The Hunt

Missing Pieces

Yesterday afternoon I was in a bahay kubo reading a book. Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. It was a dangerous for him to publish at the time. They say he suffered from anxiety for the rest of his life because of it. But it had to be done. As a scientist, it was his duty.

"Mag-ka-nou-pou?" said a tourist at the Mango Queen stand nearby.

"Twenty-five pesos." Diane said. She handed the foreigner a Thai-inspired dessert. It was diced mangoes, boiled bananas, and sticky rice topped off with a generous amount of condensed milk and muscovado sugar. It was popular with both the locals and the tourists.

"At-ano-po-number-nila?" the tourist followed up with a smile.

"Ay. Wala po akong number." Diane replied. She told them she didn't have one. Easier to play the innocent island girl, despite her Master's Degree in Game Design, Theory, and Development.

She had looks. She was described by the guy who introduced her to me as a Chinese-Negro. I didn't know if that was politically correct, and didn't care. She had dark skin and almond-eyes for sure. But there were no words that could describe her laugh. Or how her eyes turned amber at dawn.

The sun began to set. The islanders slept early, and so she started closing up shop. The tourist watched her fold the booth, playing with his phone the whole time. Probably making plans for the next adventure.

The tourist wrote down his own number on a piece of paper and passed it on to her. "Ka-pag-na-a-lala mo." Then gave her a wink.

Diane approached the hut, the scrap of paper in her hand.

"Nice, Dee." I said. Without the sun, I'd lost my light source and had to stop reading.
"Yeah..." She watched the tourist in the distance, walking away.
"He's cute. I would date him. If I were a girl." I said.
"Nah. You're too lazy to go out on a date."

Ouch.

She stretched her arms upwards and did her little after-work battle cry. She was like a baby lion. There was a tiny growl too, it was her stomach trying to grab some attention.

It was around six-thirty in the evening. We were expecting my adopted father Ed in the afternoon. He offered to cook for us. Now it looked like we would have to make something for ourselves.

"You cook." She lay down on the straw mat inside the hut and stretched some more. "Call me when you're done." I rolled down the mosquito net attached to the hut and left her there to rest.

The Mango Queen stand was near the beach. Behind it was the straw hut. And a short walk from there was Diane's home. Her parents were abroad, and left her there to her own devices.

Their one-storey bungalow was small, but fitted with modern tech. So much tech that I didn't know where the kitchen was. Eventually I found a remote control in the living room which revealed the kitchen. The counters and cupboards were hidden, and only came out of the walls on command. I wondered what would happen if the remote ran out of batteries. People would starve.

The utensils were local, thank the gods. I took out some fish to thaw. I filled the rice cooker with four cups and let it do its thing. Simple dinner tonight, pan-fried fish. Filipino as hell. I dipped the fish into the calamansi and soy sauce mixture to marinate. It would take at least ten minutes.

While waiting, I remembered this story about fish. Ed had told me about an incident when he was on his way to Cebu on a boat. The boat had an elderly passenger who was selling the morning catch. No one had bought anything. After a while, the the fish vendor disappeared. And then a smell began to fill the air. It was the smell of piss. A yellow liquid began to run down the middle of the boat. The fish vendor came out and apologized, he couldn't hold it anymore. No one gave him any attention. Except for my father.

Ed stood up and asked one of the boatmen if there were any mops on the boat. There were none. He took a shirt out of his duffel bag and used it to mop up the fish vendor's piss with his bare hands. Everyone saw what was happening, but there was this silence all around them. No one knew what to feel about their indifference.

The fish was fresh. I had set up a dinner for three, but he never came. It was delicious, and was sorry that he'd missed it. I texted him that we would go ahead to The Blast Zone. He was supposed to meet us there.

This memory...this was yesterday. I'm sure of it. But I'm no longer sure if yesterday was still today. I need to tell you more.

As I speak to you, I'm on a pirate ship. Ed appeared just now. His face wasn't there, but his body was, mopping urine on the deck. My memory, my story, has seeped into the game. This was one of those details I was telling you about. My own memories. Details that were not written into the game. I'm not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

The figure is here. The watcher. I tried to approach him just now but he ran and jumped off of the deck. When I reached the ship's railing I looked down and found nothing. Not a splash.

There will be a way out. Things are happening. The game is changing according to my will. I just need to... make it mine. I'll need to tell you another story. In my mind, I'm going tell you a story.

But in this game, I jump into the water and hunt down my watcher.