Work Text:
The thing about Colet Vergara was that she was, by every external measure, a deeply unbothered person.
She wore all black to a country that was thirty-four degrees in the shade. She was the tidiest of the eight of them, the one who cleaned up after everyone, the one who quietly reorganized your kitchen while you weren't looking. She had a jawline that, according to Mikha, "should be illegal in at least three barangays," and a habit of saying things like "wala akong pake" in a low voice that made strangers at the gym forget their reps. She wrote songs in a bedroom she had soundproofed herself. She read books. She was, by unanimous and unkillable consensus among her friends, "the papi."
This was not self-appointed. There had been a vote. In 2023, in this exact condo unit, Mikha had stood on a chair and declared a referendum, and seven hands had gone up, and Colet had won "Most Papi" by a landslide that Gwen had documented in a Notes app file because Gwen documented everything and trusted no one's memory, least of all her own.
So Colet was unbothered. That was the established canon. That was the lore.
Which was why it was such a problem that Maloi Ricalde existed.
Tigilan mo, she told herself, the way she told herself most nights. Magkaibigan kayo. Huwag mong sirain. Huwag kang umasa.
It was a Friday in the wet middle of August, the kind of tag-ulan night where the rain came down like it had a personal grievance and all of Metro Manila smelled like wet concrete and someone's sopas. They were at Sheena's place in QC, because Sheena had the best videoke setup of the eight of them. She had bought a professional-grade machine "as an investment," cried about the price for one entire month, and then announced, with the calm of a woman who had made peace with her sins, that it brought her joy and she would do it again.
Eight grown women. One two-bedroom condo. A coffee table that had survived more than any piece of furniture should ever have to. And a case and a half of San Miguel Flavored Beer (lychee - cause it’s the best one) that was, at this point in the evening, mostly empties.
And Maloi was the loud one.
Maloi was the loud one the way the sun was the bright one. Not by accident. She came into rooms like weather. She wore yellow when everyone else wore something sensible. She laughed with her whole face and her whole throat and sometimes her whole upper body, tipping backward, grabbing the nearest arm.
And the nearest arm, with a frequency that Colet had long ago stopped pretending was random, was Colet's arm.
She grabs everyone's arm, Colet reminded herself. Toucher si Maloi. Personality. Hindi ka special.
Sige, said the second voice, the one that lived behind her sternum and existed only to ruin her. That's why your pulse just did that? For a personality trait? Okay, maem.
"COLET." This was Mikha, from the floor, where she was lying for reasons no one had questioned. "Colet, it's your turn, you've been doing the mysterious-staring-into-the-distance thing for like forty minutes, it's giving music video, it's giving final scene, GALAW."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're brooding, you’re staring. Sheena! Sheena, tell her she's natutulala."
Sheena was perched on the arm of the couch eating chicharon directly from the bag with the silent focus of a sniper. She did not look up. ""Kanina pa ‘yan natutulala since dumating si Ate Maloi," Sheena said, and then, because she was Sheena, she set the bag down, leaned slowly toward Colet, and screamed "BADING," directly into her ear.
Colet nearly went through the wall. "HOY TUMIGIL KA!"
"Ay sorry, reflex lang. Reflex ko lang i-drop ang word and ‘bading’" Sheena said serenely, picking the chicharon back up. "Hindi ko po macontrol."
"You CAN control it, you do it on PURPOSE - "
"And yet," Sheena said.
"In Colet's defense," Jhoanna said warmly, from where she was curating the videoke queue with the seriousness of a woman organizing a national event. Jhoanna had the broadcaster cadence even off the clock, the leader's instinct to narrate a room into order. "Maloi has that effect. Tingnan mo nga siya. She's glowing. It's annoying. Honestly? If I were Colet I would also brood. I would brood EXTENSIVELY."
"Salamat, Jho," Maloi said, blowing her a kiss.
"Walang anuman, babe." Jhoanna even raised her hand to look like she’s catching the kiss.
"Wait, what effect," said Aiah.
Aiah was in the good chair, the only one in the apartment with proper back support, calm and slightly dangerous, a beer she was not really drinking in one hand. "What effect does Maloi have," she said again, mildly. "Be specific."
"Aiah, don't," said Colet.
"I'm just asking."
"You're never JUST asking. You're the scariest person I know - "
"Maloi makes Colet stupid," Stacey announced.
"It's a documented phenomenon," Stacey went on cheerfully, sweet enough that you didn't feel the knife until later. "Maloi enters. Colet's IQ exits. They high-five at the door. It's very sad. We love her."
"My IQ is INTACT - "
"Cols, last week Maloi said your hoodie was nice and you said, and I quote, 'thank you, I am also a hoodie.'"
The room lost it. Ecstatic laughter erupted from all corners of the room.
"I did NOT - "
"You did," said Gwen.
Gwen had not spoken in eleven minutes. She was reading something on her phone with the flat, unbothered expression of a woman who let exactly none of her feelings reach her face. "You said 'I am also a hoodie,'" Gwen reported, not looking up. "I wrote it down. It's in the file."
"WHAT file - "
"The file."
"Gwen has a file," Maloi said, delighted, scooting across the floor toward the couch. "Gwen has a Colet file."
"I have a ‘everyone's file’" said Gwen. "Don't flatter yourself."
