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Chapter 107: The Secret
Last Updated:
2024-10-29 19:42:56
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The Boyfriend App Chapter 108: The Castle
The Bali Girls and Boys enter a small alley towards the looban (interior), which is like a ghetto courtyard surrounded by houses. In the Philippines, the market for high-rise apartments hasn’t boomed and most families are crammed in a bungalow or one half of a duplex. The walls of the alley, just like those of the interior, are covered in graffiti and smell of either cat piss or garbage, despite the countless "Don’t Dump Your Garbage Here You A**hole" signs. Surprisingly enough though, there’s none of those odors tonight and the graffiti appear to have been covered with a fresh coat of paint. {Huh! Imagine that,} Kate thinks to herself. {A lot can change in a couple of months. Who says Filipinos don’t have discip—} Kate freezes in her tracks. For some unfathomable reason, there are many tall potted plants at the mouth of the courtyard; so many that it feels slightly like a jungle. Beyond this thicket of bamboo and ficus, the interior appears to be glowing as bright as a fair. And on
The Boyfriend App Chapter 109: The Princess
Dion gets back on stage and introduces the 18th Rose just as the next song starts to play: A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. Terra takes a bow and Kate instinctively makes a simple curtsey. He places his hands on her hips and she places hers on his shoulders, which look extra wide in the tuxedo. They start to dance, swaying side to side in more or less the same place just like the previous Roses. “Thank you,” Kate opens. “For what?” “For everything. The stego letter, the getaway car, this surprise party.” “Oh, yeah. Sure. Don’t mention it,” Terra answers quickly, without eye contact and tilting his head a little to the side. “Dion mentioned something to me. Is it true you dislike phone calls?” “Phone calls? No. Why?” “Maybe you prefer text messages to calls?” Kate offers. “Not really.” “That’s weird…” Kate says. “Is it important?” Terra asks. “I haven’t had the chance to talk to Dion since he arrived from QC, you know, because we picked you up at camp.” “Right.” A spell
The Boyfriend App Chapter 110: The Last Dance
“All right,” Dion says on the mic, “that concludes our 18 Roses Dance. Now, let us proceed t—” Just when everyone thinks all the dances are over, who comes striding into the center of the dance floor but robo-puppy Ecto 2.0! “Wait! What’s this? Ladies and gentlemen, we have a surprise contender on the dance floor. It’s none other than the irresistibly cute and incredibly high-tech… Ecto 2.0!” Deafening cheers. “All right, little guy,” Dion keeps speaking on the mic. “What song would you like to dance to with Kate?” Ecto 2.0 sits on its haunches and starts playing a song from its speakers. “Ohhh, would you look at that?” Dion says. “It looks like Ecto 2.0 brought his own brand of music. And the song’s very catchy and sounds vaguely familiar to me. Hold up, does anybody know what this song is?” Members of the audience answer in unison: “Señorita!” “That’s it! Señorita! By Camila Cabello and…” Dion listens to prompts from the audience. “Shawn Mendes. Wow. How did you know such a n
The Boyfriend App Chapter 111: Lost and Found
It’s already 2 a.m. when all the guests have gone home and most of the decorations have been taken down. Kate has changed into her jammies and removed her makeup in the bathroom. On her way back to her room, she passes by the pile of fatigues, camo backpack, combat boots, headlamp etc next to the laundry basket. She and her parents have agreed they would just mail the stuff back to Camp Unplugged. Mrs. Lapuz is standing awkwardly and undecided in the dim hall in front of her and Mr. Lapuz’s room. “Ngek!” Kate exclaims. “Ma! You startled me. Er… why are you still up?” “I need to tell you something, Katie Pie,” she says somberly. “I did something terrible to you.” “I know, ma, and I forgive you. Just forget about it, OK?” “No, it’s not about Camp Unplugged. It’s something else.” “Whatever it is, it can wait till tomorrow. We’re both pooped.” “No, I have to tell you this now. Maybe there’s still time. Maybe you can still fix it.” Kate can’t help but sigh because she can hear her b
