Entangled

Chapter Two

The first thing Sofia noticed when she woke was the sound of her phone buzzing nonstop on the nightstand.

She rolled over, squinting at the glow. Not her alarm. Notifications. Dozens of them, vibrating so hard it felt like the phone might leap off the table.

Her stomach tightened. She unlocked the screen with trembling fingers.

#TristanJacinto.

The hashtag was everywhere.

Her feed was flooded with grainy photos taken in the alley behind Elysium Club. Tristan Jacinto, pressed against a woman against the wall, his hair a mess, his suit jacket open. His hand gripped her thigh, her dress hiked up, his mouth buried against her neck. It looked damning, intimate, impossible to explain away.

The woman’s face was blurred, but her outline, dark hair, curved jaw, small frame, was enough.

And then Sofia saw her own name.

Sofia Reyes.

Threads on X dissected her graduation photos. t****k edits zoomed in frame by frame. i********: collages plastered her staff headshot beside Tristan with captions like Mystery Girl Revealed. On f*******:, auntie gossip groups were tagging her family.

Her chest tightened. She barely used social media. Her f*******: was private. Her i********: had fewer than a hundred posts, mostly sunsets and coffee mugs. Her t****k account was blank and only uses it to watch cute dog videos. She had spent her life avoiding attention.

Now strangers had decided she was Tristan Jacinto’s alley girl.

The phone slipped from her hand and clattered onto the floor.

Her bedroom door flew open. “Sofie!”

Lani burst in, hair wild, rainbow shirt crooked, waving her phone like a siren. Behind her, Pia and Marco hovered, pale and wide-eyed.

“You’re trending!” Lani shouted. “Number three on X. Girl, what did you do?”

Sofia’s throat closed. “Nothing!” she choked out. “It’s not me. I wasn’t there. I didn’t—” Her face burned. “I’ve never even been to Elysium.”

The three of them stared at her. Silence stretched for a beat too long.

Marco finally spoke. “So… you didn’t…?”

“No!” Sofia nearly shouted. “I didn’t sleep with him. I didn’t even meet him in person. I just did an email with his team and edited his interview answers!”

The tension cracked. Lani blinked, then broke into a grin. “Oh my god. So you really pulled it off.”

Sofia frowned. “Pulled what off?”

Lani smirked. “You’ve managed to have the first s*x scandal in history without actually having s*x. That’s… honestly iconic.”

“Lani!” Pia snapped.

“What?” Lani shrugged. “People usually need to make at least one terrible decision to end up like this. Sofie literally just went to sleep and woke up in a nationwide scandal. That’s talent.”

Sofia groaned, burying her face in her hands. “I’m ruined.”

“No you’re not,” Pia said softly, crouching at her side. “These things pass.”

“Pass?” Lani scoffed. “Girl, this is the internet. By lunch there’ll be t****k dance challenges set to ‘Alley Girl Sofia Reyes Remix.’”

Sofia let out a strangled laugh that melted into a sob.

Her phone buzzed again on the floor. She didn’t pick it up.

Because this wasn’t just Manila gossip anymore. She came from a small town where everyone knew everyone, even across the neighboring barrios. Where news traveled faster than tricycles on the highway. Where people had only just gotten proper internet, and now f*******: and t****k were their favorite pastime.

If the country was already tearing her apart, she knew the gossips back home would be worse. And when her parents saw this, when her brothers saw this, she had no idea how she would explain.