Chapter 11
The plaza had filled up fast once word got around that the barangay’s one working karaoke machine had been dragged out for a “practice run” ahead of Ver’s wedding reception, which everyone understood to actually mean an excuse to share food and humiliate their neighbors in front of God and the covered court.
Allan had spent the last hour on a plastic chair between Ver and Jake, watching the BEBES take turns absolutely butchering “The Prayer” with a certain, unruffled confidence of women who had decided decades ago that technical skill was optional as long as the feeling was sincere.
The first act of the evening was a trio of ten-year-olds attempting a boyband number with full choreography, which the BEBES scored a collective ten out of ten purely on commitment, followed by one of the cousins from the send-off dinner attempting a rock ballad he clearly could not reach the high notes of, which the BEBES scored considerably lower, and loudly, right to his face.
Jake, delighted by the chaos as always, ran the scoreboard on a small whiteboard propped against the karaoke machine, updating it with theatrical flourish after every act.
“Now,” Jake announced into the microphone, static crackling gloriously, “it’s time for the part of the night where people humiliate themselves for fun. Karaoke!”
“Not me,” Allan had said preemptively, to absolutely no one, since he was fairly sure his fate had already been decided several minutes ago by committee.
“Who’s next?” Jake said, scanning the crowd with theatrical menace. “Well, look who it is. The barangay’s very own Wonder Kid.”
“I hate this family,” Allan said to Ver.
“You’re not family, just a friend,” Ver joked. “But we love you anyway, so go on, sing.”
Robby, a few chairs down, was very obviously trying not to laugh, which somehow made the whole thing worse.
“Fine,” Allan said, standing with the dignity of a man walking to his own execution. “But someone else is singing with me. I refuse to suffer alone.”
“Robby! Robby!” the entire table said, more or less in unison, with a speed that suggested this had also been decided by committee well before Allan arrived.
“Me?” Robby said, pointing at himself with the least convincing surprise Allan had ever witnessed.
“You,” Tita Becky confirmed, already elbowing Tita Yolanda in anticipation.
Robby stood, brushing invisible dust off his shorts with exaggerated reluctance that did not fool a single person present, and joined Allan at the makeshift stage, two plastic chairs and a tarp-covered table that had, over the years, hosted every fiesta pageant and impromptu political rally the barangay had ever needed.
“I want it stated, for the record,” Allan said, “that I am being coerced.”
“There’s no coercion here,” Jake said, adjusting the ancient karaoke machine’s antenna with the focused care of a surgeon. “It’s all voluntary. There’s just a list, and your name happens to be on it.”
“I didn’t sign that list.”
“Tita Becky signed for you,” Jake said. “In your name. She says that’s legal.”
Jake, cackling, punched in a song number without consulting either of them.
The intro started. Allan recognized it immediately and closed his eyes in brief, silent despair.
“You picked this on purpose,” he told Jake.
“I did,” Jake said proudly.
It was, inevitably, a duet: Kailan by Smokey Mountain, covered by MYMP—one of those old OPM ballads that had played at every Filipino gathering since the dawn of videoke, the kind where the lyrics existed less as poetry and more as a public confession machine you were legally obligated to operate sincerely once the intro started.
Robby, to Allan’s genuine surprise, actually knew the words.
Actually sang them, not well, off-key in a way that curved dangerously close to endearing, but with the full-bodied commitment of someone who had clearly grown up doing this at every fiesta of his life and had simply decided, tonight, to aim the whole performance directly at Allan.
The crowd noticed. Of course the crowd noticed. The BEBES were already elbowing each other so hard Allan feared for Tita Yolanda’s ribs.
Allan tried to match the commitment, badly, and found himself laughing through half his lines, which only made Robby grin wider and lean in closer during the chorus, microphone forgotten between them, singing directly at Allan’s face like this was a personal challenge rather than a song.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” Allan said, mid-verse, off-mic.
“You’re the one who said you didn’t want to do this alone,” Robby said. “I’m right here. Just follow me.”
By the final chorus, the whole plaza had joined in, Jake conducting with both arms like a deranged choir director, Ver filming with unnecessary enthusiasm, the BEBES swaying with their hands pressed to their chests in performative anguish.
Robby’s voice cracked comically on the last high note, and Allan lost it completely, doubling over laughing, the microphone dangling forgotten from his hand.
When the song ended, the applause was loud, delighted, and completely disproportionate to the actual quality of the performance.
“Ten out of ten,” Jake declared. “For the joy of it, not the tune.”
“I have never been more humiliated,” Allan said, breathless, still laughing.
“Liar,” Robby said, close enough now that Allan could feel the warmth radiating off him after the stage lights, close enough that the joke in his voice had gone soft and quiet underneath. “You had fun.”
“…Fine. Yes. I had fun. Don’t tell anyone.”
“The whole barangay saw,” Robby pointed out.
“Then everyone keeps this secret.”
They stepped down from the makeshift stage together, and in the general chaos of the next act starting, one of the teenagers attempting, unwisely, a Whitney Houston song, Robby’s hand found Allan’s elbow, steadying, then simply staying there, easy, like it belonged.
“Allan,” Robby said, low, just for him.
“What?”
“I know you said, friends muna,” Robby said. “But can I look at you like this, just a little? Before we become whatever we’re supposed to become?”
Allan’s heart did something complicated and entirely unhelpful for someone who was supposed to be pacing himself.
“You’re already looking,” he pointed out, voice not quite steady.
“I know,” Robby said. “I’m just asking if it’s okay.”
The plaza noise blurred around them, the teenager still murdering Whitney, the BEBES arguing loudly about the scoring, Jake narrating something into the mic that nobody was listening to, and for one suspended second it was just the two of them, standing close, the old fear finally, visibly, losing its grip on both of them at once.
“It’s okay,” Allan said quietly.
Robby’s smile, when it came, was the kind Allan felt in his chest more than he saw with his eyes.
“Okay,” Robby said. “Dahan-dahan lang.”
“Dahan-dahan,” Allan agreed, and let himself, for once, not run from the warmth of it.
Behind them, Jake, who missed absolutely nothing, leaned into the microphone one more time.
“Next on the list,” he announced grandly, to a crowd that had, at this point, fully stopped pretending not to watch Allan and Robby, “there is no next. The show’s over for tonight, folks. The best part already happened.”
The BEBES cheered like it was a soap opera finale.
Allan buried his face in his hands, laughing, mortified, and did not, for once, feel the need to run anywhere at all.
Robby’s radio crackled once against his hip, low, easy to miss under the karaoke feedback and the BEBES’ cackling. Then again, more insistent. He checked it, and Allan watched the easy warmth in his face shutter, fast and practiced, into something more focused.
“Small flooding, Sitio Panganiban,” Robby said, already standing, already reaching for his jacket. “Probably nothing. I still have to check.”
“Now?”
“Now,” Robby said, and the apology in his face was real, even rushed. “This is the job, Allan. It doesn’t wait for a good night to end properly.”
He was gone within minutes, jacket half-zipped, waving off Jake’s offer to come along because someone needed to stay and run the karaoke machine responsibly, which Jake took, loudly, as a personal insult.
Allan sat back down amid the noise and the fairy lights, the good feeling from five minutes ago still warm in his chest and now sitting oddly next to a small, unfamiliar ache: the first real preview of what loving someone with this particular job was actually going to cost, on nights that weren’t emergencies, until suddenly, without warning, they were.