Puerto Prinsesa, Palawan
MARISSE
The hum of the ship’s engine was steady, almost comforting. Marisse stirred, eyes blinking open in the dim light of the crew cabin. The faint sway of the vessel rocked him gently, a rhythm he'd long ago come to associate with safety. Above him, the upper bunk remained unoccupied, its blanket folded with military precision.
This crew cabin being small, clean, and sparsely furnished was a far cry from luxury, but it held a strange sort of weight for Marisse. It had been the first space in his life he hadn’t had to share with more than one person. No cramped floors littered with bottles, no thin mattress on cold cement, no whispers or shouting from strangers in the next room. Just one bunkmate. One door he could close. One drawer he could call his own.
He didn’t know why the memory struck him so hard now, but as he sat up on the lower bunk, a wave of nostalgia hit him…thick and sudden, like sea mist rolling in uninvited. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, feet finding the metal floor, and just sat there, elbows on knees, head bowed.
The ache was familiar. That sharp twist of longing for something simpler, something kinder. But nostalgia, for Marisse, never came without its darker companions. Bitterness. Anger. The kind that simmered low, like the slow boil of the ship’s engine.
He ran a hand over his face, exhaling through his nose. This cabin reminded him of how far he’d come, but it also reminded him of why he’d had to fight so hard to get where he was in the present.
Suddenly, the weight of Marisse’s past pressed down on him like an anchor.
Hardship was no stranger to him. He could still feel the rough texture of the fishport's crates against his small, calloused hands, the sting of salty air in his eyes as he tried to make sense of a childhood shaped by absence and longing.
He had been born to a mother who loved too deeply and too recklessly. Her obsession with Marisse’s father, a wealthy tycoon who had never once acknowledged him…cast a long, bitter shadow over their lives. Marisse often saw her gazing out at a world they didn’t belong to, her eyes gleaming with a desperate hope that he might one day notice them. That hope slowly curdled into something tragic, a quiet madness that consumed her from within. While the man she longed for moved on, Marisse’s mother withered in place, and Marisse was left to fend for himself.
He remembered the days at the fishport vividly. The clamor of voices, the shrill cries of seagulls, the pungent mix of brine and fish guts. He was small for his age, but his spirit burned hot and fierce. He took any job that would offer a few coins—hauling heavy loads, sorting through slippery catches, anything to stave off hunger.
“Ten pesos for the whole bucket, kid. Take it or leave it,” the grizzled fishmonger had barked once, waving him off with a flick of his wrist.
“I’ll take it,” young Marisse had muttered, his arms already trembling under the weight. “Ten pesos still buys rice.”
It was grueling, but it beat the gnawing ache of neglect at home. Hunger was one thing. Being forgotten was worse.
Once, his mother had stumbled in from another night spent staring out the window, whispering, “He’ll come back, you’ll see. He just doesn’t know about you yet.” Her voice had cracked with hope, and Marisse had nodded, pretending to believe her.
By the time he graduated high school, Marisse was exhausted, but proud. He had carved a path through sheer will. Bitterness threatened to grow roots in his heart, but he forced it down.
“I made it,” he’d whispered to himself that night, alone on the rooftop of their crumbling apartment. “Ma, I made it.”
He still remembered the day he stepped aboard a cruise ship as a utility deckhand. For the first time, he felt unshackled. The open sea stretched endlessly before him, a wide blue world far removed from the concrete box he had shared with his mother’s fading dreams.
And it was there, aboard that ship, that he met what he now knew was the love of his life.
Seven days. That was all they had. But it lingered in his memory like a delicate bruise.
He could still hear her laughter, soft and unrestrained, as they leaned over the railing one night, watching the moonlight dance on the waves.
“You look like a man who’s finally breathing,” Rose had said.
He’d smiled, unsure how to respond. “I think I am.”
They danced under the stars. Her joy was infectious, her eyes bright and unguarded. In that fleeting moment, Marisse felt truly seen. For a breath of time, he was not the abandoned boy, not the hardened survivor, just a man with possibility in his hands.
But he made his choice.
“I can't stay,” he had told her, the night before they docked. “There’s too much I still need to prove.”
She hadn’t cried. But the way she looked at him with that silent ache in her eyes haunted him more than any goodbye ever could.
After that, Rose became a ghost in his memory. Soft, bright, and haunting. Marisse often wondered what might have been if fate had been kinder. Or if he had been braver.
But life didn’t pause for dreams. He threw himself into his work, letting himself believe that Rose had a better fate than the one she wanted to choose with him. He allowed ambition to fill the hollow places within him, and success did follow.
The boy who once scraped coins from fish-stained docks now stood at the helm of one of the country’s largest cargo companies. He had even begun investing in a construction firm, working alongside three driven partners with bold visions of the future. Their plans reached far into the horizon.
Yet now, with the specter of his past resurfacing, those dreams felt delicate, like glass stretched too thin.
Sometimes, late at night,
he still whispered into the quiet:
“Rose… if I’d asked you to stay, would you have said yes?”
