Dead Reckoning - A Gregorio del Pilar x Reader story

VII - Semaphorism

n. a conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don't go any further—an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic 'I know the feeling'—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country.

* * *

Ever since Goyo heard the news, he immediately ordered everyone to prepare for a journey in meeting Maestrong Sebio back at Kakarong; our group trailing the previous way we've took during our escape from the enemies. How ironic that we are heading straight to where we do not intend to return.

Two days of journey surely is enough for us to reach the boundaries of Kakarong. Before heading straight, Goyo sent his best men to scout Kakarong for any sign of enemies, fearful that we'll be caught into some trap. Everyone is already up even though it's just dawn; the creeping knowledge that we're still not safe surely hits everyone. One of the chosen was Isidro; that's why, before he left, he ordered me to keep a watchful eye on Goyo. After all, the latter is my mission in this game.

If I succeed on this one, I'll be rewarded. Just as the game had mentioned.

However, right after the meeting, when Isidro and a few others—namely the rest of the surviving members of the Seven Musketeers of Pitpitan—left, turning my attention then to where Goyo previously had been, he appears like he just vanished out of thin air. A second later he was there, and just after a few reminder from Isidro, he was gone. Just as easy as that and I've lost sight of him.

I sigh heavily and start tracking where he could have gone. After all, he is a weird man. Too strange, I suppose, but predictable for someone his age. Though we are close with our ages, it doesn't guarantee that I instantly know what he is thinking. First of all, he is a man; and second, he lives in this era where every male in my own does not have the same priority as he does early in the morning.

In the end, I give up and decide to ask anyone who comes along my way wherever he might be. I made a reason that I need to talk to him about something in order to easily get information about his whereabouts than be thoroughly questioned about why I am searching for him. Good thing that they get to agree into the same direction and I immediately find him by the river.

When I approach, it appears that he is clearly deep in thought not to realize my presence, which is good. I instantly hide behind a nearby tree and just watch his movements. I look from his face, no longer finding the sorrow, and then to the notebook he is holding. He appears to be writing down something, some journal as it appears to be? I can't quite remember him writing some journal before; somehow, I find it a change about something that I didn't know about him. Or perhaps I am not listening too well, really, with history that I didn't know that our heroes like to write journals of their own.

I watch him for a second as he looks on at the flowing river before returning back to whatever he is writing down. Finally, he tenses up a little and looks around. And his eyes settle onto me.

He frowns, displeased, that I am watching out for him this way. "Yung taga-Cruz Roja," he says with a heavy sigh.

I bite my lower lip for a second and move out of my hiding spot, drawing closer to him. I kick off my slippers by the riverside, pull my skirt a little as I try to keep my footing even and not to slip onto the rocks. The cold water touches my skin as I sink one foot first and then the other before reaching the large boulder where he is sitting on.

He moves away a little, but remains sitting as he keeps his journal and pencil close to him, just enough for me to have a seat of my own. He trails his eyes then onto the water, watching it flowing downstream. He is looking intently onto it that I can't help wonder what he is thinking about.