RICO SPADES

Episode 19

Episode 19

Three weeks ago.

"Hello, Ms. Shana!" the kids greeted her.

She sat on a small chair in front of the children who were also seated on chairs arranged in a semi-circle formation.

"Hello, everyone! I have a good story here with me today," she began.

"But I need one volunteer to help me tell the story."

Four kids raised their hands and Shana figured out that three of them have already volunteered in the past sessions.

"Please come forward, Tintin," Shana said as she read the nametag worn by the young girl she had picked.

"We're going to sing a song first before we go on to the story. Tintin, do you know how to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat?"

"Yes."

"Well, I want to teach you some steps that go with the main part of the song. Is that okay with you?"

Tintin and the other kids nodded.

After getting the kids' attention through the steps of Row, Row, Row Your Boat, the storyteller thanked Tintin and asked her to get back to her seat.

"Our story is about a lonely pirate who rowed a small boat across vast oceans to find a great treasure."

"The lonely pirate rowed with all his might. The lonely pirate rowed all day and night."

"Finally, the lonely pirate found the treasure. This is it, the lonely pirate felt very sure."

"The pirate saw the house he was from. The pirate is no longer lonesome."

"I was very tired last night," Dainne explained to General.

"She was the first person I told about our relative invisibility to the tenants downstairs, but she didn't believe me," Fely complained.

"I didn't say I don't believe you. I just said I'm sleepy."

"How can you sleep right away after hearing what I told you?"

"How am I supposed to react well when I've been awake for 30 hours straight?"

General excused himself: "I need to use the bathroom. Can you help me not to step on the others who are still asleep?"

Only Dainne and Fely had slept on the bed. General and the other three unseen tenants slept on the floor.

"They're all sleeping this way," Fely told him, pointing the area just beside where he had slept.

"What are you pointing at?" Dainne said, laughing.

"Sorry," Fely told General after hitting Dainne in the shoulder. "You can walk freely by the doorway."

After peeing and washing his hands and face, his curiosity led him to inspect the bathroom if it also has the Rico Spades inscription.

"Are you done yet?"

Everyone in Fely's unit was awake by the time that Aling Shirley knocked on the main door and informed them that it is now safe to go out.

Fely was about to voice out her complaints but Antonette covered her mouth.

"We should pretend she doesn't exist."

Karvin and Steven laughed at Antonette's suggestion but ended up agreeing with her.

"Can't we all just leave this place right now?" Dainne asked.

"Maybe we can, maybe we can't," Steven replied. "But don't you guys want to know what's really going on here?"

General stood still as Zenith crossed his mind upon hearing what Steven has just said.

"In the name of curiosity, I'd stay," Karvin answered.

After deciding that they would stay for the meantime, the tenants freed the doorway from the barricades they set up.

Loida woke up feeling dizzy. She crawled slowly to her medicine kit, took out an ointment, and spread a lump of it on her temples.

Drinking was one thing that she promised herself she would refrain from doing, but she found it hard to say no to her friends.

When Loida stepped outside her unit to breathe some fresh air, she saw an unfamiliar person sitting against the door of Aling Shirley's unit.

"Excuse me," he called her attention as she passed by. "You're Loida, right?"

She nodded and asked: "You are?"

"I won't let anything like that happen again," DJ told the landlady while he was wearing back his shirt.

"I should have realized Nicholas has been plotting something extensiveagainst us," Aling Shirley said, holding the journals Nicholas had kept.