Between Replies and Sunrises

It all started with a simple Threads post.

"I badly wanna hike. Looking for someone to come with me so my family would finally let me go."

I never expected anyone to take it seriously-until a stranger slid into my DMs and asked, "hiii when mo plan mag hikee? pwede ako sumama? haha"

What was supposed to be a one-time conversation slowly became part of our everyday lives. We moved from Threads to Instagram, and somewhere between late-night chats and sleepy good mornings, we found ourselves sharing stories, dreams, fears, and the quiet parts of our lives we rarely told anyone else.

He worked night shift as a virtual assistant, while being a forensic science student at the same time and I stayed awake long enough to keep him company. Night after night, our conversations stretched until five in the morning-between replies and sunrises.

This epistolary is a collection of those messages, the moments we never planned, and the story of how two strangers met through a random post and slowly became each other's favorite notification.