Red Sunset

The Story

As the sun begins to set, the city of Manila welcomes the gloom of evening time as the glittering starlight spreads throughout the sky like amateur splatters of white paint produced by one's inexperienced curiosity. Jaram, a ten-year old, leaned into a window of her room to observe the sky with a magnified gaze as her focus suddenly turned to the edges of the window. Quietly, as she examined to her notice it was full of blisters and cracks as a result of the ceaseless drive of termites. The house in the stumpy area where she and her family currently settle in had been standing for centuries but with it's fragile state, it's only a matter of time for them to move.

It was 2016, when El Niño dried up hectares of her family's rice fields in Cordillera, it was the most devastating moment of their lives. Her father, Mang Garo, poured out all of his blood and sweat just to cultivate a bounty of crops for their everyday meals, and also for earning profit. They weren't able to dwell that incident could happen to their lives. Massive portions of their crops withered in a snap. Misery filled the hearts of her family and it also resulted in intense famine within a week. Mang Garo decided to bring his family to Manila to temporarily live in their homes until he could find a job and earn enough to supply the needs for the recovery of their farmlands. Unfortunately, the devil pierced their feet - piles of challenges welcomed them as they stepped on the road of Manila. The majority of places charge huge monthly fees, and they couldn't afford it. The only option left for them was to sleep in the sonorous and polluted squatters area in Tondo. They have to survive until they can find a job and earn enough to supply the needs for the recovery of our lands. The incident also resulted in Jaram and his brothers being halted from attending their school and were decided to be home-schooled by their mother.

Mang Garo became a freelance mechanic in Marikina. He was paid about 300- 500 pesos weekly, which honestly was barely enough to provide the needs of his wife and his three kids. They only get to eat twice a day and would only eat sardines or shrimp paste. Elise, their mother, is suffering from shame and disappointment for herself, for she can't afford to buy real and delicious meals, and she felt like she was feeding her children some cat food. There was no electricity in their home either. Their only light was from the moon and from a traditional oil light. They kept on awfully striving to survive and they ain't progressing on their goal.

After a moment of reminiscing about their past lives, she suddenly recalled that she was able to solve a calculus problem and she wanted to show it to her parents. Jaram went downstairs with her scratch paper, and she saw her parents sitting by their doorstep. She quietly sat beside them and handed them a paper full of mathematical solvings. Frowns and confusion were painted on their faces. They honestly told her that they got zero ideas on what was written on the sheet of paper. She smiled, and slowly explained to them the solution. She told them that she secretly goes to a carinderia to use their light so she could read and study properly. She met a stranger who seemed to be a college student, dressed adroitly and has a scholarly look. The stranger handed her some sort of mathematical problems for her to study since she told the stranger that her mother doesn't know how to teach math on them.

"The lady asked me if we could go to Manila Bay to see the sunset. Can I go with her?" she asked her parents.

Both of them became far-fetched for a moment yet when they saw her lessons to their girl, they imagined that she may be a decent and trustworthy individual. It was also meaningful for them that their child was able to make friends with the people in Manila.

On the following day, at 4'o o'clock in the early evening, Jaram surged quicker than a wild cheetah while putting on her clothes. She kept scampering around the four corners of her room, looking for more decent clothes to wear. Because of her exaggerated excitement, she stumbled on a nail popping out of their wooden floor, and her pinky toe was injured. She stared at the blood flowing from the cut for a minute before tying it with a piece of cloth scissored from her old pajama. However, she didn't stop on finding clothes and she saw her mother's green dress underneath her dusty bed. She just shook off the dust on the dress and put it on.