This was the thing about Maloi that Colet could not get over and had decided, as a survival strategy, never to mention to a living soul for the rest of her natural life. It wasn't the prettiness, though the prettiness was a documented hazard. It was the way Maloi was so MUCH. So fully herself, so loud about it, so unembarrassed to take up the whole room and out-eat everyone and risk looking silly because, as she always said, risking was better than regretting. Colet, who had spent her whole life making herself smaller and cooler and harder to read, found this completely devastating.
You love her because she's everything you're too scared to be, said the voice behind her sternum.
Hindi ko siya mahal, Colet thought back. I respect her as a close friend and an artist.
You wrote a song about her.
I wrote a song, yes. Pero hindi s’ya tungkol sa kanya.
It's in a folder titled "M."
That could be anyone whose name starts with M. Mikha. Maraiah. Ma. Nicolette. It could be a song about Mondays.
Maloi, Colet. It's about Maloi. You know it's about Maloi.
She took a sip of her beer, which was warm, because she'd been nursing it for an hour to avoid getting drunk, because getting drunk around Maloi was a documented risk and the last time it had happened she had, allegedly, told Maloi her eyes were "really, really good at being brown" and then claimed amnesia for two weeks.
"Okay, plano," Jhoanna said, clapping her hands, the queue apparently finalized, her eyes doing the thing they did when she had already decided something and the rest of them were simply going to find out about it. "Forget Colet's tortured ballads for now. Mababa ang energy. We've been sitting too long. Sheena, hindi ba you wanted to practice something?"
The chicharon bag came down for the second time that night.
There was a particular quality to Sheena that the group had learned, over the years, to genuinely fear. In public she was the quiet one, the soft-spoken bunso, the baby they all doted on. In private, with three beers in her and the right song, she became a force the laws of physics struggled to contain. She had once done a full four-minute choreography in a kitchen the size of a parking space and broken nothing, which everyone agreed was somehow more frightening than if she had broken everything.
"I did want to practice something," Sheena said. Quietly. Which was worse.
"No," said Gwen, finally looking up. "Whatever it is. No. It ends with someone on the table. It always ends with someone on the table. And tapos may magbabayad sa table na yan, and it's never the person who got on it."
"That was ONE time - "
"Apat na beses. It's in the file."
"Of course it's in the file," said Aiah, serene in the good chair.
Jhoanna was already scrolling, ignoring all of them, and then she made a small triumphant noise and pointed the remote at the machine like she was knighting it.
The opening notes came on. That synth. That cheeky, swaggering, impossible-to-sit-still synth.
The room reacted before the lyrics even started. It was Pavlovian. It was cellular. Mikha sat bolt upright off the floor like she'd been resuscitated. Stacey put the chicharon DOWN, which was how everyone knew it was serious. Aiah, in the good chair, allowed herself a small smile, the panganay watching her children prepare to embarrass themselves.
"KAKAIBABE," Mikha screamed.
"Baliw ka, Jho," Maloi said, already grinning, already swaying, the oversized shirt slipping off one shoulder.
"I contain multitudes," Jhoanna said serenely. "Sheena. Maloi. The floor is yours. Or the table. Gwen, log it."
"Logging it."
What happened next, Colet would later think, was technically a crime. Not legally. Spiritually.
Because Maloi got up.
She got up the way she did everything, all at once and with total commitment, and she pulled Sheena up with her, and the two of them found the rhythm in about half a second because they were both the kind of people whose bodies just knew. And Sheena, the quiet one, the soft-spoken one, dropped into the choreography like she had been waiting her entire life for someone to let her. She hit it clean and sharp and feral, fully unleashed, and Mikha screamed "GORA SHEENA" and stood up on a couch cushion to do a back-up impression with zero coordination and total confidence, and Stacey was belting the whole thing off-key on purpose just to be a menace, and Aiah was filming with one hand while not getting up from the good chair, and Jhoanna had her phone up, narrating like a sports broadcaster.
"Tignan niyo ang bunso," Jhoanna was saying. "Walang takot. Walang awa - "
And Maloi.
Maloi was a problem.
Maloi danced like she was daring the universe to keep up. She hit every beat with this little punch of the hip, this flick, this roll of the shoulder that should not have been legal to do in someone's living room in a shirt about coffee. She was laughing the whole time, missing words on purpose, throwing in extra ad-libs, soulful belt bending into pure brat, and the others were screaming the lyrics from the couch, and the rain was coming down outside, and the condo was warm and bright and so loud, and Colet was sitting very, very still.
Wag mong tingnan ng ganyan, she told herself. They'll see. Si Jhoanna nakakakita ng lahat. Si Aiah mas malala. Be normal. Be the papi. Lean back. Look bored.
She leaned back. She looked, she was almost certain, bored.
And then Maloi turned around.
She turned around mid-chorus, that swaggering kakaibabe strut, and her eyes found Colet's across the small room, and she did the move. The chin tilt. The little smirk. She pointed, two fingers, gun-style, right at Colet, and she did the hip thing, the SLOW one, holding eye contact, mouthing the words directly at her like the song had been written for this exact purpose, in this exact apartment, to be aimed at this exact idiot.
And she winked.
Colet's heart did not skip a beat. It skipped the entire song. It skipped the bridge and the key change and the outro. It packed a bag and left the country.
