The day after the funeral, the house felt like it had been hollowed out.
Maria's slippers were still by the door. Her coffee cup sat on the counter, a faint ring of brown inside. The pillow she used on the couch was dented where her head used to rest.
I sat on the floor that night, back against the couch, staring at those things like they might fill the house with her voice again.
They didn't.
Weeks bled into each other like watercolors running together.
There were mornings I woke thinking I heard her in the kitchen, only to find silence waiting for me.
There were nights I lay on the couch, sketchbook open, pencil hovering over the page — and I couldn't move.
Every time I tried to draw, I saw her hands brushing my hair back and heard her voice saying, Don't stop drawing.
And every time, I dropped the pencil like it burned me.
The envelopes started coming a few weeks after Maria's death.
No return address, just my name written in a hand I remembered too well.
Inside: cash.
Later, there were bank transfers. Tuition, bills, food — all covered.
I never replied. Never called.
I used the money.
But I hated every peso of it.
Because every bill felt like an apology I didn't want, sent by the man who hadn't been there when she needed him.
I didn't forgive him.
I wouldn't.
Reya was there through it all.
She came every single day that first week, then every other day after that, and then often enough that the house stopped feeling completely empty.
Sometimes she brought food. Sometimes she just sat with me.
The third day, she found me on the kitchen floor, clutching a torn piece of paper with a half-drawn sketch of Maria.
"You haven't eaten," she said.
I didn't answer.
She knelt, took the pencil from my hand, and set a plate of food beside me.
"Eat," she said gently. "You don't have to do everything today. Just eat."
Her voice cracked — just enough for me to know she'd been crying too.
Months passed.
School became a blur. I went. I sat in class.
I stared at my notebook without writing anything.
I heard teachers' voices without listening.
People whispered — about the funeral, about me — but I couldn't care.
The only thing that felt real was Reya sitting next to me.
Every lunch. Every class.
Never letting me drift too far.
By the time the last term of middle school ended, I felt like a shadow.
Everyone's parents were there for the completion ceremony, cheering, clapping, holding bouquets.
Maria should have been there.
She wasn't.
Reya waved from the back row, exaggeratedly, like an idiot — and somehow it got a tiny smile out of me.
It didn't reach my eyes.
Two months later, senior high enrollment forms were in front of me.
"Strand?" the clerk asked.
"STEM," I said without hesitation.
Reya leaned over the counter beside me. "STEM too," she said.
She looked at me, lips quirking. "Guess we're stuck together."
Senior high brought a new kind of exhaustion.
The house was too empty. The homework too heavy. The silence too loud.
I'd wake up early for class, come home, and draw until my hand cramped.
Sometimes it was sketches of Maria. Sometimes it was pages for Ecaria.
I had already uploaded the first few chapters online back in middle school.
At first, they had only sat there, unseen.
But now, little by little, people were reading.
A handful of comments. A few likes.
Then, one day, someone messaged me to say they loved Aurelia.
Another said the world felt real.
A trickle of readers became a tiny stream, and then — slowly — it started to pay a little.
Not much.
A few pesos here and there.
But it was something.
And more than the money, it was proof someone out there was listening.
Ecaria became my escape — and my obsession.
When grief got too heavy, I drew until the paper nearly tore.
When exams piled up, I stayed up sketching panels until dawn.
Every monster, every city, every character felt like bleeding something out of me.
Aurelia became everything I wasn't — fierce, unshakable, bright.
And every once in a while, I'd sketch Maria into the margins of my notebooks. Her smile. Her hands. The way her hair fell over her face when she cooked.
Sometimes the paper would blur because I cried over it.
Reya saw the drawings one day.
She sat beside me, leafing through pages, pausing when she found the ones of Maria.
"She's beautiful," she said softly.
I nodded, swallowing hard.
Reya didn't make it awkward. She didn't say "I'm sorry" again.
She just stayed there, flipping the pages gently, like she understood.
The first Christmas without Maria didn't feel like Christmas.
I didn't decorate. Didn't cook. Didn't even take the tree out of storage.
Reya showed up anyway, carrying a box of cookies shaped like stars.
"We're not skipping Christmas," she said firmly.
I almost told her to leave.
Instead, I let her put the cookies on the table, and we sat there eating in silence.
It wasn't the same.
But it was something.
By the second year of senior high, the webcomic had a modest following.
A dozen readers became fifty.
Fifty became a few hundred.
Someone even drew fan art of Aurelia and tagged me.
When I saw it, I just stared, hands shaking.
For the first time in months, I felt something close to joy.
Senior high ended with another ceremony.
Maria wasn't there.
Reya's mom came, standing in for someone who couldn't.
Reya nudged me afterward, smirking. "Two years down. Now we conquer college."
I almost smiled.
By college, I had hair that brushed the back of my neck.
I never really cut it anymore — just trimmed the ends when it got too messy.
It grew into something uneven, a jagged wolf cut that always fell into my eyes.
Reya would tease me about it.
"You look like some tortured anime protagonist," she'd say, flicking her finger at my fringe.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," I muttered.
She'd roll her eyes. "You are a bad thing."
Reya's hair grew longer too — cascading down her back now, glossy in a way that turned heads when she walked into class.
She'd gotten prettier every year, the kind of girl people whispered about.
She could have been anywhere, with anyone.
But she kept showing up at my house.
She kept sitting across from me, flipping through textbooks while I drew until my fingers cramped.
College made nursing more than just a dream,it was anatomy charts and clinical duties and nights of memorizing Latin terms until my head throbbed.
I clung to it.
Because it was the promise I made her.
I juggled lectures, clinicals, and drawing ,always drawing.
Pages of Ecaria stacked up around me like walls.
It earned just enough now to help with groceries, to cover sketchpads and pencils.
But it was never about the money.
It was the only place where my grief made sense.
The only place I could breathe.
Money from my father kept coming.
I used it for tuition.
I hated it every time I did.
I never replied.
I never forgave him.
Years blurred.
Through every late night, every exam, every ugly breakdown, Reya stayed.
She scolded me when I forgot assignments because I was drawing.
She made fun of my wolf cut, calling it "your sad boy hair."
She handed me tissues when I didn't realize I was crying over a sketch.
She brought cookies on birthdays, even when I told her not to bother.
She dragged me outside on New Year's Eve to watch fireworks, saying, "Maria would've wanted you to."
I stood next to her, looking at the sky, and thought maybe she was right.
By nineteen, I wasn't the boy on the hospital floor anymore.
But sometimes I felt like him.
And sometimes, Reya was the only thing keeping me from screaming again.
The house was still the same.
Still hers.
Still ours.
I still came home and sometimes caught myself waiting to hear, "Welcome home."
But the house never answered.
And somehow, painfully, quietly, I kept living anyway.
And so the years blurred — in sketches, in exams, in nights where the house felt too big for just one person.
I kept studying. I kept drawing.
I kept living, even when it felt like I wasn't.
By nineteen, the pages of Ecaria had swallowed my desk, and maybe pieces of me along with them. Aurelia's sharp eyes stared up from unfinished panels, Seren's warmth sketched in faint pencil lines. Somewhere in those drawings, I'd buried my grief, my promises, my mother's voice telling me don't stop drawing.
I looked at the clock. Past midnight again.
My hand ached, but I pressed the pencil to the paper anyway, whispering, just one more line.
One more turned into ten. Ten turned into a blur.
The lamp hummed quietly as my head finally sagged forward, cheek pressed to the unfinished page.
By the time my eyes slid shut, graphite smudged on my fingers, it was already tomorrow, the day everything would start to change.
Chapter 10 END