Page 24 of Signal No. Us

“This is my job,” Robby said, simply, like that explained everything, and in a way, Allan thought, it did.

For the mock scenario itself, Allan got assigned, over his very vocal objections, to play a stubborn elderly evacuee refusing to leave his house, a role Tita Yolanda had apparently lobbied hard to cast him in specifically “so the kids could get some practice talking a stubborn old man down.”

“I resent this deeply,” Allan told her, settling into a plastic chair positioned to represent his “house.”

“You can do this,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Method acting.”

A pair of terrified fifteen-year-old volunteers approached him nervously, scripts fluttering in their hands.

“Lolo, Manong, we really need to evacuate now⁠—”

“I’m not leaving,” Allan said, committing fully now, crossing his arms with theatrical stubbornness, channeling his inner Bea Alonzo energy in Four Sisters and a Wedding. “I was born here. I’ll die here. Foreveeerrrrrrrr.”

“Manong, please po, the storm’s getting close⁠—”

“I don’t care about any storm. I’ve survived five of them already. I can handle this.”

The teenagers, flustered, glanced toward Robby for backup. He crouched beside “Manong Allan” with the easy patience of someone who’d done this a hundred times for real, no cameras, no drill, just an actual frightened old man refusing to leave a house full of memories.

“Manong,” Robby said, gently, voice dropped to something warmer, “I know you love your house. But you matter more than the house does. If you come with us now, you’ll still have a house to come back to. If you don’t—” He let the sentence trail, careful, never cruel. “I’ll stay with you. I won’t leave you here.”

Allan, fully aware this was a drill, fully aware he was supposed to be improvising stubbornness, felt something genuinely catch in his throat anyway.

Shet, patay, ang pogi.

“…Okay,” he said, breaking character slightly, his voice rougher than the scene called for. “I’ll come.”

The teenagers cheered, relieved, and moved on to their next scenario, and Robby helped Allan up from the plastic chair with a hand that lingered a beat longer than the drill required.

“You okay?” Robby asked, quiet, just for him.

“Yeah,” Allan said. “Just, I get it now. Why you’re so good at this. It’s not just that you know what you’re doing. It’s that people can feel you actually mean it.”

“I do mean it,” Robby said. “Everyone on my list matters.”

“Am I on the list?” Allan asked, half-joking.

Robby’s expression softened into something completely unguarded. “Number one,” he said. “Have been for a while.”

Later, once the drill wound down and the barangay hall emptied out into the usual post-event scramble for snacks, Jake found Allan restacking chairs and elbowed him companionably.

“You know,” Jake said, “I’ve spent ten years watching Robby be good at everything, his job, his family, the whole barangay. But this is the first time I’ve seen him get even better at it than that. I think that’s you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Allan said. “He’s just good at his job.”

“It’s not just the job,” Jake said. “You know, for the longest time he’d been scared to choose something for himself because he’s been so used to taking care of everyone else. You’re the first thing he’s chosen just for himself.”

Allan looked across the emptying hall to where Robby was crouched beside an actual elderly resident, laughing at something she’d said, patient and present the way he was with everyone, but when Robby glanced up and caught Allan watching, his whole face changed, just slightly, just for him.

“Yeah,” Allan said, quiet, mostly to himself. “I think I get that now.”

CHAPTER 11

The plaza had filled up fast once word got around that the barangay’s one working karaoke machine had been dragged out for a “practice run” ahead of Ver’s wedding reception, which everyone understood to actually mean an excuse to share food and humiliate their neighbors in front of God and the covered court.

Allan had spent the last hour on a plastic chair between Ver and Jake, watching the BEBES take turns absolutely butchering “The Prayer” with a certain, unruffled confidence of women who had decided decades ago that technical skill was optional as long as the feeling was sincere.

The first act of the evening was a trio of ten-year-olds attempting a boyband number with full choreography, which the BEBES scored a collective ten out of ten purely on commitment, followed by one of the cousins from the send-off dinner attempting a rock ballad he clearly could not reach the high notes of, which the BEBES scored considerably lower, and loudly, right to his face.