The Boyfriend App Chapter 112: Lost in Virtual Space
With an unsteady hand, Kate clicks Play All Videos. Her heart leaps at the sight of Ecto’s character: Volteros the Knight from the neck down and handsome Ecto from the chin up. It brings a grin to Kate’s white-as-sheet face. She breathes a laugh through that smile. Ecto has that instant, powerful effect on her. But soon, her brow furrows and her smile falters when Ecto dies in the game in the hands of a Level-3 wizard. Ecto regenerates at the starting point and goes on his quest again. With uncanny speed, Kate finds and grabs her headphones amid the clutter of her room and plugs them in to hear Ecto’s voice simultaneous with his in-game chats. She smiles at his familiar voice; that husky one that she has missed so much; the same one that she selected especially for him – eons ago, it now feels. At the same time, her eyes threaten to well up again because it’s like she can feel every blow, every injury, every decrease in his HP; and every death. {“So you like ganging up on solo play
The Boyfriend App Chapter 113: The Blackout
Nestled in the rolling foothills of Laurel, Batangas is a picturesque resort-subdivision called Woodland Vista. Spanning 300 hectares, it’s made up of townhouses, condominiums, condotels, pools, private estates, a golf course, a country club and a hotel. Tonight though, it’s just a fathomless pool of inky blackness because there’s an unscheduled power interruption from its energy provider, BATELEC II. Approximately twelve hours ago and 45 kilometers away, a kite got entangled on a power line in Barangay Biga, Sto. Tomas. The anonymous kite-flyer was unharmed but their kite caused a chain reaction of misery that started in the controlling breaker and reached hundreds of thousands of households across one city and four towns along the northeastern rim of Taal Lake. The power has been so erratic that parents were forced to turn off appliances and grudgingly took out candles and hand fans. Kids had to content themselves with just listening to tunes to conserve the battery of their smartph
The Boyfriend App Chapter 114: Bros
“Seriously though,” Shadow says, “you’re smarter than this, Nate. And you’ve got so much raw talent. It just feels like a sin letting all that go to waste. When are you going to audition for SM Entertainment?” “Nollijima…” “Who’s joking? I’m not joking. I’ve heard you sing, bro. You’ve got the voice of an angel. We both got that from appa.” “Maybe I can sing. But I can’t dance for shit.” “If I told you once, I told you half a dozen times: Anyone…” “… can dance,” Nate finishes, nodding like a bobblehead puppy. “Just pretend nobody’s watching you. That’s what I do. You think I dance for other people? Fat chance. I dance for myself. To relieve my stress. When I’m dancing, that’s the only time I feel I’m free.” Shadow extends his motorcycle helmet to Nate. “Here.” “What am I supposed to do with that?” “Try it on, dumbass. What else are you going to do with it? You drive.” “Jinjjah?” Nate asks incredulously. “Jinjjah. This baby’s yours so you’d better break it in.” “Holy…” Nate
The Boyfriend App Chapter 115: Bad News Bears
The news anchor’s somber words float from the studio on screen, across the living room, to greet Kate, who’s walking slowly towards the sectional sofa. It feels like she’s still surfacing from a dream. She thinks if she doesn’t make any sudden move, the dream might not take a dark turn and become a nightmare. “… reports from Batangas that Ji-hoon Kim, more popularly known as Shadow, leader of the K-pop group Monte X-O, has been killed in a motorcycle accident… and that an until-today largely unknown Filipino half-brother by the name of… Nathaniel Policarpio is gravely injured.” Kate’s mouth produces a gasp before she can cover it. “They were apparently being pursued by a van carrying camp counsellors of an Internet addiction rehabilitation center. The reports are that Shadow has been killed. The half-sibling Nathaniel Policarpio is in critical condition. “For those of you just tuning in, here’s the footage from our field team in Laurel, Batangas captured just 30 minutes ago.” The