She felt her face do something. She did not authorize her face to do anything, and yet it acted, treasonously, independently, hot and red and stupid, her whole carefully constructed unbothered-papi architecture collapsing not brick by brick but all at once, like a building condemned for years that had finally just given up.
She made a sound. It was not a cool sound.
And from the good chair, calm as a sniper herself, eldest and spiciest and entirely too observant, Aiah said, without even raising her voice:
"Oh. Oh, I got that. I got the whole thing. Jho, did you get it from your side?"
"I GOT IT," Jhoanna said, vibrating. "I GOT IT FROM THE FRONT. Tignan niyo si Colet. TIGNAN NIYO SI COLET."
***
The clip was eleven seconds long.
Two clips, actually. Aiah had the wide shot from the good chair, steady as a tripod, because the panganay's hands did not shake. Jhoanna had the front angle, slightly shrieking, which somehow made it better. And when you cut them together, which Mikha did within the hour because Mikha had editing skills and a dream, you got eleven perfect seconds.
The first eight were Maloi. Maloi dancing. Maloi being Maloi.
The last three were Colet's face.
And Colet's face, in the last three seconds, was the face of a woman watching her entire personality leave her body. Mouth slightly open. Eyes wide. The beer bottle frozen halfway to a mouth that would never reach it. A blush so total it had crept up past her ears. The face of someone who had been hit by a truck made entirely of feelings.
It was in the group chat by 11:47 PM, right after everyone dispersed.
***
THE WALO (walo hanggang dulo)
Jhoanna: [coletdownbad.mp4]
Jhoanna: for the archives 🐥
Mikha: STOP
Mikha: STOP STOP STOP
Mikha: I edited it. I already edited it. I added a zoom.
Mikha: [coletdownbad_FINAL_v2.mp4]
Mikha: I need everyone to look at the last 3 seconds with the zoom
Mikha: THE PAPI OF THE WALO
Mikha: EVERYONE LOOK AT THE PAPI OF THE WALO
Stacey: I'm screaming WHO IS SHE
Stacey: that is not a papi
Stacey: that is a baby
Stacey: that is a newborn deer who just saw a pretty girl for the first time
Aiah: I have the wide shot if anyone wants it. Steady cam. No zoom. Director's cut.
Aiah: [coletdownbad_wideangle.mp4]
Aiah: you can see the exact frame her brain turns off
Sheena: in MY defense I was also up there dancing and she never looked at me AT ALL
Sheena: I was NAILING the choreo at di man lang ako napansin. TE COLET ANUNA
Stacey: Ate Colet was busy having a spiritual experience
Gwen: Updated the file. No table was harmed. One (1) Colet was harmed beyond repair.
Jhoanna: the wink got her
Jhoanna: I literally heard the noise she made
Jhoanna: it sounded like a kettle
Mikha: SHE WENT kettle noise
Stacey: KETTLE NOISE
Mikha: put it on her tombstone
Mikha: here lies colet vergara. papi of the walo. cause of death: ONE wink
Mikha: and maloi wasn't even TRYING
Mikha: maloi was at like 12% effort
Mikha: imagine full power
Aiah: we'd lose her
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared.
It was Colet.
Colet: I was reacting to the SONG
Mikha: GIRL
Stacey: GIRL.
Jhoanna: cols, the song was not pointing at you
Jhoanna: the song does not have fingers
Colet: I had a chill. it was cold.
Gwen: It is 31 degrees. It is raining but it is 31 degrees. I checked.
Colet: internal chill
Stacey: "internal chill" hahahahahahahahahaha
Stacey: bestie that's called a CRUSH
Colet: I do not have a crush
Colet: I respect Maloi as a dancer
Mikha: as a DANCER
Mikha: colet you looked like you were going to get down on one knee
Mikha: you looked like you saw heaven and heaven did the kakaibabe hip thing AT you
Sheena: ate aiah's wide shot is so funny it's like a nature documentary
Sheena: and the narrator is like. and here. we observe. the papi. in her final moments.
Aiah: I'm glad my cinematography is appreciated
And then, the message that changed everything.
Maloi had been quiet. Maloi was never quiet, so the whole chat felt it, eight women in eight different parts of the city all staring at their phones, when the dots appeared next to her name. What she sent was this:
Maloi: awwww was 12% too much for you pogi 😘
And then:
Maloi: I really don't think you can handle me at full power tbh
And then, the kill shot:
Maloi: but it's okay. we all knew the papi thing was a marketing campaign 💅
The chat detonated.
Mikha: OH
Mikha: OH IT'S ON
Mikha: SHE SAID MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Stacey: maloi pulled out the BIG knife
Stacey: not the marketing campaign 😭😭😭
Jhoanna: the AUDACITY. the disrespect. I love her. I would die for her.
Sheena: Ate Maloi said Ate Colet is shrinkflation
Sheena: smaller papi, same price
Aiah: brutal. correct, but brutal.
Gwen: Accurate.
And Colet, who had spent two years building an unbothered persona precisely so that nobody would ever have to see the soft idiot underneath, who had survived this long on deflection and good lighting and the strategic deployment of leather jackets, felt something rise up in her that was older and dumber than any survival instinct.
It was pride. Wounded, stupid, fatal pride.
Colet: I can handle you at any power.
She typed it before she could stop herself. She watched it send. She felt, immediately, the specific horror of a woman who has written a check her entire nervous system cannot cash.
