#HeartboundWP

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Day 4 | E/N

ELIAS WAKES UP feeling much better on Wednesday morning. Alam niyang nakabawi na ulit ang katawan niya nang maunahan na niya ulit ang alarm. He doesn't get up yet, dreading the schoolwork that he inevitably has to face once his day officially starts. He stays in his bed, face down on his pillow, the duvet bunched up beside him.

He pulls his head up from his pillow when he notices something missing beside him. He slides to the other side of his bed, and there on the floor he sees the chicken stuffed toy that made his bed seem less empty last night.

Poor Chikoon. He reaches for it before bringing himself up to sit. Ilang beses niya iyong pinagpagan bago iupo sa lamesita. Imbes na sulitin ang oras sa kama ay bumangon na siya nang tuluyan at nag-ayos na lang ng kuwarto. He won't come home here later. Hindi niya alam kung kailan niya ulit magagamit ang kuwarto na 'to.

He picks up his phone when his alarm rings. He hits the stop button, then his thumb moves on its own to go check his inbox. He sucks in his teeth upon seeing Nadi's name and her contact photo. He exits the app and places his phone back down on the table beside Chikoon. No. He's not doing this again. Well, at least not this fucking early in the morning. He needs to do himself and Nadi a favor by accepting the consequences of his actions on one hand, and her decisions on the other. Elias can hear Z yelling "Not again!" in his head. Tama naman ito, but he's taking Z's words in a different context.

He takes a bath after cleaning up his room. He gets dressed for school and makes sure he has everything he needs before closing the door on his way out. He does everything quickly. But this time, it's not because he's afraid Nadi's going to get in his head and make all his limbs go weak. Nagmamadali siya dahil mas mahaba ang biyahe niya coming from Ate's house, and he cannot afford to arrive late.

He mutters a curse under his breath when he notices that he accidentally left something in his room. He immediately heads back. He turns the light on and Chikoon stares at him as if to make him feel bad for leaving it. Elias clicks his tongue and picks Chikoon up.

His eyes sweep across the room for one last time before closing the door. He finds himself stopping midway down the stairs. He looks at Chikoon and his head stops working again. 'Tang ina naman. Ano'ng gagawin niya rito? Shall he strap this on the front seat of his car? And what, think about Nadi on the way home? Shall he bring this home with him, in his room, like having Nadi in the air isn't a torturous enough form of reminding? Fuck, parang gago. Now he can hear Z maniacally laughing in his head, making fun of him for having a kid in the form of a chicken-shaped polyester. Why does this decision seem like a matter of life and death? It's just a fucking toy. Is this level of attachment even normal?

His sister hears the frustrated sigh he lets out when finally arrives at a decision. Elias tries not to show in his face how stressed he is this early in the morning when he notices Ate. Baka magtanong. Ano namang isasagot niya? Na iyong nananahimik na stuffed toy ay ginagago ang isip niya? How the hell would he even explain that?

"Breakfast ka?" Ate asks. Elias shakes his head and goes down the rest of the steps. "Coffee?"

"I'm okay," Elias replies. Pinigilan niyang magmura nang bitiwan niya si Chikoon sa isang sulok ng sofa. Zoa's in the dining area having breakfast, baka marinig siya. Baka bumalik ang sakit ng ulo niya kapag nabungangaan siya ng Ate niya dahil ayaw nito ng nakaririnig si Zoa ng mga ganoong salita.

He takes a throw pillow and buries Chikoon under it. The fuck. He feels as if the toy is looking at him and asking him if it did something wrong for him to leave him there. Parang tanga talaga, 'tang ina. He turns his back away from the living room. Well, fuck. He hopes that he's right that getting rid of Chikoon would help. Because if he's wrong and he fucking ends up associating with Nadi anything that enters his line of vision, he's going to rip his head off.

"Good morning," he greets Zoa. There's a stain of hot chocolate on his niece's upper lip when she looks up at him. Elias wipes them with his thumb.

Zozo took after Ate, which explains why she looks so much like Mama. He wonders how Dad feels whenever he looks at the kid.

Kuya Ali looks up from his laptop screen set up on the dining table. Nginitian lang siya ng asawa ni Ate bago itulak palapit sa kaniya ang platong may lamang sausages at omelette, inaalok siyang kumain. Elias shakes his head. He just picks up a glass and gets himself some water.

"No breakfast?" Zozo asks.

"No breakfast," Elias answers. He goes to Zozo's side and softly pinches her cheek. "Alis na si Tito."

"Kaunti lang?" hirit ng bata. Elias chuckles. When they were younger, Migs often joked about Elias having a daughter at home. Palagi kasing when he's asked why he has to go home early, or why he can't hang out, or what he's so busy about, si Zoa ang dahilan niya.

He would never forget that one night, sometime between their second and third year in undergrad, when a woman came up to them while they were drinking. Given his lifestyle before, Elias entertained her, but he ended up laughing the rest of the night when she suddenly asked about his 'daughter.' As it turned out, she was a schoolmate in high school. Migs' joke got passed around and transformed into this rumor of him accidentally getting someone pregnant at sa kaniya iniwan iyong bata. He went home alone that night to visit Zozo who was just around three or four years old.

"Nagmamadali ang Tito mo. May pasok 'yan," Ate's husband says.

Zozo pouts. Elias squishes her cheeks with one hand before kissing her on the forehead a couple of times. "Dinner. 'Pag 'di na ako busy."

Elias leaves the house reluctantly. He's not exactly thrilled to come back to class. He hasn't even stepped foot in the campus yet, but he's already spent after going through the unbearable traffic. He heads to his locker first to sort out his notes and tries to come up with the most efficient way to catch up without getting himself sick again. 

