Delays Between Departures

Margins of Metro Manila #1
Florence has spent most of her life surviving, and never really living. As the eldest, she learned early how to carry burdens that were never meant for her: a broken home, a father who strayed too far and stayed too little, and a mind that never lets her rest. Every choice feels like a risk, every feeling something she questions. Loving someone else has never been simple, especially when she's still unsure how to love herself.

Diorella Mave, on the other hand, is warmth in human form. She is with a soft heart, she moves through life with a quiet strength; always giving, always caring, always choosing to stay. She laughs easily, loves deeply, and fills spaces with a kind of light.

They were never meant to meet; just two strangers standing on opposite sides of the same station. Florence, bound south. Diorella, bound north. A single moment stretched between them: a glance that lingered longer than it should have, a feeling neither of them could explain.

And when the train finally arrives for both of them, will they step in together... or watch each other leave?