"Primero... the kids... si bunso..."
The man pressed his forehead on his wife's, she's dying, blood all over the collar of her ragged blouse, bullet holes on her ripped shirt darkened by the mud as the rain continues to pour its rage against the cursed land.
It was awful.
All his plans we're interrupted--- oh heavens! He was betrayed! His eyes went darker because of hunger and anger and fear and... and all the things he should worry about. Poor Primero.
Poor poor Primero, he was clutching his bleeding waist while hugging his wife, Esmeralda, the woman is desperately gasping for air, a prayer circling in her mind for her two sons.
"Primero... ang mga bata."
The kids.
Her last words before finally being one with the falling rain, behind the sound of gunfire the rain sounded so quiet, so silent as if it was never really there.
Primero stood up, he forced himself to run towards the woods--- through it, to their house, leaving his poor wife behind, there is no time to bury her or to mourn, his children might be dead if he will let his emotions get into his whole system. He can't manage to lose them, to lose all of them.
So he ran, the mud of the earth hugging his bare legs, his aching calves and tired feet, he ran with the sound of water splashes as he steps onto puddles, he ran with the sound of cracking woods, then he arrived.
He stood there, behind the thick body of the banana tree, just wide enough to hide his whole figure, his eyes fixed on a single face that he knows.
Japanese soldiers stabbing his friend Macario on his stomach, the man is spitting blood on the floor, hard boots hitting his face as they kick him repeatedly like he is no human.
Primero's skin went cold.
The Hapons have found their home. His wife is dead. Macario will follow very soon. And the house... oh boy.
It wasn't really the sound of branches that he ran on to just to get there, it wasn't their cracking, it was the house's.
Their home was on fire, and the sound of his two child's cry was all over his ear, a defeaning whistle of failure.