If it weren't for Ate messaging him about Chikoon, it wouldn't even have crossed his mind. He leans on the protruding part of the wall towards his first class, his index finger tapping on the back of his phone while he thinks of a reply. He sighs after making the decision to leave Chikoon with his niece. It surprised him that he didn't obsess over that chicken's absence in his car on the way here, and he hasn't let a single thought of Nadi take over his mind.

He has so much to do now. He doesn't know where to start. He doesn't know when Nadi's gonna get to him again.

But he's certain that he'll figure it out, one little step at a time.

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NADIA DOESN'T SAY anything when her team tries to console her after their meeting. They are telling her to file a complaint, that they have her back, that they are certain that he's only acting that way because the principal designer is currently working overseas which makes him the de facto head of everything. She shuts her ears off, and for a long while she just stares at the yellow bell drawing stuck on the base of her screen, tuning out the noise. She's not used to having this much anger in her heart; she feels like she's going to explode.

The faulty wheels of her swivel chair screeches against the floor when she pushes it back and stomps off to the restroom. The room falls quiet when she's gone.

Nadia washes her hands, quite aggressively, as if doing it like so is going to help take some anger off her chest. Literal na nag-iinit ang ulo niya. She wants to douse her face with cold water but refuses to ruin her makeup, so she does nothing but aggressively wash her hands, hoping that the cold water running on her palms somehow finds a way to cool her head down.

Earlier was not the first time that Nadia got humiliated in front of everyone during a presentation. The first time, she felt more embarrassed than anything. That is no longer the case now. There's an unfamiliar amount of anger burning through her chest, growing stronger every time she tries to figure out how to deal with it but fails. She doesn't remember anyone making her this mad before.

Her grip on the faucet is tight when she shuts the water off. She's so . . . done. She has a hunch that this would happen again in the near future, on the next presentation that takes place after she says no to another lunch or dinner invite.

Nadia knows that she isn't in college anymore. She knows that not everything is taught in the four walls of the classrooms and laboratories, and employment will constantly remind her of that. She will be given less chances that will cushion the blow in case she fails, so there's less room for mistakes. The 'real world' is less forgiving, but that doesn't justify the disrespect she has received in their studio in the span of a month.

This is what happens kapag masyado kang mayabang, a certain someone who has worked with the studio since its founding said. His voice echoes in her head. There's a look on his face somewhere in the middle of disappointment and disgust when she says no to his invitation yesterday. He was sporting the same awful look the whole time Nadi was talking. He had already made his judgment before he heard her out.

Your face will only get you so far. Nasa'n ang skills? This is so uninspired. Nadia kept on clicking on her pen as she listened. She was not even halfway through her slides when she got interrupted. Are you not taking this seriously? Nadia stayed quiet, blinking silently on the floor. She wondered if she shouldn't have hidden her eyebags with concealer this morning. Would that be enough proof that she wasn't lazing around? 'Wag mo kaming idamay. You're only doing this for fun because you can always fall back to your rich parents, 'no? Nadia swallowed the lump on her throat. She would have accepted that last statement, even if the earlier part of it weren't true, had he not said more. You think you'll always get your way because you're pretty? Masasayahan sa gawa mo kasi maganda ka? Next time do not be an airhead who just got lucky in the Boards. Paganahin mo 'yang utak mo, or else just do modeling. That one doesn't require much thinking.

She doesn't know how she was able to stay in that room for fifteen more minutes. After, underneath the desk, Charm reached for her hand and held it. Nadia had her fair share of 'terror' instructors and straight-up mean professors, but not once did she receive criticisms that kept bringing up how she looks.

She didn't notice it the first time it happened, but now she's certain. He's mad because he didn't get his way with her. He probably thinks she's too full of herself because she's pretty and she doesn't want to get dinner—or anything—with him. Maselan. Mapili. Mahilig mag-inarte.

No one talks to her that way. She can't believe she let him get away with it the first time.

She gets out of the restroom. She still doesn't hear anything when Marj asks her why she's cleaning up her stuff after she schedules an email. It's a fairly famous studio, but a small one nonetheless, so there's not a lot of hoops her resignation has to go through. She packs her bag and checks her mini box where she chucked everything she has lying around. In the course of packing she glances a hundred times at the sticky note with her yellow bell illustration, before deciding to peel it off her desk and stick it to the hardcover of her work notebook inside the box. She doesn't say anything, nor look at anyone, before heading her way out. She's done.

Nadia sets her things on the front seat of her car. The next minute, she's on the road, driving to nowhere in particular. She pulls to the curb when her stomach grumbles. Her anger fading out a little reveals a few more emotions she didn't notice earlier. She's hungry; kulang iyong lunch niya kanina. She's frustrated. Now she wants to drive back and yell at his face and his receding hairline. Wants to apologize to Charm, Marj, and Toni for storming out without saying anything. Wants to head to the other room in their office where their junior designer and intern are and tell them to run. She's sad. She can't believe she lost her first job just as quickly as she landed it. What does she do now?

She sighs. She glances at her box on the front seat, and on the yellow bell on top of her notebook. She gets the notebook, peels the yellow sticky note off the cover, and transfers it to the first page inside where it's safe. She places it back in the box after.

She's also relieved. She doesn't feel like crying. The first time she got humiliated in the office, she remembers holding back her tears, blaming it all on Elias because she doesn't know better, and crying when no one can see her anymore. And the first time she got her heart broken because of Elias, she remembers struggling so much to sleep because she felt like one of his shirts she intentionally did not return to him kept calling out her name and making fun of her pain.

But now, she doesn't feel like crying. The yellow bell inside her notebook finds no misery in her that it can make fun of.

Nadia has this newfound sense of relief that washes over her, and at that moment, she realizes that she really is going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine, or at the very least, her heart would be.

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