The chat went silent for three full seconds.
Then:
Maloi: oh?
Maloi: prove it then
Maloi: bet?
Wag, begged the voice behind her sternum. Colet. For the love of everything that is holy. For once. Wag.
Colet: bet.
Mikha: I'M GETTING POPCORN
Aiah: I'm getting my good camera
***
"You did WHAT," Gwen said.
It was Sunday. They were walking, because Gwen walked on Sundays with the grim regularity of someone managing her own enormous interior weather, and Colet had invited herself along because she needed to talk to the one member of the Walo who would not immediately put it in the group chat. They had ended up at a quiet stretch near the creek, the afternoon gray and thick, the rain holding off but threatening, the air heavy enough to chew.
"I agreed to a bet," Colet said. "With Maloi."
"I read the chat. I'm asking you to say it out loud so you can hear how stupid it is."
"I agreed to a bet with Maloi that I can, quote, handle her, end quote."
Gwen walked in silence for a moment. Gwen was good at silence. It was where she lived.
"And what does that mean," she said finally. "Operationally. What are the terms? What does winning look like? Because I know you didn't define the terms. You are a romantic in a leather jacket who has never operationally defined anything in her life."
"...We didn't define the terms."
"Of course you didn't."
"It's vibes-based."
"It's VIBES-based." Gwen pinched the bridge of her nose. "Colet. A bet with no terms isn't a bet. Alam mo ba kung ano yun? It's two people agreeing to torture each other until one of them cracks. That's not a bet. That's a situationship with extra steps and a worse name."
"It's not a situationship."
"Then what is it?"
And here was the thing. Here was why Colet had come to the one person who would not flinch and would not tease and would not screenshot it for the chat. Because Gwen, certified introvert, deepest-feeling and least-expressive woman in the group, was the only one who could make a thing small enough for Colet to actually hold.
"I think," Colet said, "that if I lose, she finds out."
"Uh.. finds out what?"
"That it's not a campaign." Colet watched the creek. "The papi thing. I built it. I built the whole thing. Kasi if I'm the cool one, the unbothered one, then nobody ever has to know that I'm.. That I.."
She stopped.
Gwen, who kept everyone's file and let no feeling reach her face and quietly wanted to spend her life making rooms that other people felt safe in, did the kindest thing she knew how to do. She didn't say anything. She just slowed down, so Colet could keep up.
"That I'm so in love with her I can't see straight," Colet said.
Gwen stopped. Colet jumped into the part she can no longer take back.
"Two years I've been sitting on it. She winks at me one time at a videoke night and I make a sound like a KETTLE because my body cannot physically contain it. And if she ever turned the full thing on me, the real one, not the joke, I would just.. dissolve. There'd be nothing left. They'd have to mop me up off Sheena's floor and you would put it in the file."
The creek went by. A tricycle sputtered somewhere behind the trees.
"So the bet," Gwen said slowly, "is whether you can survive her flirting with you."
"Yes."
"And the real stakes, the ones you didn't write down, are that if you can't, she'll know you mean it."
"Yes."
"And the reason that's a problem, and not, say, the obvious solution to two years of suffering, is - "
"Because she flirts with everyone." Colet's voice came out flatter than she meant it. "You've seen her. She kissed Jhoanna on the cheek six times yesterday. She holds Stacey's hand. She calls all of us mahal. She's just WARM, it's just who she is, it doesn't MEAN anything when she does it to me, and if I lose this bet and she finds out, then she has to do the worst thing in the world."
"Which is?"
"She has to be kind about it." Colet swallowed. "She has to let me down gently. And I'll have to watch her be gentle, knowing it's pity, and then it'll be weird forever, and the others will feel it, kasi they feel everything, Jhoanna feels it, Aiah DEFINITELY feels it, and we'll lose the thing. Walo hanggang dulo, di ba? Except it won't be walo anymore. It'll be seven and a half and a girl who used to be the papi standing slightly outside the group because she couldn't keep her stupid feelings in her stupid chest."
She finished. She felt scraped out.
Gwen walked beside her for a long moment. The threat of rain sat over both of them.
"Can I tell you something," Gwen said. "As the person who has watched both of you for two years from the only neutral seat in this entire group."
"...Okay."
"You're both idiots."
"That's not - "
"I'm not done. You're both idiots, and I'm not going to tell you the part you want me to tell you, because it's not mine to tell, and because you wouldn't believe me anyway. You'd find a way to explain it away. You always do. It's in the file."
Gwen stopped walking. She turned and looked at Colet with the full, flat, terrifying sincerity she kept locked behind the nonchalance for occasions exactly like this one. "But I'll tell you this. You keep saying you can't lose the bet. You keep saying losing means she finds out, and finding out means you lose everything."
"Yeah."
"Did it occur to you," Gwen said, "that you might be calling the wrong thing 'losing'?"
A leaf came down off a tree and landed on the path between them. Colet did not have an answer. Gwen started walking again, and after a moment Colet followed, because that was the dynamic, that was the whole dynamic, Gwen set the pace and you kept up, and the rain held off a little longer, and Colet's chest hurt in a way she didn't have the structure to hold.
***
The bet, in practice, was a war of attrition.
Maloi escalated. Of course she escalated. Escalation was Maloi's first language, right after tagalog and right before "ordering for the whole table without asking."
