Love Costs Too Much

Claire Ann Marquez is a second-year Applied Mathematics student who has learned to calculate every single thing: jeepney fares, the price of rice, how many meals she can skip so her younger siblings can eat, exactly how much she owes, and how little she has left. She has always carried her family's struggles alone, convinced that being poor means you have no right to ask for anything more.

Kian Gabriel Fuentes is a third-year Civil Engineering student who works twelve-hour days at a construction supply shop just to pay for his mother's medicine and keep himself in school. He knows exactly what it feels like to have empty pockets and a heavy heart-and he sees that same quiet exhaustion in Claire that no one else notices.

They start as strangers. Then classmates. Then two people who keep finding themselves sharing half a cup of rice, walking home down dark roads, and leaning on each other when the world feels too heavy to bear alone.

But loving each other comes with a cost they can barely afford.

It means choosing between buying medicine or saving for school. It means fights born of hunger and exhaustion. It means nights spent wondering if staying together is only dragging each other down. It means moments where one turns away, and the other stands frozen, terrified-Are you walking away from me?

This is not a story of easy love or happy endings handed on a silver platter. This is the story of two people who have almost nothing, learning that love really does cost too much - but sometimes, it is the only thing worth paying everything you have for.