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Chapter 84: Apple-logy
Last Updated:
2024-02-21 20:52:51
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The Boyfriend App Chapter 85: One-on-One
At 3 pm, Ms. Perfect is sitting across a table from Kate in a makeshift office that used to be an attic. The inwardly sloping ceiling is painted taffy-pink and plastered with leopard prints; posters of kittens that would’ve looked cute and at home on the web but were printed and blown up so they’re just scary; magazine cutouts of the Pope; painting replicas of the Virgin Mary and Jesus; and posters of quotes like: | Dance like no one is watching {Love} LIKE YOU’VE NEVER BEEN HURT {Sing} LIKE NO ONE IS LISTENING {Live} LIKE HEAVEN IS ON EARTH | interspersed with images of Snoopy, Kate’s fave dog character along with Odie. Those few, tiny images of Snoopy never fail to remind Kate of Ecto 2.0 and the painful moment when she repeatedly commanded it to “stay” and, finally, “shut down” on the day that Camp Unplugged’s van came to pick her up. As though Ecto 2.0 could sense something bad was about to happen, he kept following her around. Here at the top of the Main House, the
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The problem with Kate is she’s overthinking the whole thing. For her, the Double Vision Board is like those English essay-writing tests where everybody comes up with the best-sounding lies to answer a question like "If you could change one thing in this world, what would you change?" or "Describe the person who has had the greatest influence on you." The teacher always tells you there’s no right or wrong answer but the fact that there’s a grade attached to it makes her feel that there should be a catch somewhere. Many of Kate’s classmates at 11-Narra have perfected the art of concocting (and memorizing) the most suitable lies, whichever’s shorter and more effective in getting the grade. Kate’s conscience, unfortunately, always requires her to do things the hard way by writing an honest answer, her composition exceeding the allotted space below the typed question, snaking along the edge of the questionnaire, disappearing and continuing on the back page, seen off by a "Cont." label and
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Ms. Perfect likes her psychology exercises. Kate, being the hyper-imaginative daydreamer and overanalyzing girl that she is, always feels like she’s fighting for her life against Ms. Perfect’s mind games. She feels exactly like Beatrice Prior in the serum-induced psych aptitude test. The other day, Ms. Perfect had Kate stuck in a patch of quicksand, like her character Kayzel sometimes experienced inside Dungeon Raydens. Kate could almost feel the sucky mix of sand and water as she was dragged first knee-deep and then waist-deep; the squeezing mass of sand around her legs, their viscosity quickly approaching the solidity of concrete. In her daydream, Ms. Perfect was sitting on her usual chair just above the puddle where Kate would very soon be chest-deep. Ms. Perfect was phlegmatically scribbling on her flipchart and not even looking at Kate, who was hyperventilating and covered in cold sweat. “Help, Ms. Blanca!” Kate screamed. “I’m going in too deep!” “Kate, if you’re going to use
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“The student passenger keeps shouting at you,” Ms. Perfect continues her psychology exercise and Kate continues her daydream. “‘Hurry up, Miss Driver, I’m running late and we have a quiz on fifth period. Hurry please. Hurry, hurry, hurry.’ “The student also looks stressed overall. She’s got thick eye bags and her hair’s still dripping fresh out of the shower, a comb stuck in the tangles. She’s eating a sandwich with one hand and writing a school report with the other. Loose-leaf paper is spilling out of her binder. “The second suspicious passenger is a female dwarf.” “You mean like Kili in The Hobbit?” Kate asks without opening her eyes. Even as she does, she imagines a female version of the hot dwarf prince, wearing a medieval leather jerkin with royal embroidery. Automatically, she has assigned Tauriel’s elven face, but with shaggy hair and a bit of sideburns. “Yes,” Ms Perfect replies, “but less fantasy-related and more, er, congenital.” “Oh, I see…” Kate changes the dwarf’s