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The Boyfriend App Chapter 175: Ecto's Stocking
After Mass, Kate and Nate buy rice cakes at the town square. One is the awesomely purple puto bumbong and another the yellow bibingka. They also buy roasted chestnuts and bring all the treats home to Mr. and Mrs. Lapuz. On one trip to a very crowded shopping mall, Ecto sees a Santa Claus impersonator. Curiously, the Santa is Caucasian and not brown-skinned like most of the Filipinos. Of course Ecto has already figured out by himself that Santa isn’t real. To his surprise, after they get back home, Kate insists on teaching him the hooman custom of hanging a stocking. On the desktop of her computer, Kate shows him a folder that she has named “Ecto’s Stocking”. She then goes through all the trouble of changing her wallpaper to a fireplace and dragging the folder onto the 2D mantelpiece. “What for?” he asks her through her smartphone’s loudspeaker. Her smartphone is open and showing the My Dream Boyfriend app, right into the inside of Ecto’s bedroom. Ecto’s wearing a knit sweater
The Boyfriend App Chapter 174: The Holidays
With a little help from Terra, Kate downloads the My Dream Boyfriend App again with some customizations. Because Ecto isn’t bound by any one platform anymore, he’s capable of some manner of fission, where he splits and replicates himself while also dividing his consciousness among all his manifestations. It’s like Doctor Strange’s clones when they were fighting Thanos, but in Ecto’s case, each and every duplicate is much more than an illusion and is a sentient and perfect version of himself. This allows him to be both in Nate’s microchip implant while back in his virtual bedroom inside the My Dream Boyfriend app on Kate’s smartphone. At any time, he can also perform fusion and re-absorb his manifestations. Terra removed the boyfriend creation window because of course Kate doesn’t need it anymore. Ecto wanted his virtual bedroom exactly as it was. He could easily “slide” into his other cribs anyway, like the old orange, pink and red Provençal one on Dungeon Raydens which he was able
The Boyfriend App Chapter 173: The Truth
It’s already 6 pm when Nate finishes his social host obligations and comes looking for Kate. He doesn’t need to look hard though because earlier, Kate sent him a text saying she’s waiting for him in the Council office. Nate has a spring in his step and is smiling ear to ear. The scratches on his face are still stinging but, before the closing ceremony, Nurse Judy cleaned and applied Band-Aid on them. Nate can’t hide his excitement in seeing his GF again after they’ve taken care of all their responsibilities. {That kiss on the track was supernova-hot. I hope we make out too.} When he finds the office door locked, oddly enough, he knocks and calls out uncertainly: “Kate?” He hears her move inside the room and then the door swings open. The sight of her face wipes his smile off. She’s been crying in the dim. She has the look of someone who has just had herself a good cry. Her eyes look cleansed and exposed, indeed like pure windows into her soul. Her lips are tightly set in a line, as
The Boyfriend App Chapter 172: The Anagram
Kate is alone in the Student Council office tidying up. Nate’s off wrapping things up with his manager and the film crew and saying goodbye to everybody, including his bandmates. The trophy that STEM 12 won is now in the 12-Everest homeroom, because the bulk of tournament champions is there. Kate’s classmates are all posing with it and gushing at how shiny it is. This year’s Intrams was perfect. Kate couldn’t ask for anything more. She has once again been reminded of the importance of having balance in life; of, as cheesy as it sounds, having both a sound mind and a sound body. It felt good to do something physical, to be away from the rigors of school work and the false urgency of the Internet. But the heart of the matter is, she’s blissfully content because she has a boyfriend and she didn’t make a mistake in choosing him. In fact, she made a brilliant choice. An undertow to her joy is a silent prayer that she has finally broken the curse that she felt had hung over her ever since