It started small. A voice note in the group chat, ostensibly for everyone, where she said "good morning Walo, good morning lalo na sa mga taong hindi ako kaya i-handle," in a tone so smug Colet had to put her phone in another room and stand on her balcony for a while. A comment on Colet's Instagram story, a black-and-white photo of her studio setup: "very papi. very campaign. 💛" A moment at lunch, the whole group crammed into a too-small table at a place in Poblacion, where Maloi reached over and stole a piece of Colet's fries with her fingers and held eye contact while she ate it, and Colet had to stare at a fixed point on the wall and silently recite every key on a piano to keep her face from betraying her.
And the diabolical part, the genuinely evil part, was that Colet was fighting back.
Because of the pride. Because of the wound. Because she had said "I can handle you at any power" in front of God and the entire Walo and Gwen's file, and now she could not back down. So every time Maloi escalated, Colet had to respond, had to be smooth, had to lean against a doorframe and say something low and unbothered and watch it land. And the terrible thing, the thing she could not admit even to herself in the dark, was that it was the happiest she had been in two years.
Because flirting back was allowed now. It was the bet. It was a bit. She could say "you've got something on your lip" and reach over and not-quite touch Maloi's face and watch Maloi's breath catch, and it was FINE, it was within the rules, nobody could accuse her of meaning it, because the whole point was that she didn't. She was just winning.
Except.
Mikha: genuine question for the group chat
Mikha: are they flirting flirting
Mikha: or bit flirting
Stacey: bit flirting
Stacey: ...
Stacey: I think??
Sheena: I was there, I was in everything flirting moment
Sheena: that was not bit energy
Sheena: when Ate Maloi ate the fries, Ate Colet stopped breathing for an entire conversation
Sheena: nakita ko, kitang kita ko
Aiah: I was also there
Aiah: I have watched a lot of people pretend not to be in love
Aiah: I have BEEN one of those people pretending not to be in love
Aiah: that was not pretending. that was the real one. trust your panganay.
Jhoanna: I think the saddest part is they BOTH think it's a bit
Jhoanna: like genuinely both of them
Gwen: Leave it.
Mikha: but GWEN
Gwen: Leave. It. If we push, Colet bolts. We have all seen Colet bolt. Remember the open mic. Remember when she "had a cold" for nine days.
Mikha: that was a real cold
Gwen: That was a feelings cold and it is in the file.
Stacey: feelings cold 😭
Aiah: ok we leave it
Aiah: but I'm keeping the good camera charged
Jhoanna: and I'm manifesting
Jhoanna: I wrote it on Sheena's bathroom mirror
Sheena: YOU DID WHAT ON MY MIRROR
Jhoanna: "colet and maloi 2025 🐥💛"
Jhoanna: it works. you just have to say it. or write it. on a mirror. it's science.
Sheena: that's not science that's vandalism in my CR
Jhoanna: it's manifestation Sheena
Mikha: AU title for this ship KETTLE NOISE: A LOVE STORY
Stacey: HAHAHAHHAHAHA I’m shipping
***
The peak came three weeks in, at Mikha's birthday.
Mikha's birthday was at a rented videoke room in Makati, because the universe had a sense of humor, and there was lechon, and there was a cake shaped like Mikha's own face for reasons that made sense only to Mikha, who wanted to be a Best Actress someday and was, in fairness, treating her own birthday like an awards show. And there was, inevitably, a moment where someone queued Kakaibabe again, on purpose, looking directly at Colet.
That someone was Stacey, and Stacey was already cackling before the synth even started.
"Staks," Colet said. "No."
"Staks YES," said Stacey, sweet as anything, sliding the mic across the table.
And Maloi, who had spent the whole evening on the sticky vinyl couch next to Colet, close enough that their thighs touched, close enough that Colet had memorized her exact temperature, stood up. And she held out her hand. To Colet.
"Tara, papi," she said. "Bet's a bet. Handle me."
The room went feral.
"OH MY GOD," Mikha screamed, on her own birthday, abandoning her own face-cake. "OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING. AIAH. AIAH THE CAMERA."
"Rolling," said Aiah, who had not gotten up, who was the panganay and would film this from a seated position like a queen.
"Jho, are you getting the front - "
"I'm getting the front, I'm manifesting AND getting the front - "
Sheena was already doing the choreo in her seat. Gwen had quietly put down her drink and picked up her phone, opening, everyone would later confirm, the file.
And Colet looked at Maloi's hand. The painted nails. The little ring she always wore. The hand that had stolen her fries and grabbed her arm a hundred times, the hand she had spent two years not letting herself want. And she thought, with a sudden vertigo, if I take this hand I lose, I will lose, I cannot dance with her in front of everyone and keep my face. The bet is the face. I lose the second I touch her. And the voice behind her sternum was screaming WAG, and Gwen's voice from the creek said did it occur to you that you might be calling the wrong thing losing, and the synth was starting, and Maloi was waiting, her hand out, her smile slipping just slightly at the edges, just slightly, into something that wasn't a dare anymore, something that looked almost, almost like fear.
Colet took the hand.
She lost the bet in the first eight seconds.
