When the Clock Strikes Us

Introduction

Sometimes, it's not time travel. Sometimes, it's time to remember.

Gretel "Gretah" Valle, 29, is a freelance travel documentarian drawn to nearly forgotten stories—folk tales whispered by elders, ancestral homes crumbling in silence, and remote islands that time almost abandoned. Her journey is personal: a quiet rebellion against being unseen in a noisy world. With her camera as her shield and storytelling as her compass, Gretah travels solo, searching for meaning in the margins.

Theodore "Theo" Lucien, 31, is a former university history professor who gave up academia to pursue a private research project passed down through generations of his family—an unfinished investigation tied to pre-colonial Filipino myths, unexplained time lapses, and a love story no historical record dares to name. He prefers logic over legend—until he starts seeing signs he can no longer explain.

Their paths cross in Vigan, at a small antique store tucked between colonial houses and cobblestone alleys. There, both are unknowingly drawn to two identical vintage pocket watches—rusted, delicate, engraved with the initials "A + C." Without exchanging more than a polite smile, they each purchase one and leave.

But neither of them knows that the watches are tethered to a tragic love story from the 1800s: a forbidden romance between Amara, a weaver's daughter, and Cael, a Spanish mestizo rebel, whose love defied class, time, and fate—but ended in betrayal and bloodshed on the very day they tried to escape together. According to legend, the pocket watches stopped ticking the moment they died—and anyone who possesses them will live fragments of Amara and Cael's unfinished story... over and over again.

Soon after, Gretah and Theo begin experiencing strange déjà vu every time the clock strikes twelve midnight, shared dreams of people they've never met, memories that don't belong to them, and the unshakable feeling that they're being pulled toward each other—by something far older than either of them. 

When fate reunites them by chance in another city, the truth begins to unravel.

They discover that with every place they visit, every tick of their watches, time resets in subtle, haunting ways—revealing alternate versions of their relationship. In some timelines, they're lovers. In others, strangers. Sometimes they fall in love, sometimes they fall apart. But always, they find each other again.

To break the cycle, they must travel to different locations across the Philippines—each holding a clue, a fragment, or a heartbeat from a version of their past lives.

But there's one rule:
When the clock strikes twelve... time decides who they are. And just like a dream, they return to their present lives, making it seem that everything that happened was real. Yet, Theo will only be the one left to remember it vividly and Gretah will only have the emotions left to linger during the time travel.

Will Gretah and Theo finally rewrite the ending the original lovers never could—or will history demand the same price, again?