Sitting with Luna's reproduced sketchbook, my own pathetic attempt beside me, I made a decision. I wouldn't go to Manila. I wouldn't study computer science. I filled out the application forms for a smaller, local university that offered a degree in Fine Arts and Digital Media, with a focus on conservation and archival work.
It felt right. It felt like honoring a legacy in a way that was true to myself. I couldn't bring back the lost, but perhaps I could help preserve what remained. I could learn to protect stories, to give them light, just as I had promised to protect hers. My future wouldn't be about escaping Nasugbu; it would be about understanding it more deeply, about learning to see the magic in its history, not through the eyes of a ghost, but through my own.