Maria Lourdes Salas stepped off the plane at
Clark International Airport, her eyes stinging
from the dust of Dubai and the weight of her
sister’s debt. She had left Manila six years ago
with dreams of becoming an architect, only to
return with a degree and a broken heart. Now,
she was back to pay for Rosa’s tuition at Ateneo
de Manila.
Her cousin, Jun, had a plan: fake a romantic
relationship with Elias Delgado, the estranged
heir of a wealthy sugar baron. The deal was
simple—three months of pretend, and Rosa’s
scholarship would be secured. Maria agreed,
though not without a curse muttered under her
breath.
Elias was everything she feared: charming, rich,
and unshakably aloof. Their first “date” was at
a rooftop party in Makati, where Elias’s old
flame, Marga, watched with narrowed eyes. Maria
tried to keep her distance, but Elias insisted
on walking her home through the Quiapo district,
where the air smelled of incense and old secrets.
That night, Maria dreamed of a woman in white
who whispered, “You will pay for what you took.”
She woke up to find her mother’s old amulet
missing from its place by the altar.
The next day, Elias found her crying in the
chapel of Our Lady of Fatima. He didn’t ask
questions, just handed her a handkerchief and
said, “You don’t have to do this.” Maria laughed
bitterly. “And what would you do? Let my sister
fail?”
But Elias had his own ghosts. His father had
died under mysterious circumstances during
Martial Law, and his mother had raised him alone,
feeding him stories of honor and duty. When he
saw Maria’s hands trembling over a blueprint for
a new barangay hall, he knew she wasn’t just
faking it.
Their charade deepened, and so did their bond.
Maria began to see the cracks in Elias’s
carefully constructed world—the way he avoided
certain parts of the city, the way he kept a
photo of his father in a locked drawer.
Then the aswang came. A child from their
barangay went missing, and whispers spread that
the forest near the old sugar mill was cursed.
Maria, ever the skeptic, dismissed it—until she
found a torn piece of her mother’s amulet in the
mud near the trees.
Elias took her there, not to fight the creature,
but to confront the truth. “My father
disappeared here,” he said, voice low. “They
never found his body.”
Maria realized then that the fake romance had
become something else—a bridge between two
people carrying their own burdens. When the
aswang attacked, it wasn’t Elias who saved her,
but a boy from the barangay who had been
watching them both all along.
In the end, Maria broke the pact with Elias,
revealing the truth about her sister’s debt. But
instead of anger, Elias offered her a job at his
construction firm. “You’re not just saving your
sister,” he said. “You’re building something
real.”
The amulet was found in the church, wrapped in a
cloth marked with a sigil from the 1970s. Some
say it was Elias’s father’s doing. Others say it
was fate. Either way, Maria finally felt like
she was home.
