The first time Vince saw her, she was crying.
It was the second quarter of the school year, and she walked into the classroom clutching a lavender lunchbox and wearing shiny black shoes that were too clean for the dusty tiles of St. Adrian’s Grade School. Her uniform was crisp. Her braids were tight. Her eyes were puffy.
“Class,” their adviser said, “this is Stella Vienne Tuazon. She’s transferring from Manila. Please be nice.”
Everyone craned their necks. First graders weren’t subtle.
Vince didn’t know what to think at first. She wasn’t the loud kind of new girl. She didn’t try to win the class over with candies or stickers like other transferees. She just quietly took the seat at the far corner—beside the electric fan—and kept her gaze low as their adviser resumed teaching addition with regrouping.
Vince was six, almost seven. Old enough to know what being different looked like.
But not yet old enough to name what tugged at his chest when he looked at her.
That came later.
At first, he just called it curiosity.
* * *
Stella didn’t talk much the first week. She ate lunch by herself, always peeling the breading off her chicken nuggets before eating them. Sometimes, she just had crackers. Her hair was always neat, her socks always pulled high, and she never played langit-lupa during recess.
Vince noticed. Even when he pretended not to.
He tried calling her once during P.E.
“Hoy, new girl! Laro tayo!”
She didn’t even look.
So, like any logical first-grade boy, Vince decided to make her notice him the only way he knew how: by annoying the hell out of her.
He pulled her chair once before she sat.
He tossed bits of eraser shavings on her notebook.
He called her “Braids” every time he passed her desk.
Still—nothing.
No reaction.
No glare.
Not even a “tumigil ka nga.”
He started to think she might be mute.
Until the day she finally snapped.
* * *
It was after music class.
They were putting their recorders away when Vince accidentally-on-purpose bumped into her desk, knocking her pencil case to the floor.
“Oops,” he grinned. “Sayang, nawala yata 'yung unicorn mong sticker—"
Before he could finish, she turned to him with fire in her eyes.
“Ang kulit mo,” she muttered, voice quiet but sharp. “Hindi kita pinapansin kasi hindi tayo friends.”
He blinked. “Eh 'di maging friends tayo.”
“I don’t want to.”
And just like that, she walked off.
He stared at her back, stunned, feeling something weird in his stomach.
It wasn’t embarrassment.
It was... interest.
He’d never been rejected like that before. Especially not by a girl who smelled like baby powder and had a sticker book full of Lisa Frank.
From that day on, Vince stopped teasing her.
Not because she asked him to.
But because he realized something:
She wasn’t like anyone else.
* * *
By second month, Stella started talking to a few classmates. Especially to Michael Dizon—one of the quiet ones, but funny when he wanted to be. They started doing their science projects together. Ate lunch together. Stella even let Michael borrow her sparkly scissors once, which, by grade school standards, was basically a marriage proposal.
Vince didn’t like it.
He didn’t understand why he didn’t like it.
He just knew that when he saw them laughing over a coloring book, something inside his chest felt hot and twisty.
It was the first time Vince learned the word selos.
And maybe the first time he realized that whatever this was—whatever he felt every time he saw her braid one strand tighter or look away when she caught him staring—wasn’t going away anytime soon.
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