The romantic escape to Davao holds a fleeting promise of normalcy, but the weight of secrets and unspoken jealousies soon shatters the illusion. As a super typhoon ravages the province, a brutal phone call brings years of complicated loyalty to a catastrophic end.
When we finally woke up in Davao, DJ Pol was sitting in front of the mirror, trying to wipe something off his face. His cellphone sat conspicuously right in front of him. I had a gut feeling he had used it while I was asleep — breaking our one rule for the trip — but I chose to say nothing. I did not want to spoil our first true dinner date.
We took a taxi, and the driver recommended Jack's Ridge. The restaurant was crowded, vibrant, and smelled wonderful. A live band played near a young couple's table, and we were ushered to a vacant spot by the terrace. We talked about how romantic the setting was, how hard we had fought to get there, and how grateful we were to finally be together in Davao. I was wearing the same shirt from our batch reunion, and we laughed as we recalled how he had boldly approached me that night with a glass of wine.
As we began to eat, the singers suddenly appeared by our side. He confessed he had requested them. It felt slightly awkward, but I pulled out my camera to capture the moment anyway, telling him it was something I wanted to remember. The overwhelming romance of that evening seemed to cure whatever anxieties we had the night before; we never had an issue with intimacy for the rest of the trip.
Before the conference began, we explored the city. We visited the GAP Farming Resort, strolling beneath the heavy shadows of massive, leafy trees. The Philippines often referred to Davao City as the "Land of Promise," and its landmark sign sat proudly on a hill within the resort. But our visit quickly turned dramatic. He misinterpreted something I said, believing I had implied he was only after my money. I saw real tears slipping from his eyes as we argued. It took immense effort to walk him back through the conversation to prove my innocence, but eventually, we were holding hands again.
The rest of our time in the city was beautiful. We stopped at a roadside stall to eat durian, mixing in with the crowd. We visited a zoo where I joined the braver tourists in letting a massive snake drape around my neck. Later, wandering aimlessly, we heard the profound, melancholic voices of a church choir spilling out onto the street.
We slipped into the overflowing Catholic Church just as Mass ended, deciding to stay kneeling in the pews to wait for the next service. Staring up at the statue of Jesus nailed to the cross, an overwhelming wave of guilt crashed into me. I was sitting beside a man I was deeply passionate about, yet our relationship was entirely unsanctioned. DJ Pol saw me crying and gently pulled my hand closer to him, though we never spoke about the reason for my tears.
When the conference officially started, he was undeniably gentlemanly. Whenever other participants asked, he proudly stated I was an elected official from his province, just like him. He ensured I always had a plate of food during refreshments and an extra chair by his side. Though I wasn't an official participant, I acted like one, quietly sharing my thoughts with him so he could represent our ideas during discussions.
It was only when we returned to Manila that the trouble began again. We were standing in line at an airline office when he turned his cellphone back on to call a friend. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was Dr. Becka (not her real name), the swine specialist.
Before they could even speak, I snatched the phone from his hand and answered it myself. Neither of us was ready for that conversation. My heart raced, but I forced my voice to stay calm. I wanted her to know that we had just been in Davao together, hoping the realization would finally convince her to back away.
But I drastically underestimated her determination. She refused to hang up. She pleaded with me, begging me to just let her speak to him. Then, she began to cry. Hearing her tears, an unexpected wave of pity washed over me. I became surprisingly accommodating, eventually handing the phone back so they could talk for a while before we turned the device off again by the time they finished, I had her number memorized by heart.
I needed to return to Marinduque immediately to distribute the relief goods collected by the school in Japan. DJ Pol couldn't come; he claimed he had a mandatory meeting at the Department of Education but promised he would follow later and, more importantly, promised not to contact Dr. Becka while staying at his mother-in-law's house.
I used the entirety of his government-issued check to buy additional groceries, driving around with my friends to distribute them to the poorest families we could find. It was exhausting but joyful work.
