I Would Hate To Be You

Chapter 29 [libraries vs movies]

[Author's Note: 10k word vomit for today's chapter because it's May 28.

Happy birthday, my Cyrus Sarmiento Trenton ❤️]

Chapter 29

Nothing much has changed since Japheth and I have become Facebook friends. We still haven't had our first chat and there are no notifications from him. No likes (except his reaction on Kuya Boaz's reply—which later on pinagla-like din ng mga pinsan ko, ni Sash at Guian) or comments-which I kind of expected. After all, he's Japheth. This is not something new. But I can't help but see how different he is from the friends I've had before. I mean, usually when I become Facebook friends with other people, sumasabog na ang notifications ko dahil lina-like nila ang mga old posts at, of course, old profile pictures. Just like what Jin did. He even sent me the link to my very first Facebook profile picture na sobrang jej. Mahabaging langit. He kept on teasing me about it for days. Hindi ako makaganti sa kaniya dahil halos lahat ng profile pictures niya ay maayos. At lahat may sunset sa background. It's so unfair.

Anyway, rumor has it that Japheth doesn't post that much on social media, and boy, they're not wrong. Karamihan sa mga nasa timeline niya ay tagged posts lang—mostly from Guian. And oh, by the way, pinagpiyestahan ng mga tao ang Facebook post niya. I'm not even surprised that a lot of people chose (1) Cyrus. I mean . . . you just have to look at the guy and you'll figure it out on your own. However, that same night, Guian also took his post down. When I asked him why he said that it's because he may or may have not heard some not-so-nice words from Jillian and Mitch. I sent him a funny gif because of that. I cracked up so hard just imagining how it went. Kasi naman, sobrang kulit niya. But I doubt if it will be the last time.

I, on the other hand, chose to keep my fingers from liking anything. I don't want to scare the guy. Plus, again, he doesn't have that much post. After scrolling through a bunch of tagged posts, I saw one that he himself posted. It was two years ago. A photo of their barkada taken during the New Year and its caption was a very touching: HNY.

It was so epic, a little too funny, and very much Japheth-like. Indeed, he is a man of few words . . . and few letters. After that, I stopped scrolling because I could bet all my nonexistent fortune that there's nothing more to see.

When I checked his profile picture history, I saw that he only has two. The first one was when he first created the account which is gazillion years ago. It was his childhood picture (he's maybe five or six years old here)—which I may or may have not saved on my phone. No one will know.

The second one is his current photo which was updated three years ago. It's a picture of him on stage while holding his bass guitar. As always, he's not looking at the camera but he still looked pretty. Kainis. I fought the urge to react to it because it's an update from three years ago and it would surface again once I do that. I've already done so many crazy things in my life and I don't want to trouble him by doing that. Baka i-unfriend niya ako bigla. The horror . . . I cannot.

Nonetheless, my heart was full that night. Japheth once said that Facebook doesn't make everything official, but that gesture was still another milestone for our friendship.

****

When I entered college, I've developed this love and hate relationship with August. It's because August meant midterms exams and we all know that hell week is called hell for a reason. During the last weeks, I buried myself with piles of books and handwritten notes—which took a long time before I finished them because I did some calligraphy. Since hindi naturally brainy ang ganda ko pagdating sa school, I have to exert extra effort to make studying enjoyable for me. It's so I can learn. I have to love what I'm doing and sometimes, that means transferring my notes from my notebook to index cards and sticky notepads which I carefully re-wrote and highlighted using my art pens. That in itself is already time-consuming. At nang natapos ko na lahat ng pag-iinarte ko na 'yun, tinamad na ako sa mismong pag-aaral. Ugh. It's so hard.