The bus was the 11 PM Victory Liner to Baguio, ₱550, the kind where the AC drips on whoever has the window seat and they pretend not to notice for the first hour and then give up and shift their bag onto their lap so it doesn't get wet.
He had the window. The other one had the aisle.
Two hours. Somewhere past Bulacan the other one pulled out one earbud and held it out without looking, the way you offer somebody a piece of food you're not sure they'll want, and he took it because what else do you do with an earbud somebody is holding out to you at 1 AM on a bus.
The artist was somebody he'd never heard of. Toneejay. Filipino indie, the kind he'd always thought was for people who took themselves too seriously, until it wasn't, until Bawat Piyesa was playing and the bus was going through the part of the road where there are no lights for a long time and the other one had his eyes closed and his head was leaning against the seatback at an angle that meant he wasn't asleep, just listening, and the earbud in his ear was warm because it had been in the other one's ear for the last hour and a half.
He didn't say anything. The other one didn't say anything. The song ended and the next one started and they kept not saying anything for the rest of Tarlac and most of Pangasinan, and by the time they hit La Union his shoulder had fallen against the other one's shoulder and he hadn't moved it and the other one hadn't moved either and that was the whole thing. That was the entire trip. One earbud each. Nobody saying anything.
That was March.
It's December now. Spotify Wrapped came out yesterday.
Toneejay is number three.
He looks at it on the MRT going home, holding the strap with one hand because the train is doing the thing where it lurches, and his thumb is on the screen, and there it is, Your Top Artist #3: Toneejay, with the little percentage and the little graphic and the cheerful purple background that doesn't know anything.
He keeps scrolling. You listened to "Bawat Piyesa" 87 times this year.
Eighty-seven.
He didn't know it was 87. He knew it was a lot. He knew it was the song that came on when he was walking to the jeepney stop and he didn't skip it, and the song that was playing in his ears when he was in line at 7-Eleven for the siopao, and the song that he'd let loop sometimes when he was working on his thesis because the loop was easier than choosing the next one. He didn't know it was 87.
The algorithm doesn't know either. The algorithm just knows he played it. The algorithm has put it in the year-end summary like a gift. Look at this artist you love. The little graphic is animating. It is very pleased with itself.
He thinks about texting the other one. Uy. Top 3 ko si Toneejay. Just that. Casual. Funny, even - a callback to the bus, a thing only the two of them would get, the kind of message you can send a person and pretend it doesn't mean anything.
He has the message half-typed. He has had it half-typed for about a minute. The MRT is at Boni now.
He doesn't send it.
He doesn't send it because the last time he sent a message like that - uy nakita kita kanina sa katipunan - it took the other one four days to reply haha oo and then nothing, and he had sat with the haha oo for those four days like it was something he had to digest, and he is not doing that again, not in December, not when Wrapped is out and everyone is posting theirs and he would have to scroll past the other one's, eventually, on some feed somewhere, and find out whether Toneejay was on it too or whether the bus had been a thing only one of them was keeping.
The train lurches. His thumb hits the back button. The message stays in the draft box. It will still be there tomorrow. He knows this because he has checked, on other drafts, on other days.
He gets off at Cubao. The stairs smells the way every MRT station smells, which is a smell with no name — concrete and rubber and the specific exhaust of a place where forty thousand people pass through every hour and none of them stop. He walks to the carinderia near the office because he hasn't eaten and it's almost 8 PM and the rice will be cold by the time he gets home if he tries to cook.
Ate at the carinderia looks up.
"Adobo, kuya?"
He hadn't ordered yet. She just knows. He has been coming here three times a week since March, since the bus, since he started taking this route home instead of the one that goes past the place he and the other one used to meet, and ate has clocked the adobo, has clocked the ₱70 he always has ready in exact change, has clocked the way he sits at the corner table even when the middle ones are free.
"Opo."
She scoops the rice. The portion is generous in the way that means she has decided, without telling him, that he looks like he hasn't been eating. He hasn't told her anything. She has not asked.
He sits down. He puts his bag on the chair across from him, on the seat, not the floor, the way he does - the way he learned, on the bus, from the other one who had said wag mo isabit sa baba, madumi, and reached over and moved the bag himself, onto the empty seat between them, and then left his hand on the bag for a second longer than he needed to before pulling it back.
He eats.
Toneejay is still playing. He hadn't realized. The earbuds are still in. Bawat Piyesa is on, because of course it is, because the algorithm has learned this is the song he opens the app to, and his thumb hasn't touched the screen since the MRT, and the song is just - playing.
Masarap pa rin yung adobo.
He finishes it. He pays the ₱70. Exact change into ate's hand and she nods at him the way she always nods, and he nods back, and outside the jeepney is calling Cogeo Cogeo Cogeo and the night is the kind of cold Manila pretends to have in December, which is not cold, which is just slightly less hot, and his phone buzzes -
- Spotify. Share your Wrapped with friends!
He locks the screen. Puts the phone in his pocket. Shifts his bag onto his shoulder, the strap settling into the groove on his collarbone that the strap has made over the year.
The song is still playing in his ear.
He lets it.