She lost it because she could not, it turned out, hold eye contact with Maloi Ricalde while the latter did the hip thing two feet away and keep her face cool. Her face was not cool. Her face was an open book in a language every single person in that room could read. She danced anyway, badly, laughing, helpless, and Maloi laughed too, and they were terrible together and it did not matter, and the whole barkada screamed the lyrics, Mikha standing on the couch, Stacey belting off-key, Sheena doing the whole choreography by herself in the corner, Jhoanna narrating, Aiah filming, Gwen typing. And at the kakaibabe part Maloi spun and pressed her back to Colet's front for one single beat, one beat, and Colet's hands found her waist on pure animal instinct, and Maloi went still against her for half a second, just half, before spinning back out into the choreography.
And Colet thought:
Oh no.
That wasn't a bit either.
***
She found Maloi in the hallway by the comfort rooms, twenty minutes later, away from the noise.
It was an accident. Colet had only gone to get air, to put two walls between herself and the thing that had happened on the dance floor, to stand somewhere her face could do whatever it wanted without an audience. And there was Maloi, leaning against the wall by the sink, phone in her hand but dark, not looking at it. Just standing. The lechon and the screaming were a muffled country away.
"Hi," Maloi said.
"Hi."
And then Maloi didn't say anything smug. That was the first wrong thing. Maloi always had something smug, some 12%-too-much line ready to fire, and instead she just looked at Colet for a second too long, and the line of her shoulders was different, softer, undefended, and she pushed off the wall and took a step closer, and her hand came up, slow, toward the side of Colet's face, and her voice when it came was so quiet it barely cleared the noise behind the walls.
"Col," she said. "Kanina, when you held my - "
And Colet panicked.
It was not a decision. Decisions happen in the part of the brain that has time. This happened in the older part, the part that had spent two years building a wall and would defend that wall against anything, including her own happiness, especially her own happiness. She felt the reach coming and she felt the truth rising up to meet it and she felt, underneath both, the bottomless terror that if she let this be real and it broke, she would lose not just Maloi but the whole shape of her life, the eight of them, the only family she had built on purpose. And so she did the thing she was best at in all the world.
She stepped back. She put the unbothered face on. And she laughed. She didn’t notice a hand was about to reach for her face.
"Sayang, ang galing mo talaga sumayaw," she said, light, dry, papi, reaching for the bit like a railing in the dark. "Pero you still lost. I handled you. The entire Kakaibabe bit and I survived. Pay up."
The hand stopped.
It stopped in the air, halfway to her face, and then it came back down to Maloi's side, and Colet watched something happen that she had never once seen happen to Maloi Ricalde in all the years she had loved her. She watched the light go out. Not dramatically. That was the worst part. There was no scene, no slammed door, no shout. Just a small, quiet folding-in, like a window closing somewhere far inside a house. The brightness she came into rooms with just. Dimmed.
"Right," Maloi said. "The bet."
"Maloi - "
"No, you're right. You won. Galing." She smiled, and the smile was the wrong size, two clicks too small, the smile she gave strangers and not the one she gave Colet. "Uwi na ko. Maaga pa pero pagod na ko. Sige na, Cols."
And she went. She went back down the hall toward the noise to say her goodbyes, and her walk was still Maloi's walk, still bright to anyone who didn't know, and Colet stood by the sink and understood, far too late, that she had not won anything.
She had just done damage. To the one person. The one.
Ayan, said the voice behind her sternum, and for once it was not clinical, it was not smug, it was just sad. Protektahan mo daw siya sa sarili mo. Eto. You protected her. Tingnan mo siya. Ang galing mo, Colet. You finally did the thing you were always scared of doing. You hurt her. Hindi sa pag-amin. Sa pagtago.
***
She didn't sleep.
She lay on her floor, because she did her best catastrophizing on the floor, where the ceiling was far away and she felt appropriately small, and she did not run the half-second on the dance floor anymore. She ran the hallway. The hand coming up. The hand coming down. The light folding in. The smile that was two clicks too small.
She had spent two years terrified that the truth would cost her Maloi. And tonight, presented with the truth reaching for her with its own hand out, she had chosen the lie, and the lie had cost her Maloi anyway. The thing she was protecting and the thing she was protecting it with turned out to be the same thing. She had set fire to the house to keep the house from burning.
Tawagan mo siya, she thought. Now. Mag-sorry ka.
But it was past midnight, and she was a coward, and cowards wait until morning and then find a reason to keep waiting, and she knew this about herself, knew it the way you know the shape of your own hands, and she lay there hating it.
Nag-a-assume ka, the voice tried, one last weak time, about the half-second on the dance floor, about whether Maloi had felt anything at all. You want it so bad you're seeing it. Nagulat lang siya. That's physics. Hindi yun -
Her phone lit up.
11:58 PM. A DM. Not the group chat. Maloi. Just Maloi.
Maloi: gising ka pa?
Colet sat up so fast her head spun. Of all the things she had braced for, a message from Maloi tonight, after the hallway, after the light folding in, was not one of them. Her thumbs hovered. She had a hundred apologies and no idea which one came first.
Colet: oo
Colet: maloi I'm sorry about kanina I -
Maloi: can I call you
Maloi: I don't want to do this over text
And Colet looked at those words for a long time, on her floor, in the dark, the rain finally coming down again outside her window, and her chest hurt, because I don't want to do this over text could mean she was about to be forgiven and it could just as easily mean she was about to be let go gently, the exact thing she had spent two years dreading, and there was no way to know which without picking up. She thought about all the ways this could go, and every single one of them was terrifying, and she typed:
Colet: ok
The phone rang. She answered it on her back on the floor, the ceiling far away.
