The mornings in Sagada started to feel lighter.
Not because the pain was gone—no. That kind of pain doesn't vanish like mist under sunlight. But Yna had stopped fighting the quiet. She no longer filled the silence with shame or guilt or the voices of people who never asked how she felt.
Now, when she woke up, she breathed.
Really breathed.
And Miggy was still there.
Every morning.
Every evening.
Like a rhythm she could return to.
They didn't talk about law school at first.
It hung between them sometimes, in the quiet moments—like the unopened messages from her professors, or the thick law books still stacked in the corner of her room, untouched and slowly collecting dust.
But one afternoon, as they lay side by side on a picnic blanket, her head resting on his chest, he asked, gently—
"Do you want to go back?"
She didn't answer right away.
She let the wind rustle the trees first.
Let the question settle inside her bones.
And then, with a voice steady but soft—
"No."
Miggy looked at her, but didn't interrupt.
She smiled, a sad and certain kind of smile.
"I don't want to go back to pretending. To wearing the suit, smiling like I've earned peace when all I've ever done is survive." She traced a small line on his palm with her finger. "I want a life where I can actually breathe. Laugh. Be soft again."
He nodded slowly. "Then don't go back."
She blinked. "Just like that?"
Miggy squeezed her hand.
"You don't need to prove anything to anyone, Yna. Not even to yourself. Not anymore."
Tears brimmed at the edges of her eyes—not the desperate kind, but the ones that came when your heart was finally, finally heard.
They stayed in Sagada for two more weeks.
In that time, Yna danced again.
Not for anyone else—just for herself. On the grass. In the soft morning sun. On the narrow trails of the forest when Miggy would hum one of their old songs under his breath.
She also started writing again.
Not legal arguments. Not essays.
Just thoughts.
Fragments.
Dreams.
Small things she never let herself want before.
"I think I want to teach," she told him one night. "Or maybe open a book café. Something that makes life gentle."
Miggy smiled. "You'd be incredible at both."
The day they packed up to return to Manila, it rained.
A soft, slow drizzle that made everything feel like a goodbye kiss from the mountains.
But Yna didn't feel like she was leaving something behind.
She felt like she was taking something with her.
A truth.
A new kind of self.
One that wasn't defined by trauma, or silence, or survival.
But by choice.
When they got back to the city, she wrote her formal withdrawal from law school.
No explanations. No justifications.
Just:
"Thank you. But I choose a different path now."
Her family didn't understand at first.
But Yna no longer lived for their understanding.
She had learned the hard way that peace doesn't always come with permission.
It comes with courage.
And Miggy...
He remained her anchor.
His love had saved her—not in the way of fairy tales, but in the quiet, daily kind of way.
He let her unravel.
He held her together.
And now, he walked beside her as she started, for the first time, to build a life.
Not just survive it.
She still had bad days.
There were mornings she'd flinch at loud voices.
Nights when sleep would evade her, and ghosts would slip back into the room.
But now, she reached for him.
And he'd hold her until the dark lost its shape again.
YOU ARE READING
Where the Silence Grows
FanfictionTo the girl who stayed silent for too long. To the child who was never asked how she felt. To the woman who chose to live. This is your story. And you are not alone anymore.
