Letters to a Mysterious Stranger [ONGOING]

Prologue: Hell Week

Manila Pacific University's Foundation Week was also known as Hell Week for junior faculty. Every planned activity must be seamless, and costs must meet the English department's meager budget. Students who would rather escape to the nearest shopping mall must be coaxed, required, threatened or bribed with bonuses to attend events. Administrators, guests and visiting prisoner must be entertained.

As the department's youngest faculty member, Judy Abad had to bear the brunt of organizing the student quiz bee and the graduate students' conference, and helping out with the socials on top of her eight classes. The week flew by rather quickly. She finished her graduate student presentation entitled Pride, Prejudice and Feminism: Gender Politics and Cultural Appropriation in Jane Austen Fan Fiction Online a couple of hours ago—not that anyone was interested in it. Though she was no graduate student, she had to contribute due to the very small number of graduate students enrolled that year in the Humanities program. It was her very first graduate presentation, and it got on tolerably well, even though no one threw her a question or commented on how she may improve on it. Her audience consisted of twenty-three seniors and two grad students. Everyone else was in the MPU's Christmas Masquerade Benefit that her colleagues were organizing across the hall. At least Prof. Nadal, the local terror who made humiliating grad students and junior faculty as one of her life's goals, was not present to make her cry like the ones who presented before her.

The masquerade was still ongoing, yet Judy preferred the quiet. Though some of her friends and colleagues welcome the fact that it gives them an excuse to dress up (and cross-dress especially for her gay and transgender colleagues), the solace of the corner at her favorite café in Dapitan Street was enough. No other place would do since the faculty room with its lockers and large canteen tables was always a place of gossip, and so was the room that she was sharing in the boarding house with four girls. She took out her dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre. She had not read two sentences when her phone vibrated. A text from the department secretary just arrived:

THE CHAIR WANTS YOU IN HER OFFICE ASAP.

What did I do wrong, she wondered. Was the food not enough for the guests? Was there something about her presentation that offended someone? Or worse: someone gave her a scathing review during class observations the week before? Is her contract going to be terminated next year due to the budget cuts? She knew that she was expendable, even if she graduated magna cum laude of her class at MPU.

It was already dusk at the height of the rush hour at Recto. Judy had to elbow her way out of a throng of people. A disheveled man, whose T shirt and basketball shorts look like they haven't been washed for days and whose reddened eyes looked like he had taken drugs, aggressively pushed his way out, and rushed to the other end of the street. It took Judy a few minutes to realize that her bag was gone, and that the man took it!

"Hoy! Magnanakaw!" she cried desperately.

But he was already across the street, and the crowd was pushing her back. The next thing she knew, the man who got her bag was on the ground and another man wearing a Zorro costume was pointing a sword at him. Zorro never said anything, but the man immediately dropped the bag and ran away.

Judy watched while Zorro made his way across the street towards her. After handing the bag to her, he made a low bow.

"Th-thank you," she said nervously, still slightly shaken from the encounter.

Before she could say anything else, a long black Lamborgini buzzed past and stopped right in front of him. He quickly slipped on the back seat, and the car sped away.

The traffic resumed, and the crowd continued to move past her. Still, Judy stared at the space where Zorro stood. A police officer slightly tapped her shoulder. "Miss, are you okay?"

"I hardly know."

Judy never made it back to Prof Zalde's office that evening, for she had to explain the incident to the police officer who didn't seem to believe her. If she could only know how that one meeting would change her life forever.