I Was In 1942

"Hindi lahat ng bayani ay nasa libro, ang iba ay nakalimutan na ng mundo."

Status: Ongoing / Drafting
Date Started: March 23, 2026
Date Finished: [To be updated]

TRIGGER WARNING: This is a work of Historical Fiction set in 1942.
This story contains descriptions of violence, war, strong language and historical trauma that may be distressing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

Cassie Naomi Nakamura is an ordinary Historian College student whose life revolves around archives, dusty textbooks, and the looming pressure of her final research project. She thought she knew everything about the past until a single whispered name changed everything.

Mateo Ilustre.

Why does a man who has been erased from every digital record and history book feel so hauntingly familiar? Why does the mention of his name send a shiver through her soul?

During a field research trip to the ancient walls of Fort Santiago, the line between the past and the present shatters. In one heartbeat, the laughter of her classmates and the flash of cameras vanish. In the next, Cassie wakes up to the suffocating stench of rust, blood, and the terrifying echoes of 1942.

Trapped in the darkest chapter of the Japanese Occupation, Cassie finds herself caught in a web of war, secrets, and a revolution she was never supposed to witness. As she fights to survive in a Manila she no longer recognizes, she encounters the man she was looking for. not as a ghost of the past, but as a living, breathing enigma.

Can Cassie survive a history that is deadlier than the textbooks ever described? Or is she fated to be forgotten alongside the man whose name the world is too afraid to mention?