MGA PAKIWARI AT PAGMUMUNI-MUNI (An AlDub Collection of Poems and Short Stories)

Fortune Cookie

Day 5 entry for AMACon Drabbles: Oikos

FICTION PLEASE. OK? OK.

(Also please do not get mad at me 😅🙏🏻✌🏻️)

Unbeta'ed as always.

//

He was eating by himself in his condo's living room with the Chinese take out he had delivered after a long day of work. Too tired to go out, too tired to cook - he opted to just stay in and call for delivery.

He laughed to himself as he thought how pathetic he must look like right at that very moment, with a box of chow-mien in one hand and chopsticks on the other and the TV on - a quiet and welcome background, all by his lonesome.

With a messy condo unit, clothes here and there strewn across the floor or on chairs, dishes piling up on the kitchen sink - he knew he hasn't been himself for the past month. Only going to work to forget it all then coming home - to remember everything. Repeat the following day. It was already becoming a vicious cycle.

He chuckled, shaking his head.

I never thought I would stoop this low.

If only the world could now see what became of The Alden Richards, after the phenomenal love-team died down - they would most likely laugh at the sorry excuse of what he now was.

Just then an old commercial of them popped up on TV, one that made him look up from his food, frowning.

Kung tayo'y matanda na
Sana'y di tayo magbago... 🎶

They still play this after all this time? He thought to himself as he put down the box of chow-mien on the coffee table in front of him and leaned forward, to watch but in reality, to stare only at her.

He didn't realize he was reaching out to her, his arm stretched up, not until the commercial was done. He didn't realize that there were tears cascading down his cheeks not until he felt the wetness of it on his thighs. He looked down, noticing the wet spot on his jeans and hastily wiped his tears from his face.

He then leaned backward on his couch, looked up, closed his eyes, sighed and laughed. He laughed so hard he thought he was going crazy.

Then his laughs turned to cries.

And finally, he wept.

It should have been me, Menggay. That should have been me and not you. You should be here and I should be the one gone.

He turned his head to the side and a photo of her together with him - grinning wide, her arms wrapped around him, a glittering diamond shining on her left ring finger - greeted him.

"I miss you," he whispered brokenly, as another tear unconsciously fell. "I don't know what to do without you."

After a while, he sat back up and took one fortune cookie that came with his delivery. He tore the packaging off and broke the cookie in half, going straight for the little strip of paper inside that was his "fortune."

Then he laughed once more and asked mockingly to no one, "How? When she's no longer here by my side? When I'm only living a half life? Tell me fucking HOW??"

Fate must be playing with him right now to show him that commercial and then this fortune cookie.

Time heals all wounds.
Keep your chin up.
Soon life will become more interesting.