03
1103 Words
Monday. 2:56 PM. Campus Auditorium.
Puno ang hall.
Organization shirts colored the seats—blue for the engineering guild, maroon for the theater group, yellow for the campus volunteers. In contrast, the front row gleamed with gray suits and tight-lipped expressions. Admin reps. Media cameras lined the back wall, their red blinking lights like quiet warnings.
Tension humming beneath the aircon buzz.
At sa gitna ng lahat, si Aira, hawak ang press pass niya like a shield.
She scanned the stage. Five panelists. All admin. No students. So much for “dialogue.”
“Excuse me,” she told the usher, slipping into a reserved row. First two seats marked THE SENTINEL. The one beside hers? Empty.
Typical.
Two minutes to three. She opened her laptop, notes at the ready, highlights in yellow. Her outline was structured to the second. First ten minutes, budget overview. Next twenty, Q&A. Last part: open forum. If they allowed one.
She reviewed her document for the fiftieth time. It wasn’t just a story. It was scaffolding—every sentence a beam. She didn’t want to cover this forum. She wanted to carve truth out of it.
Bago pa siya makapagtype ng kahit ano, may tumabi sa kanya, sabay sipol.
“Wow. May seating chart,” bulong ni Elijah.
“Late,” bulong pabalik ni Aira.
“Stylishly,” he said, flashing a grin.
He opened his own laptop. No notes, no outline—just a blinking cursor on a blank doc. It was infuriating how calm he looked, like this wasn’t a high-stakes beat but some campus club meeting.
She resisted the urge to scoff.
“Baka gusto mong mag-review muna ng background,” sabi niya, hindi tumitingin.
“Baka gusto mong magrelax,” sagot niya, naka-ngisi.
Then the mic feedback hit. And the panel began.
---
3:12 PM.
The numbers were presented. Fast. Dense. Puro graphs. Puro projections.
Aira typed furiously, catching abbreviations mid-sentence. CAF—Campus Auxiliary Fees. STFAP—Scholarship Tiering Framework. MDP—Miscellaneous Development Projects. Every acronym was a lock, and she was trying to pick each one open.
Elijah leaned in. “Do you understand any of that?”
“Some,” she muttered. “And the rest, hindi kasi sinadyang gawing hard to understand.”
“Sneaky.”
“Strategic.”
Then came the questions. Safe ones. From student council reps na halatang napaghandaan. Walang follow-up. Walang pressure.
And then, a girl stood up. Familiar voice.
Gem.
“Bakit hindi in-announce nang maayos ang student rep reshuffle? At bakit walang kahit isang org leader sa panel?”
Murmurs across the room.
One panelist smiled. “We believe leadership should be representative, not reactive.”
Gem didn’t back down. “Transparency is not a slideshow. And this—this isn’t a forum. It’s a monologue.”
“Whoa,” Elijah whispered.
Aira was already typing, fast. Every word mattered. Every moment, headline-worthy.
She noted the pause between sentences, the tightness in Gem’s tone. The subtle nods from students around her. The discomfort in the admin’s faces—not rage, but something like recoil.
Then came the tension.
A student tried to raise a placard. “STUDENT FUNDS = STUDENT SAY.”
A guard approached. Gently took it away.
The room stiffened.
“Bawal daw,” someone muttered.
The air thinned. Aira’s fingers paused above the keys. For a second, time slowed—not in a poetic way, but like the moment before a car hits a wall.
She glanced at Elijah. For once, he wasn’t smiling. He was typing too.
This—this was what it meant to witness.
For a second, they weren't rivals. They were reporters.
---
4:46 PM.
“Tangina,” bulong ni Elijah habang papalabas sila ng hall. “That was insane.”
“I need to rewrite everything,” Aira said, already pulling out her phone.
Elijah caught up beside her. “Wait. Debrief muna.”
“No time.”
“You’ll burn out.”
“I’ll burn later.”
He stepped in front of her, blocking the hallway.
“Elijah—”
“One minute,” he said. “Real talk.”
She crossed her arms. “Make it fast.”
He hesitated. Then:
“You ever wonder why we’re doing this?”
Aira blinked. “What kind of question—?”
“I mean this. Journalism. Stories na ganito kabigat.”
She didn’t answer right away.
Then: “Because someone has to.”
Elijah studied her face. “And what if walang makinig?”
“Then we write louder.”
“Pero do you ever think this is all useless?” tanong niya, genuine. “Like, kahit anong sulat natin, they still get away with it.”
She looked him in the eye. “That's why we write. So they don’t.”
For a moment, silence fell between them. Not the awkward kind—just quiet. The kind that understood.
He smiled. Not smug this time. Soft.
“Okay,” he said. “Then let’s write loud.”
---
8:03 PM. Sentinel Newsroom.
The room was nearly empty.
Except them.
Two laptops. One story. Paragraphs bleeding into each other, annotated in color-coded comments.
Aira’s structure. Elijah’s lines.
> Students left the forum with more questions than answers.
“Transparency without accountability is just optics,” one rep said.
Outside, the placards were gone. But the tension lingered like graffiti the rain couldn’t wash away.
“Too poetic,” Aira said, marking it.
“You said loud. That’s loud,” Elijah countered.
She sighed. “Fine. Keep it.”
He raised a brow. “That easy?”
“I’m tired.”
“You trust me now.”
“Don’t push it.”
Silence for a beat.
Then he said, “Aira?”
She looked up.
“You were right, you know. This story matters.”
Her voice was quiet. “You were right too. Stories need warmth.”
They looked at each other, the doc glowing between them.
Two bylines. One story.
And, in some strange unspoken way, it had stopped feeling like a compromise.
---
10:24 PM. Draft finalized.
Sent to Ma’am Laurel.
Aira packed up slowly. Elijah waited at the door.
“Sabay?” he asked.
She nodded.
They stepped out of the newsroom together, into the cool night, not quite friends. Not yet enemies. Something in between.
The campus lights were dimming. Somewhere nearby, a student strummed a guitar out of tune. The echoes of the day clung to their shirts like sweat.
And for the first time, the silence between them didn’t feel like competition.
It felt like a beginning.
- Writer
