Somewhere in the Hippocampus

PROLOGUE

Trigger Warning: earthquake-related incidents; mention of death, depression, suicide; and vehicular accident.

Prologue:
A Peck of Dust in This Ever-Expanding Universe

February 13, 2026. Friday.

Some said it only lasted for a few seconds, while others said that the earth shook for as long as a lifetime. But I think, time was irrelevant. It was non-existent during those moments. No one actually cared for how long it lasted. Everyone was scared regardless. Even suicidal people. Even I.

That's when I realized how terrifying it is to die in chaos, to feel your bones crack in the rhythm of darkness. "Gusto ko mamatay, pero hindi tulad nito," naisip ko. This wasn't the kind of death that I wanted. I want to die in my sleep, as if my final dreams were the reality I've longed for. Gusto ko mamatay nang mapayapa, as if dying feels like coming home to a familiar place of safety.

I laid there on my uncomfortable bed, mind as blank as it could ever be, and I felt like I was more alone than I've ever been before. I've got no one to call. Not even God because I've been an atheist for quite a long time. I stared at my ceiling—cobwebs that I have noticed by then danced to the rhythm of the 7.2 magnitude earthquake. "Hmm, kailangan ko na rin pala maglinis," I told myself as I noticed how dust fell from my ceiling. It would've been an interesting sad climax of a chapter if someone read that scene on third person point of view: the concrete ceiling falling on the fatigued body of a depressed, suicidal twenty-two-year-old woman who have given up in life but doesn't want to die a painful death. But that didn't happen. My apartment was sturdily built. That is probably why the rent costs so much. Nonetheless, the readers would've felt electrified— scared. Even if the life on the line wasn't theirs.

I started shaking only when the ground stopped doing so. By then, my entire internal world shook into an unmeasurable magnitude as I remembered the people I love...and loved: ang mga kaibigan ko noong highschool na matagal ko nang hindi nakakausap; mga kamag-anak na napagdesisyunan kong tanggalin sa buhay ko dahil hindi na maayos ang pakikitungo nila sa akin; at si Helio. It was their existence that flashed before my eyes, not mine.

That's when I realized both how long and swiftly the earthquake lasted: long enough to destroy my sanity, swift enough to take lives. And since my experience wasn't interesting enough, I read their sad, tragic stories in third person.

Rhada and her peers from Golden State College got stock on the third floor of the old Lagao Gymnasium. The idea of falling 30 feet above the ground sent waves of fear through their veins that would last for a lifetime. Niccolo and Diego, together with some of the students at Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Colleges, got trapped inside the comfort room of KCC Convention Center—turning them into the survivalists that they never were. Ambrose was running for his life as the ceiling of their substandard Mindanao State University classroom started to fall apart, realizing that their professor fled first without looking back to his flock of 45 scared students. And Laoise had to decide whether or not to sacrifice her life to shield her bedridden father from the possible collapse of their entire home.