Page 21 of Signal No. Us

“Does she eat them?” one of the teens asked, delighted.

“According to one version, yes,” Jake said. “According to others, it’s sadder than that: she just makes them fall in love with her so much they forget everything else.”

“Then came Handiong,” Jake went on, sweeping an arm toward the shadows. “Warrior. Strong. Official monster-killer. His job: make the land ‘safe.’”

“So, who’s the villain?” Allan asked, genuinely curious now, settling onto a rock beside Robby.

“Depends who you ask,” Jake said. “In one version, they fight, Oriol and Handiong, or they dance, or both. In one version, she betrays her own kind to help him. In another, she betrays his trust just to keep him near her. The ending changes depending on what the storyteller wants you to learn.”

“That’s a very diplomatic legend,” Allan said.

“All the old stories are like that,” Jake said. “They’re not about who’s right. They’re about what’s left standing after.”

Robby had gone quiet beside him, watching the teenagers argue happily about whether Oriol deserved better narrative treatment, and Allan caught him smiling to himself in the dim light, small, private, unguarded in a way he hadn’t quite seen from Robby before the library conversation.

“What?” Allan asked.

“Nothing,” Robby said. “I was just thinking, we’re always taught there’s a villain in every story. Sometimes there really isn’t one. Sometimes it’s just two people, scared, getting things wrong, trying to work it out.”

“That’s suspiciously specific,” Allan said.

“Maybe,” Robby said, and this time he didn’t look away from Allan’s eyes, steady in a way that made Allan’s pulse do something inconvenient. “Maybe I had some inspiration.”

“Very smooth. Folklore as a flirting technique. Bold strategy.”

“I’ve been practicing,” Robby said, and this time his voice didn’t have its usual joke tucked inside it. “Saying things instead of just assuming you already knew them. Turns out it takes practice.”

“That’s annoyingly sincere for where we are.”

“I know,” Robby said simply, and didn’t take it back.

Allan laughed, real, loud enough that one of the teenagers glanced over. Still grinning, he bumped his shoulder against Robby’s, testing, easy, the kind of small contact that had started, over the past few days, to feel less like an accident and more like a choice they were both quietly making.

Jake, from his boulder, watched them with the unmistakable, delighted attention of a man who had once convinced an entire fiesta committee that a stray cat was an engkanto and clearly considered this an equally promising story.

“Would you look at that,” he said, to no one in particular. “Seems like there’s a new story happening right here. Not that I mind; just keep it down, I’m working.”

“We’re right here,” Allan said.

“I know,” Jake said serenely. “I said what I said.”

On the walk back out, the teenagers ahead arguing about which version of the legend was the “real” one, Robby fell into step beside Allan in the narrowing cave mouth, close enough that their arms brushed with every other stride.

“Thank you,” Robby said quietly, out of nowhere.

“For what?”

“For coming along. Even though you know we still have things to work out.” He hesitated. “And for being willing to be friends again. I don’t take that for granted.”

Allan considered him for a moment in the flickering headlamp light, the careful, unguarded honesty of him, so different from the boy who’d once laughed instead of speaking up, and so clearly the same person underneath, just braver now, or trying to be.

“We’re not done yet,” Allan said. “But I’m not angry right now either. That’s already a big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Robby agreed, and something in his voice made it sound like a promise rather than a consolation.

They emerged back into daylight, blinking, sun-warm after the cave’s cool dark, and Allan found himself thinking, with the feeling of someone watching a wall they’d built for ten years develop its first real crack of light, that maybe this was what the legend had been trying to say all along.

Not villain and hero. Just two people, learning, slowly, how not to be afraid of each other anymore.