And the silence always answered back like glass perched on the edge of a precipice.
Haunting, yet too broken for him to hold onto.
When Jax spoke of changing his life, it didn’t bring the relief he had expected. It brought a quiet dread, a reminder of everything he had sacrificed, and everything he stood to lose.
The thought of starting over was terrifying. What if he lost everything again? What if, in reaching for more, he forgot the very things that gave his journey meaning?
He had clawed his way out of a life that had been stacked against him from the very beginning. And yet, in the quiet of morning, in the solitude of this narrow room, the past still found ways to pry open old wounds.
There was no escaping it, not fully. Not when memories clung like rust to steel.
Marisse stood, stretching his arms overhead. His back cracked with a dull pop, and he winced. He'd gotten used to discomfort, had lived in it most of his life. But lately, it felt heavier. Maybe it was age. Maybe it was the weight of success. Maybe it was Jax's words echoing louder than he wanted to admit.
He dressed methodically, tugging on a work shirt and rolling up the sleeves. There was still a day ahead, and the sea didn’t wait for anyone drowning in memory.
But just before leaving the cabin, he paused with his hand on the latch. The silence lingered around him like a held breath.
For a second, he wished he could go back, not to relive anything, not to change what had happened. Just to see it all again. To understand why it still hurt.
And then, with a quiet click of the door, he stepped back into the world that never stopped moving.
*******
The sky over Palawan stretched endlessly blue, laced with wisps of high, sunlit cloud. Below, the Maverick’s Rose drifted into port, her white hull slicing cleanly through turquoise waters that sparkled like shattered glass. From the open-air promenade deck, the cliffs of the island seemed carved from myth, ancient and waiting.
He had read his journal and Rose’s post for this day ten years ago before he took the second Polaroid shot and was mentally recollecting it as he completed his morning open deck checks in preparation for the ship’s docking.
Rose’s post was playful, full of light. She had written about the breeze, the palm trees, the smell of grilled fish in the market as she had gone ashore alone.
He was still trying to process it when he heard her voice.
“You always look like the wind might blow you away,” Rose said, suddenly beside him.
Marisse startled. He hadn't heard her approach. She was barefoot, in loose linen pants and a sunhat tilted at a jaunty angle, her sunglasses hanging from her fingers.
“I---I didn’t see you.”
She shrugged, her smile teasing. “You rarely do. That’s what makes watching you so interesting.”
Marisse gave a weak chuckle, already off-balance. “What brings you here?”
“I’ve decided,” she began with her eyes bright, and then as if suddenly unsure, eyed him with a smile that pulled the ground off his feet. “To go ashore today,” she said, eyes bright, but with something else beneath the sparkle. An urgency he hadn’t seen before. “And I want you to come with me as an apology for what I said last night.”
Marisse blinked. “Me?”
“You’re not the worst company,” she said, then tilted her head. “And I think you need it more than I do.”
He stared at her; the question caught in his throat. Was this it? Had he done something to shift time? Had his presence already changed her course?
In the original timeline, Rose didn’t ask him to come ashore until day five. That memory was solid, etched in grief. So why now? Why this invitation two days early?
Hope crept into his chest like sunlight warming a cold stone.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’d like that.”
They met just after lunch near the main dock, boarding a local outrigger boat that cut through the shallows toward a cluster of karst cliffs rising dramatically from the water. Rose laughed with the boatman, tossing questions in broken Tagalog, her laughter like sunlight on water.
Marisse watched her from behind his sunglasses, taking in every detail. The wind tugged at strands of her hair. Her skin was golden in the light. She was fully alive, and for the first time in days, so was he.
They hiked together up a limestone trail to a viewpoint that overlooked the cove. The sea below was a dazzling wash of aquamarine, interrupted only by distant islets. He stood next to her in the silence, both of them catching their breath.
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he murmured, but he wasn’t looking at the view.
She caught him watching her, and for a heartbeat, neither of them looked away.
Later, in the open-air market in Puerto Princesa, they wandered through stalls selling handwoven baskets, dried mangoes, cheap shell jewelry. A child tugged on Marisse’s hand and offered him a flower crown. He laughed, surprised, and Rose took it before he could refuse, carefully placing it on his head.
“You’re officially ridiculous now,” she declared.
“I think you mean regal,” he said with mock dignity.
“Mm. Definitely ridiculous.”
Their eyes met again, and the joke trailed off into something quiet…intimate.
They found a quiet beach by late afternoon, toes buried in warm sand. Marisse hesitated, watching the tide creep in like a promise. Rose stood with her arms spread wide, letting the breeze push against her.
“Do you ever feel like everything’s already been decided?” she asked suddenly.
Marisse’s breath caught.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But I think... I think it can be changed.”
She turned to look at him, her face unreadable. “Do you believe in fate?”
“I used to. Maybe I still do,” he said. “But I believe in choices more.”
She smiled at that, a wistful, soft smile. “Good. Then choose to stay here, just a little longer.”
And he did.
He stayed beside her until the stars began to prick the sky, and the tide kissed the edge of their shoes.
*******
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