The Boyfriend App Chapter 171: The Cheater
“OMG!” Mr. Romero says the word in everyone’s mind as they watch the pitiful scene. “Policarpio’s crawling to the baton exchange. Quick! Somebody help him! Help him!” Reggie is the first to break the spell of paralysis. He leaps over the rail and onto the track. He and Jared manage to run towards him before the alert CAT volunteers practice crowd control and stop others from joining. Reggie reaches Nate’s side. “No!” Nate screams vehemently. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! I have to do this by myself.” “But hyung,” Jared says, having stopped next to Reggie, “you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to prove anything.” “Yes… I… do,” Nate grunts as he crawls forward foot by precious foot. “Let us help you,” Reggie pleads. “You don’t have to do this alone.” “Don’t come closer!” Nate barks, spittle flying between his gritted teeth. In what feels like eternity, he reaches the changeover zone and Kate’s crouched form. Her eyes are glassy and full of pity for him. He hates that loo
The Boyfriend App Chapter 170: The Race
By Friday morning, STEM 12 has won a total of 7 champion ribbons and several ones as runner-up. This makes them a leading candidate for overall champion. As Kate has anticipated, the non-sports events buoyed them. Apart from Francine and her escort winning Mr. and Mrs. Intrams, Grace and her benchwarmers won the bench cheer. It didn’t hurt either that the Bali Girls minus setter Lor were at the top of their game. And Nate, to everyone’s astonishment, is actually a Filipino Usain Bolt in the making. {Your BF’s Superman,} Nate’s words have been echoing inside Kate’s head since Wednesday, along with the news reporter’s: {Idol, social catalyst and Internet detective. Is there anything that Cyber can’t do?} But STEM 12 didn’t exactly win all their wins. Just like in last year’s Intrams, several games have been forfeited. An opposing team either failed to meet the minimum number of players required to start the game or failed to appear at the venue within the 15-minute grace period. On CIT
The Boyfriend App Chapter 169: Music Madness
The crowd of hysterical girls in front, held back only by a cordon of CAT cadets from junior high, are screaming the names of DMG members: “Cyber! Reggie! Jared! Sonic! Neo!” Seemingly from out of nowhere, they’ve whipped out banners and signs. Instead of the usual glow-in-the-dark Korean lettering for an evening K-pop concert, there’s a slew of English ones interspersed with the name of a particular artist or of the whole band. | IT’S MY BIRTHDAY CYBER, YOU ARE MY PRESENT DUMP KATE TAKE ME I WOULD SELL MY SIBLINGS FOR YOU I LOVE YOU MORE THAN FREE WIFI DON’T STOP INSPIRING ME! CAN I BE YOUR HAIRDRESSER? ALL I WANT FOR X-MAS IS A PIC WITH JARED DMG We have 5 fingers enough for 5 wedding rings SPIT ON ME CYBER | An English-speaking Filipino director is riding a crane and shooting high up in the aisle of the audience seats. His staff is scattered on the edges and near the stage, operating or holding up every manner of equipment. DMG plays their covers of the most popular s
The Boyfriend App Chapter 168: Within the Walls
On Tuesday, they have the same brain-hurting and nose-bleeding calculations in Physics and Chemistry. The only thing different is DMG’s closed-door rehearsal at the chapel-slash-auditorium 500 meters east. Nate has been exempted by Principal Aguilar personally from any school work or quiz. The whole campus is abuzz and on edge at every sighting of truck and van with tinted windows down Campus Drive and onwards to the auditorium. Kate has also prepared paper lots in an empty pencil case for the Secret Santa next month. She lets every Everester pick their recipient, including her own name. Kate has set the budget at “No Fixed Price” because she knows not all students are financially comfortable. When only two pieces of folded paper remain (one for Nate and one for her), she picks her recipient and is both excited and nervous to see that it’s Grace. She keeps the last piece of paper, of course unopened, for Nate. {Huh,} she thinks to herself afterwards. {What gift can I give somebod