"Hi," Maloi said. Her voice was different on the phone. Lower. The loudness turned all the way down. Just her.
"Hi. Maloi, kanina, in the hallway, I'm so sorry, I don't even know why I - "
"I know why."
It stopped Colet cold.
"That's the thing, Col." A breath, shaky on the other end. "I know exactly why. You did the bit. You always do the bit. I reach, and you reach for the joke, and tonight I actually let myself reach first, like a real person, and you looked at me like I'd handed you something hot and you put it down and you billed me for the dance."
A pause.
"That one hurt. I'm not gonna pretend it didn't. Sinaktan mo ako kanina and I went home and I sat in my car in the parking for like twenty minutes deciding whether to just let us keep doing this forever or to be brave one time and risk it. So this is me being brave. Alas-dose ng gabi, kaya bear with me."
Colet's whole chest filled with dread and something underneath the dread, something with a pulse.
"You held my waist," Maloi said. "Earlier. Before the hallway. And you stopped breathing. I felt it. Your hands. Sandali lang pero I felt it."
Colet closed her eyes. The rain came down. "Alam ko."
"Colet." Another breath. "Can I say something. And I need you to not do the thing."
"Anong thing."
"The thing where you make a joke. Where you go all flat and papi and say 'allergies' or 'it's cold' or 'I am also a hoodie' or whatever, and we both pretend, and then I drive home and cry in a parking lot. I need you to not do that. Kasi I'm really scared, and if you make a joke I'm going to chicken out, and we'll do this for another two years, and honestly? After tonight, I don't think I can survive another two years. I really don't."
Colet stopped breathing. From first Kakaibabe to the second Kakaibabe. From this moment to the end of her life.
"Two years," Coletsaid.
"Oo."
"You said two years."
"I did the math very specifically, yes," Maloi patiently says.
"Maloi." Her voice was not working right. "Anong sinasabi mo.."
And on the other end of the phone, in her own apartment across the city, in the same rain, Maloi Ricalde, the loud one, the bright one, the one who came into rooms like weather, said the quietest thing Colet had ever heard her say.
"I've been doing the wink at you since 2023," she said. "Just you. Hindi kay Jhoanna. Hindi kay Stacey. I kiss them on the cheek kasi mga kaibigan ko sila. That's different, mahal ko sila as ride-or-die friends, but the wink.. the.. the kakaibabe thing, the hip thing, I do that at YOU, Colet. I have always done that at you. And every single time you laugh and call it a bit and treat it like a joke, and I keep telling myself, sige, hindi niya nararamdaman, tumigil ka, Maloi, she's the papi, she doesn't feel the same.. but then tonight you held my waist and you stopped breathing and you made the kettle noise three weeks ago and I just.. I can't keep betting on the joke. Hindi ko na kaya. I have to know. Risk over regret, di ba? That's the whole thing I believe. So I'm risking.. while rambiling.. while losing every bit of sound thought I have."
Colet's ceiling swam.
This is a delusion, said the voice behind her sternum, one last time, weakly, going down. This is the most beautiful delusion there is and that’s exactly why you can’t trust it.
But here was the thing about delusions. Here was the medical fact she clung to.
Delusions don't call you at 11:58 PM in the rain and tell you they did the math very specifically. Delusions don't have a voice that shakes. Delusions don't go still against you for half a second on a sticky vinyl couch in a noisy videoke room. A delusion was something you invented. And Colet, for all her gifts, was not creative enough to have invented this. Her subconscious could not even hand her a dramatic crush. There was no way it had built THIS.
It was real. Totoo. It was always real.
"I made a sound like a kettle," Colet said, "because you winked at me. And I billed you for the dance in that hallway because you reached for me and it was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me, more terrifying than any version where you don't feel it back, kasi if you don't feel it back I just lose a fantasy, pero if you do, I could actually lose YOU, the real you, and I would rather hurt you a little forever than risk losing you all at once. That's what I did kanina. I picked hurting you a little forever. And I am so sorry. It was the worst thing I've ever done and I did it to protect myself and I hate that I did it to you. And I have been in love with you since 2023, and probably before that, probably for years before I had a word for it. And I built the entire papi thing so that nobody would ever see how completely you destroy me. And I made the bet because it was the only way I was ever going to let myself flirt with you without it counting. And Gwen told me three weeks ago that I was calling the wrong thing 'losing,' and I didn't understand her until eight seconds into the kakaibabe when I touched your waist and realized I would happily lose every bet for the rest of my life if it meant I got to keep touching your waist."
Silence.
Then, softer than anything: "You hurt me kanina, Colet."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I know you are." A breath, and the smallest wet laugh underneath it, the light coming back on, the window in the far house opening again. "And you don't get to do the bit anymore. Ever. That's the deal. You feel something, you SAY it, kahit nakakatakot, kahit kettle ka pa. Pangako?"
"Pangako," Colet said, and meant it more than she had ever meant a word.
Then a different sound on the other end of the phone, a sound Colet would spend the rest of her life trying to describe and failing. A wet, disbelieving, overflowing laugh.
"You wrote a song," Maloi said. "In a folder. Titled M?"
