I EMBRACED THE WORLD

Chapter Two: The Maid's Quarters

The twins were still throwing toys across the living room when Betrish finally lost her patience.

Migi and Mega had scattered half the house by noon — plush dolls, plastic tea sets, a whole shelf of trinkets flung across the sala floor like confetti. Betrish stood in the doorway watching the mess spread, her earlier warmth from meeting Sanje's guests gone without a trace.

"Enough." Her voice cracked through the room like a slap. "From now on, you two sleep in the helpers' quarters. If you want to act like this is a house with no rules, you can start earning your keep like everyone else who lives in it."

The twins froze. Migi's hand found Prince's — no, found her sister's shoulder — and gripped it tight, the two of them suddenly small in a way they hadn't managed to be all morning.

"Opo," they said together, barely above a whisper.

That was how it started. From that day on, Migi and Mega lived among the household staff, folding linens and sweeping floors alongside women twice their age. One by one, the other helpers quietly gave notice — Betrish had a habit of promising a full wage and delivering less than half of it, and few were willing to stay for the difference. Within a month, only one remained.

Sioning.

She was thirty-five, unmarried, with no family of her own waiting for her outside that house — and if she'd ever resented that fact, no one had heard her say so. She could have left with the others. She stayed instead, because somewhere in the last few months, without quite meaning to, she'd started thinking of Princess and Prince the way a mother thinks of her own children. Leaving would have meant leaving them to fend for themselves in a house that didn't particularly want them there. Sioning wasn't built for that kind of walking away.

It was Sioning who noticed, weeks later, that something was wrong at school.

Princess found out first. She was cutting through the covered walkway toward the classrooms when she spotted her brother sitting alone at the edge of it, paper balls littering the ground around him, a thin cut splitting his lower lip.

"Hey!" She was in front of him before she'd decided to move. "Who did this to my brother?"

The boys responsible had already scattered, laughing somewhere out of sight. Prince didn't look up.

"Ate, please," he mumbled. "If I fight back, they'll just hit me harder next time."

"What?" Princess crouched in front of him, checking the cut on his lip like she had any idea what she was checking for. "Prince, if you never fight back, they'll never stop."

"I'll just tell the teacher."

"Telling the teacher only works until she's not looking." Princess sat down beside him on the concrete, not caring that her uniform would need washing later. "You don't have to hit anyone. But you have to stop acting like you're the smallest person in every room, because they can tell. Bullies always can."

Prince didn't answer. But he didn't flinch away from her either, and for Princess — six years old and already fluent in the particular math of protecting someone — that was answer enough.

She didn't expect anyone to be waiting for her outside the school gate that afternoon.

The woman was old enough that Princess would have remembered meeting her — silver-haired, sun-browned, watching the gate with the specific patience of someone who had waited there before. When their eyes met, the woman waved.

"Kumusta ka na, Princess?"

Princess slowed to a stop. "Kilala nyo po ako?" You know me?

"I'm Marta," the woman said. "I've been keeping an eye on you for a long time now. Do you think we could talk? Just for a little while."

Princess glanced back toward the gate — no sign of Sioning yet, no sign of anyone who'd come to walk her home. "Sige po," she said finally, and let the old woman fall into step beside her.

They hadn't gone far before Marta spoke again, quieter this time, like she'd been holding the words back the whole walk.

"There's something you should know, anak. Your father left you here."

Princess stopped walking.

"Hindi po namin naiintindihan," she said — we don't understand — though even as she said it, some small, cold part of her suspected that she understood perfectly well, and simply didn't want to.

Marta only looked at her, old eyes steady, like a woman deciding how much of the truth a seven-year-old could actually carry — and whether today was the day to hand over the rest of it.