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“What?” Ms. Perfect hisses. Kate’s grade-conscious angel realizes they’re in trouble now and tries to convince Kate to take back what she has just said. But the rebellious devil in her believes that telling the truth – no matter how unpleasant – trumps all lies, white or otherwise. “I don’t need to do anything,” Kate explains as her fight-or-flight mode boots up. “The mystery passenger is my boyfriend that’s why he didn’t need to pay his fare.” “How are you so sure that he’s your boyfriend?” Ms. Perfect asks with an icy tone. “Because I saw it.” “Saw it… where?” “Through the rear-view mirror. When the man opened his wallet, I saw my own picture. He was keeping it in the clear ID holder.” “There’s no rear-view mirror!” Ms. Perfect thunders and Kate winces. “Yes, there is,” Kate says. “All jeepneys, in fact all vehicles, are required by law to have one.” “No, there isn’t,” Ms. Perfect roars. The counsellor is now standing, a vein bulging in her neck and a tic going under her le
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There was no haunted house in the landscape of Kate’s childhood but there was the haunted backyard garden of sugar-apple trees owned by Aling Sita. Aling Sita, short for Teresita, was a different nightmare mainstay altogether. Neither witch nor supernatural monster, it was rumored that she was the member of a Tad-tad (Chop) cult in Southern Philippines who fled to Concepcion City when there was heat on her fanatical group at the dawn of the millennium, around year 2000. Chop cults were small Catholic sects that had broken away from the dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the country. They were also remnants of government-created mercenary groups that fought Moslem and communist guerrillas in the ’70s. As a Chop cultist, Aling Sita was suspected of hypnotism, brain-cannibalism, digging up kneecaps from the public cemetery to use as amulets, owning T-shirts scrawled with folk Latin prayers, and wielding their trademark machete to deflect bullets. You can imagine that, no
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Seven-year-old Kate’s ordeal wasn’t over. For the rest of the afternoon, she endured the pain from her wrist and tried to make the swelling subside. Remembering what her ma did every time she had a bump or a sprain, she bought two freezies from the mom-and-pop store and iced her injury. She alternated between grimacing, crying and calmly sucking on the freezies (mung bean flavor), her pain forgotten if only for a short while. She prayed with only one half of the palms-touching gesture. She implored Papa Jesus that she would have a sprained and not a broken wrist. But as evening drew closer and both the pain and the swelling refused to go away, her hope began to dwindle. She wished she were Dumbledore and had literal X-ray vision to know for sure. Then again, if she were Dumbledore, she wouldn’t have hurt her wrist in the first place (she would’ve just used Arresto Momentum). The heart of the matter was, she couldn’t afford her injury to be a break. The real reason she kept looking a
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“Who are they from?” Kate asks Yssy in a soft, gurgly baby voice. “A boy named Chester Araullo,” Yssy explains, showing her the return address on the envelopes, which – another weird thing – has been printed out and pasted. “I nicked them from Ms. Perfect’s wastebasket when I brought her dinner to her office. And not only that… I also brought you… these!” Kate’s eyes bulge at the sight of two pieces of lumpia spring rolls wrapped in tissue paper. “Ohhh, give me! Give me!” she moans; the miraculous letters temporarily forgotten. It’s love at first bite. She closes her eyes, relishing the salty taste of the crepe pastry skin. “Thank you,” she finally manages to tell Yssy, after a second big bite and with her mouth full. “You literally saved my life.” “Gosh, don’t mention it. I know you’d do the same for me if our positions were reversed.” “For sure!” Kate says while chewing contently. “Anyway, eat them all up because you deserve it,” Yssy says after she has placed the mysteriou
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The Boyfriend App Epilogue: The Microscopic Villain
For Ecto, New Year’s is more or less the same as Christmas. The same warm, gooey feeling. The same close-knit spirit. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has banned the manufacture and sale of firecrackers, the shooting of which has been a well-loved tradition for centuries and can be traced all the way back to the Spanish colonial era. The exact inventors and originators were the Chinese, who believed that noise would drive away bad luck and bad spirits. According to Mr. and Mrs. Lapuz, the Filipinos seem sadder now, having been robbed of the most thrilling and spectacular means of making noise. But according to health and safety records, hospital personnel can rest easier because the ERs wouldn’t be packed with casualties this time around. Just the New Year’s before last, it was like a war zone on the streets what of households competing for the biggest bang to welcome the new year. Many men got drunk out of their minds and then tried to light a firecracker with the non-PC name
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
