Kristina and I decided to continue with the third and last entry. There were only three entries in the journal.
--ENTRY NO. 3 [MARCH 3, 2000]--
--I won't do any introduction today and I will get straight to the point. Some weird stuff kept happening to me lately. The bombing was one thing but lately, I kept receiving death threats. I sometimes see them in my drawer at the university I work at or in my mailbox. One day I received a package. A carcass of a piglet inside a shoebox.--
--I don't remember ever offending anyone. Well, except maybe for some of the girls I slept with who didn't know what a one night stand means. Surely, just because I didn't wanna date them after having sex once doesn't mean they're gonna assassinate me. Right? Especially if it's consensual.--
--And like the normal person that I am with a completely functional head, I reported it to the police. And for the last few days, they've been patrolling around my house more frequently but the threats didn't stop.--
--One day, I found a letter in my drawer again. An address was written on it. Barbara St., Lucena City, 3:00 a.m..--
--I didn't go. I handed it to the police and let them do their job. That was two days ago as I was writing this. And up to this day, I still don't wanna go there. I suggest you don't go there as well, other me. Some people will come help you and I bet they already did if you're reading this. You will be safe in their place but not for long. Don't stay in one place for more than a month. Don't trust anyone, even yourself. Learn to doubt everything.--
And that was the end of the last entry.
Kristina and I stayed dazed. No matter how you look at it, there was no safe place in this plane. And we needed to find a way to go back. Everything was fucked on this side.
5:a.m. came. Kristina went to the mess hall to do her duties. I mopped the hallways along with another young man, around 16 maybe. He wasn't speaking to me and I already had enough.
"Hey! What's your name?" I asked. We were on the second floor by the way.
He didn't answer me. He seemed to be thinking what my intentions were. "Then don't answer if you don't want to." I finally told him and mopped the floor more aggressively.
"Everyone. Everyone. Why do you treat us like we have bombs all over our body? Not like we'll kill you." I remembered grumbling in annoyance.
"Kamil," the young man finally said.
"Oh, now you're talking. Call me—"
"I know." He cut me off. "You're Mr. D. aren't you?"
I was taken aback. With my furrowed brows, I asked him back. "You know me?"
"Of course, you're the only person aside from Mr. Franco and Ms. Lydia who goes in and out of the camp. You're one of the higher ups, aren't you? Are you here to monitor us? Hey! Can I ask? When are we going home?"
What Kamil told me lingered in my head for the whole day. Just what the heck?
It was seven and just finished the day. Our schedule went like this. By five to six, we do our task. By six to nine, we do whatever we want. Have breakfast, take a shower… And by nine, we go to the makeshift classroom located at the back of the mess hall, to the right side of the dormitory.
I got to know who Ms. Lydia was in that class. She was our teacher.
"I don't like her," Kristina whispered to me. There were no sitting arrangements by the way so we sat next to each other.
"Me neither."
And if you're wondering, Ms. Lydia was a petite woman. Her dirty blonde hair was tied into a very tight bun. Wearing maroon slacks and a matching maroon blazer over a white button down shirt.
She introduced herself to the class of five. Apparently, classes only last for three days. After that, they will train you how to fight and defend yourself. And classes only last for an hour. After that, we headed to the field to run a few laps and train our body under the supervision of Chad. A muscular dude who was very good at fighting. He used to be in the military in his previous plane. I passed out when he punched me in the gut.
"We can't stay like this, Dandan." Kristina suddenly said. I want to return home.
"Yeah, me too." And then a thought came to my mind. "Hey, Kristina. How about we investigate?"
"What is there to investigate when we can't even go outside? Reading that journal didn't really help. Well, at last we know what our enemy is. But it was times like this that I'd rather be ignorant."
"The camp. It think—I think Old Klein and Franco were hiding something from us."
She raised her brows. "Oh, really? What made you say that?"
"Guts."
"Not very reliable, is it? But I'll hear you out. You doubt them, don't you?"
"It's the dormitory."
"Hmm. What about it?" She told me as she lay on my chest.
"There were hand prints. Human hand prints. The soot stains won't come off. And I spoke to Kamil, a boy, and apparently, he's been here since a month ago. He thought I was spying on them. He thought I was one of the higher ups. It was ridiculous. And here I was thinking the whole time why people won't talk to us for the time we were here, turns out they're avoiding us. Why do you think that is?"
Kristina was silent. I could only feel her breath. And another thought popped into my head at that time. If all these didn't happen, I would have asked her to marry me. I already ordered a ring. But shit happened to us and we didn't know if we would live to see the next morning.
"I wanna see them," said Kristina. "I wanna see these prints you're telling me. Let's investigate, Dandan. Better do something than nothing."
And so we got off the bed, headed to the door, and when we opened it, Zach was waiting for us outside.