Surrender

CHAPTER ONE

The television in the boarding house looked like it belonged in another century. Its screen curved at the edges, flickering between color and static, its tinny sound battling the old electric fan’s hum.

Jessica and Bea sat cross-legged on the floor of their dorm room, two girls in a space barely large enough for their dreams. The air smelled faintly of detergent, instant noodles, and city dust. A chipped plate with half a boiled egg sat forgotten beside an unwashed mug of coffee.

Bea leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “It’s the final quarter! San Beda versus Lyceum, come on, this is history!”

Jessica wasn’t really watching. Her notebook lay open beside her, its pages cluttered with messy notes for her Sociology of Mass Media class. She had been underlining the word “inequality” before Bea’s excitement tore her focus away.

She looked up just in time to see the camera find him.

Alexander Almeda.

The team captain. The name flashed across the bottom of the screen in white text, confident, complete. He stood tall on the court, every movement deliberate. Sweat gleamed under the arena lights, and the crowd’s roar seemed to move around him, not through him. The commentators called him “the Almeda heir,” their voices thick with admiration.

He looked untouchable, like someone born to be watched, not to watch.

“Look at him,” Bea whispered. “The captain, the golden boy. He’s probably rich, too.”

Jessica’s gaze stayed fixed on the screen. “People like him,” she murmured, “live in the same city as us, but on a different planet.”

The clock wound down. Almeda caught the ball, pivoted, and released it. The shot sliced clean through the air, three points, perfect.

The crowd erupted. Game over.

Bea jumped up, cheering, “San Beda wins! Ten-time champions!” Her voice filled the cramped room, laughter spilling into the hallway where other students were already celebrating. Someone banged on the wall outside and shouted, “Red Lions forever!”

Jessica didn’t move. Her eyes lingered on the replay, Almeda surrounded by teammates, smiling under the flash of cameras. It was the kind of smile born from certainty, from knowing the world would catch you if you fell.

She thought of home, of her mother’s cracked hands counting coins at the sari-sari store, of her father’s tricycle sputtering down the dusty roads of San Jose, of the nights her siblings studied under a dim bulb powered by luck and prayer.

All of them had sent her here, to Manila, to study, to make it. Every centavo was scraped together from long days and longer hopes. The weight of that truth pressed against her chest as the crowd on the screen roared for someone who would never need to count coins.

For a moment, she wondered what it must feel like to live without fear of losing. To win because the world expected it.

The television flickered, its glow brushing against her tired face. She reached for her notebook and wrote a single line:

“Fairness isn’t free.”

Bea had collapsed onto her bed, still laughing at the posts flooding social media.

Jessica closed her notebook, her fingers tracing the worn edges of the cover, the same notebook she’d promised her mother she would fill with stories worth reading. Outside, Manila throbbed with its usual noise: jeepneys groaning, vendors calling out, the city breathing in and out like a restless animal.

She looked once more at the frozen image of Almeda’s triumphant smile. A guy like that, she thought, will never have to wonder how to pay for next semester’s tuition.

Funny how close their worlds were, his school just across the street from hers, and yet the distance between them felt like oceans.

She shook her head, pushing the thought away. What mattered was surviving the week, keeping her grades up, showing up for her next shift at Tambay Table, the restaurant chain that had become her lifeline.

Outside, the city moved on. But something inside Jessica Manlapig had quietly shifted, a spark she couldn’t name yet, lit by envy, hunger, and something dangerously close to curiosity perhaps?