But before we could finish, the sky darkened. A super typhoon was barreling directly toward the province.Typhoon Reming (Durian) struck Marinduque in late 2006, causing unprecedented devastation to infrastructure and agriculture.
Without a radio or television at my place, we were caught entirely unprepared. We had nowhere to run but inside my vehicle as the wind began to howl. We could hear things ripping apart and flying outside. The car violently shook, pelted by stones and sand whipped up by the gale. The deafening shriek of the wind terrified me; it felt like God Himself was scolding me for my sins. I prayed continuously as the car shuddered, begging Him to spare the people from harm.
When the winds finally died down and we stepped out of the vehicle, the devastation was absolute. The floor of the house where the relief goods were stored had partially collapsed, dropping the boxes straight onto the ground. I didn't even have to look for needing families anymore—the surrounding neighborhood flocked to us immediately, having lost their roofs or entire homes beneath fallen trees.
The older residents claimed they had never seen a storm this destructive in their lifetimes. Inland travel was nearly impossible, but I eventually managed to ride a motorcycle with Junjun to reach my family's farm near the airport. Massive, ancient trees had been ripped out by the roots, but mercifully, my family was unharmed.
Because the phone signals were destroyed, I completely lost contact with DJ Pol. When I finally reached the town proper days later, old messages flooded my phone. He had been worried sick. When I called him, the sheer relief in his voice was palpable.
He never made it back to Marinduque. His meeting had been rescheduled, and he decided it was best to wait in Manila so he could accompany me to the airport for my flight back to Japan. When I finally secured a ferry passage several days later, he picked me up near a department store in Manila. He looked pale, haggard, and exhausted—like a "wet chick," I told him, sparking a petty argument that we quickly smoothed over during the bus ride.
Weeks later, after I had returned to Japan, the true financial fallout of the typhoon became clear. DJ Pol’s farm had been ravaged. The mahogany trees he intended to sell and the banana trees that provided his extra income were completely destroyed. He would have to start planting all over again.
I tried to encourage him, reminding him that he still had his town office job and a house to live in, unlike so many others. I told him this was his chance to prove he could survive without depending on a woman's money—especially Dr. Becka's. Giving him financial support myself would be breaking my bargain with God; there were simply too many other devastated families who deserved the help more.
But the pressure broke him.
One night, as he was driving home, we were talking on the phone. He admitted he was a bit drunk. Suddenly, all the resentments he had been burying blasted out of him like a volcano. He demanded to know why I never trusted him with my ATM card like other politicians’ mistresses did, or why I hadn't handed him control of the construction project's finances instead of hiring contractors.
I was stunned. I tried to reason with him calmly, explaining why I couldn't mix our relationship with the project's funds. But he was relentless. He accused me of only spending money when we were physically together because I could immediately get what I wanted in return.
My patience snapped. I furiously double-dared him: I told him I would fly back to Manila, stay in a hotel, and pay him thousands of pesos for every single night we did not have sex, just to prove him wrong. He initially agreed, but quickly backed down, realizing he would probably lose the bet.
Then, he asked me to forget everything he had just said. He told me he only had one favor to ask of me.
It felt like I had been struck by lightning.
"How dare you ask me to do that?" I screamed into the phone. "Don’t you care about my feelings at all?"
I couldn't take another second of it. I cut the line, collapsing into tears. I wondered how a man who was so brilliantly charismatic and kind to an entire town could be so deeply, casually cruel to me. Was it because he assumed our secret relationship lived in a vacuum, where he would never face external consequences, and I would inevitably just forgive him anyway?
When I finally called Abe and relayed the conversation through my tears, even she couldn't believe he had crossed such a devastating line.
Every toxic relationship has a breaking point, often triggered by extreme external pressure stripping away the romantic illusion. The super typhoon destroyed more than just the island's infrastructure; it obliterated the financial masks maintaining their dynamic. When DJ Pol demanded that she facilitate his return to the very rival who had paid his way in the past, he unwittingly shattered the spell, proving that no amount of romance in Davao could bridge the core fissure in their values.