Colet froze. "Paano mo - "
"Stacey saw it on your laptop at the lunch and told the us and we have ALL known for weeks - "
"I'm going to kill Stacey - "
"Is it about me?"
A pause. The rain. The far ceiling. The whole rest of her life.
"It's a love song," Colet admitted. "It's about you. It's been about you the whole time. Mondays was a cover story. I panicked and named the folder M and told myself it stood for Mondays."
"Play it for me."
"Now na?"
"No, dummy, hindi ngayon, it's midnight." Maloi was crying-laughing now, openly, the loudness coming back but soft, soft. "Bukas. Play it for me tomorrow. And Colet. Sunduin mo ako. Come to my place. Bring the song. Or sunduin mo ko then uwi mo ko sa condo mo. And don't, okay, don't come as the papi. I don't want the papi. I have NEVER wanted the papi. I want the girl who reorganizes my kitchen without asking and reads in the corner at parties and named a whole folder 'Mondays' because she got scared. I want the kettle. I want the one who makes the sound. Bring HER. Dalhin mo siya."
Colet lay on her floor, which was not so far from the ceiling anymore, which was actually quite a nice floor, a floor she would remember forever, and she was smiling so hard her face hurt, helpless, involuntary, her whole carefully constructed coolness gone and good riddance, mopped up, dissolved, nothing left but the soft idiot underneath.
And it was the best she had ever felt.
"Okay," she said. "I'll bring her."
***
THE WALO (walo hanggang dulo)
Maloi: [photo.jpg]
The photo was simple. Colet's condo, the studio, the morning light gray and soft through the rain-streaked window. Colet at her keyboard, mid-laugh, caught off guard, her face completely open, the leather jacket nowhere in sight, just a hoodie and the realest smile any of them had seen on her in two years. And Maloi, leaning over her shoulder, chin tucked against Colet's neck, beaming directly into the camera.
Maloi: she played me the song
Maloi: it's about me
Maloi: it was ALWAYS about me
Maloi: also we're together now btw 💛
Three seconds.
Mikha: WHAT
Mikha: WHAT
Mikha: WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT
Mikha: I'm editing the AU RIGHT NOW. this is the finale. this is the closing scene.
Stacey: I KNEW IT
Stacey: I KNEW IT ABOUT THE SONG
Stacey: EVERYONE WHO SAID SHE'D NEVER ADMIT IT, PAY UP
Jhoanna: IT WORKED
Jhoanna: THE MIRROR WORKED
Jhoanna: Sheena I'm so sorry about your CR but I TOLD you manifestation is real
Sheena: I'm crying
Sheena: I'm doing the kakaibabe but I'm crying
Sheena: [video of Sheena doing the kakaibabe alone in her kitchen, fake crying, bag of chicharon in hand]
Sheena: also yes okay the mirror worked I take it back
Aiah: as the panganay
Aiah: I would just like everyone to remember
Aiah: that I called it from the good chair on night one
Aiah: "that was the real one. trust your panganay."
Aiah: I trust me. you all should too.
Gwen: Final entry in the file. No tables were harmed in the resolution of this situation. One (1) bet was lost. One (1) bet was, in fact, won. Closing the file. Congratulations, you idiots. I mean that with my whole heart, which I will now put away.
Mikha: wait
Mikha: important constitutional question
Mikha: is colet still the papi
Mikha: or did the kettle thing revoke the papi card permanently
A pause. The chat considered this with the gravity of a national referendum.
Colet: I'm still the papi.
Maloi: lol no
Maloi: she's not
Maloi: she made the kettle noise again this morning when I kissed her good morning
Maloi: the papi is retired. honorably discharged.
Maloi: I have a kettle now and I love her so much 💛
Colet: ...okay that part is true
Colet: I'm not the papi
Colet: I'm just hers
Mikha: I'M GOING TO THROW UP THAT WAS SO CUTE AND IT'S MY BIRTHDAY WEEK
Stacey: "I'm just hers" 😭😭😭😭
Jhoanna: putting that in the AU and on the mirror
Sheena: [still crying] [still doing the choreo] [out of chicharon now, crying about that too]
Aiah: good. about time. now somebody come get the good chair, my back is fine but I have principles.
Gwen: File closed.
And across the city, in a studio full of gray morning light and the smell of rain and instant coffee, Colet Vergara put her phone face-down on the keyboard, and turned, and looked at the loud bright impossible girl leaning over her shoulder. The girl who had bet on the joke for two years and then refused, one day, to bet on it any longer. The girl who believed, all the way down, that risking was better than regretting, and had risked her.
Colet had been so sure that losing meant losing everything.
She had been calling the wrong thing losing.
"Mababaliw mga yan sa chat," she said.
"I know," Maloi said, delighted, glowing, weather. "I started it. Aiah's taking credit, though."
"She always does."
"Play it again," Maloi said, softer now. "The song. Just the chorus. I want to hear the part where you almost said my name and then chickened out and wrote 'her' instead."
Colet laughed. She turned back to the keys. Outside, the rain came down on all of Metro Manila, on the creek where Gwen walked on Sundays and the videoke machines and the lechon and the good chair and Sheena crying in her kitchen with an empty bag of chicharon, on all eight of them, walo hanggang dulo, scattered across the city and held together by a group chat and eleven seconds of footage and one extremely stupid, extremely successful bet.
She played the chorus.
She did not chicken out this time.
She sang her name.