CHAPTER 3

Elara POV

That night, I sat on the floor of my apartment surrounded by half-packed boxes. Cardboard towers leaned against the walls like silent witnesses, and every object I touched carried a memory sharp enough to cut me.

The chair Daniel once teased me about. The shelf where Cassandra had set her coffee during study nights. The framed photos I had flipped face-down so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

All of it felt poisoned.

On the coffee table sat the small velvet box. The cufflinks. My fingers trembled as I picked it up, the lid half-open, glimmering weakly under the lamplight.

I whispered to myself, bitterly. “Stupid. You saved up for weeks, Elara. For this?”

The silver caught the light, mocking me. I had pictured him wearing them at a pitch, at our wedding. They weren’t cufflinks anymore—they were my faith, my future, my trust… all broken.

My chest tightened, my throat closing around the weight of it.

I held them over the trash bin, my hand shaking. I couldn’t let go. Not yet.

“No… I can’t—” I gasped, my fingers tightening. “Why does it hurt so much?”

Part of me screamed don’t do it. Part of me whispered you have to.

My voice cracked as I choked out a single word. “Goodbye.”

The cufflinks slipped from my fingers.

The metallic clink against the garbage rang louder than thunder.

“No, no, no…” My knees buckled, and I sank to the floor, sobbing into my hands. “That was the last piece… that was all I had left…”

That was it. The last tie. Gone.

I whispered again through tears, softer this time. “It’s over. It’s really over.”

The words echoed back at me, hollow, final—like the closing of a door I knew I could never open again.

Two weeks later, I stepped off the bus in Manila with a suitcase dragging stubbornly behind me.

The heat was suffocating, the kind that clung to your skin and filled your lungs. Jeepneys blared their horns as they swerved recklessly through traffic. Vendors shouted, “Taho! Fishball! Bili kayo dito! ” The air smelled of gasoline, fried food, and flowers from a stall nearby.

It was chaos. Overwhelming. But inside that chaos was something I hadn’t felt in weeks.

Freedom.

Here, no one knew me. No one pitied me. No one whispered about betrayal.

I stopped at the building I’d rented a tiny studio in—a cramped, peeling third-floor apartment wedged between two towers. The walls outside were cracked with age, and the paint had faded into a tired gray that no amount of sunlight could brighten. Laundry lines stretched across the alley like tangled ribbons, and the faint sound of karaoke drifted from somewhere below. To anyone else, it would look suffocating. To me, it was salvation.

I don’t know why I chose this building, especially when there was a newer condo closer to the city center. Maybe it was practicality—rent here was half the price, and I needed to save every peso I could. Maybe it was punishment—some part of me that felt I didn’t deserve comfort after the way my old life had crumbled. Or maybe, deep down, I wanted to experience this—to start from the bottom, to feel every inch of the climb back up.

The landlady greeted me at the entrance. She was a plump woman with warm, curious eyes, her graying hair tied back in a bun, and a faint scent of jasmine soap clinging to her clothes. She held out the keys with a kind smile.

“It’s not much, hija,” she said gently, almost apologetically. “Pero safe dito. And quiet. Sleep here is good.” 

I managed a faint smile, gripping the cool metal of the keys in my hand as though they were a lifeline. “Quiet is good,” I murmured. “Quiet is exactly what I need.” She smiled at me with relief.

She nodded, then motioned me to follow. “Sige, I show your room.”

We climbed the narrow staircase, each step groaning under our weight. The hallway was dim, lit only by a single flickering bulb that hummed like an insect caught in glass. Paint peeled from the walls in curling strips, and the floor tiles were mismatched, a patchwork of repairs over the years. Yet somehow, it didn’t scare me. The imperfections almost comforted me—because I was just as imperfect.

The landlady stopped in front of a door at the end of the hall and pressed the key into the lock. “Okay, this is your room.”

The door creaked open, revealing a small square space with plain white walls stained faintly yellow from time. A single window faced the street, its glass streaked with dust and fingerprints. The furniture was basic—a narrow bed, a rickety wooden table, and a chair that looked like it had survived decades of tenants before me.

But the moment I stepped inside, I exhaled, as though the air in the room filled a hollow inside me I hadn’t realized was empty.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t even particularly clean. But it was mine.

When the landlady left with a kind, “If you need anything, go over there then knock lang.” I nodded and smiled.

When I laid my sketchbooks on the desk by the window, spreading out pencils and rulers like weapons, I felt a flicker of something I thought had died—hope.

“This is it,” I whispered to the empty room. “We start again.”

Every day after that was a fight. I built my interior design business from scraps. I designed a cheap logo, created a F******k page, slipped flyers into cafés, DM’d old contacts.

Most ignored me. Some laughed politely. A few gave me a chance.

My first client was a café owner. I poured myself into that project like it was my lifeline. When it reopened, he clasped my hands, his voice warm and sincere.

“Salamat, hija. You made this place a home.”

I blinked, caught off guard. Salamat. Thank you—I understood that much. But hija? I wasn’t sure. Daughter? Young lady? His tone was kind, though, and it softened something sharp inside me. For the first time in weeks, I let myself smile without forcing it.

Something inside me cracked open—something that wasn’t pain.

Work became my anchor. Sketch by sketch, I built something new.

But my walls… my walls were higher than ever. I turned down invitations from neighbors.

“Mag-join ka sa amin sa dinner minsan, Elara,” one of them urged kindly one evening, balancing a tray of food in her hands.

I froze for a second, my brain tripping over the words. Mag-join? Dinner? Minsan… Sometimes? Ka sa amin? My Tagalog wasn’t fluent enough, and for a heartbeat I just stood there, embarrassed by my own silence.

She smiled encouragingly, waiting.

“Oh—ah, thank you?” I stammered quickly, clutching my bag tighter as if it were a shield. “But I still have a lot of work to finish.”

Her smile dimmed just a little, but she nodded in understanding.

I dodged coworkers’ friendly chatter and declined every offer of company. My smiles were polite masks, nothing more.

Love? No. Love was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

I told myself I didn’t need it. All I needed was survival.