It’s fascinating how having money can make most inconveniences suddenly feel bearable. This was what you were thinking of when you finally
As an employee of a BPO company in the city, you lived from paycheck to paycheck. That meant that for every fifteen days, you looked at the numbers on your bank’s digital app and calculated how much of your income went to what. The rent, groceries, and monthly bills were normally enough to make those numbers disappear. But because of the holiday pay, the equation had included spending for Christmas gatherings and New Year celebrations, buying gifts for friends and family, personal splurges, and even a bit of savings, which, from experience, would last only up until the end of the following year’s first quarter. The lines on the turnstiles were extremely long, thanks to commuters who never learned how to use the train tickets, but that foreign yet always-dreamed-of mathematics about your income occupied your mind and kept your annoyance. You even smiled at an ugly baby who was being carried by her mother beside you.
You only took the train almost once a month, when you spent a weekend at your parents’ place in Indang, Cavite. Before taking a provincial bus waiting on EDSA, you would buy them pasalubong – a box of donuts, a pack of ube piyaya or a bucket of crispy fried chicken – in a shop inside the mall connected to the MRT station. Bringing something home had always felt mandatory; even on days when you were struggling financially, you were never empty-handed, because to them, you assumed, pasalubong meant you had extra surplus income, that you could make ends meet by yourself, that living in Manila was not an entirely wrong decision even though you could have stayed with them in their house and saved a whole lot on expenses.
You were already walking towards the mall’s entrance where two security guards stood when you caught a glimpse of one of the makeshift stalls near the stairs of the overpass. From a few yards away, you could see all the things the stall had to offer, things you could want but never need: battery-operated mini-fans, phone cases, facemasks, and even children’s toys, all in varying designs, sizes, and colors. An elderly woman sat on a tiny monobloc chair beside the stall, watching something on a very old-looking model of an Android tablet.
You stopped walking and stepped to the side, giving way to rushing commuters. You should have been one of them, motivated to get home by the symphony of honking cars below, stuck in a gridlock on the road for hours. Instead, you approached the stall, already half-intent on indulging yourself with something only slightly usable.
Everything was cheap as expected. Well, cheaper compared with their counterparts in huge department stores. You already had inspected three or four items on sale when you realized you were not being entertained. The old lady who was enjoying a segment of Eat Bulaga, completely ignored your presence. She was holding her device tightly with her two hands. The ends of her brittle-looking fingernails were uneven and speckled with dirt. Her thinning gray hair was a tangled mess behind her, with a pink plastic hairclip hanging on a loose clump.
“Nay?” you said. Up close, her tanned skin looked rubbery. You expected her to look up smiling, excited, and grateful at the prospect of a sale.
She did look up, but she did as if in slow motion. The way she tilted her head up seemed very strained, and it took a couple of beats for her cloudy eyes to meet mine.
“How much for this?” you asked. You held up a box of wireless earbuds while staring at the dark and sagging bags under her eyes. Poor woman must have been sitting out here for days without proper sleep.
“Two hundred,” she said. Her raspy voice sounded almost like a whisper.
Normally, you would haggle and then ask for assistance to test the product, especially if it was some kind of electronics. But watching the old lady set her Android tablet aside – with much effort – made you think it was best to make our transaction quick so she could get back to her comfort activity. It also made you think that she was too old to be manning a stall in a busy place like this, especially by herself. The other stalls were guarded by middle-aged men with their protruding bellies peeking out of their shirts, women in hijabs doing some accounting on their notebooks or teenagers scrolling on their phones or playing mobile games.
As if hearing your thoughts, a man who was maybe in his mid-30s approached you. He was around six feet tall. He looked bulky without being corpulent. He wore a black sando, and a fading tattoo of a bald eagle showed on his right arm.
“Nay, did you make him try it out?” the man asked the old lady, who just looked at him with blank eyes. His voice was low and commanding. “He needs to test the product, so he won’t blame us if in case it’s not working when he gets home.”
The man took the box from your hands. He fished out the earbuds from its plastic case and turned them on. He did so in very swift and precise movements, one could tell he had been doing it every day for years. He told you to put the earbuds on and connect the device to your phone via Bluetooth. You were a bit taken aback by his hurriedness, but the relief you felt was also instant when loud, bristling music filled your ears. You were already intent on taking a chance with this one, but thanks to the old lady’s son, you were guaranteed to enjoy the earbuds for at least a couple of weeks, which these things usually last for. After a few seconds, you unplugged the earbuds and gave it to the man, who put them back in their case in the box, again with expert hands.
“Where’s the plastic, Nay?” he asked. Before the old lady could answer, the man had already found plastic bags clumped beside her. He took one of them and put the box of earbuds in it, and then he handed it to you. In return, you gave him one thousand pesos, but with a slight hesitation, for the bill was still very clean and crisp, freshly withdrawn from an ATM.
“You don’t have a smaller bill?” he asked. You shook your head. “Oh, we don’t have change. Let me ask around.”
The man walked to another stall a few feet away and talked to a young boy in a black hoodie, showing him the thousand peso bill. When the boy shook his head, he left, turned to a corner, and then disappeared from your view.
You looked out to the highway, searched for the gas station which was just a stone’s throw away from the provincial bus terminal, and felt another wave of relief when you saw a bus waiting on the side of the road. There were times when you had to wait for nearly half an hour for an empty bus to arrive, and then another half for it to fill with passengers. The pair of earbuds you bought were only charged half-full, which was just enough to survive an hour-and-a-half travel to Indang. Already you pictured yourself staring out the bus window, munching on a salty junk food that you would buy later in the mall, while a popular K-pop song with a catchy beat blasted in your ears.
You were taken out of your reverie when you felt something touch your forearm. It was the old woman poking you with her finger. “Two hundred,” she said. Then, she held out a palm.
“You already gave the money to your son,” you told her, already confused. “He’s just looking for change.” Didn’t you hear our entire conversation? You wanted to ask her sarcastically, but then you thought she might have had very poor hearing.
Her confusion showed on her face as well: her thinning brows knotted and her eyes squinted a little. “What son?” she asked, frowning.
“The man who was just here,” you told her. You turned and looked around at the other stalls but he was nowhere to be found. You turned to the old woman again and asked: “Isn’t that your son?”
“No,” she said. “I thought he was with you.”
It took you a couple of seconds to realize that you got bamboozled.
The man had probably been waiting somewhere nearby for God knows how long until he saw you approach the stall. He probably watched and waited for you to actually buy a product before deciding that you were a good target: a clueless, harmless office worker in her mid-20s.
Did he know you just had your holiday pay? How could he? But then, it wasn’t too improbable that he’d correctly assume most employees had already received their holiday pay by this time. And hadn’t you been feeling too happy? A weird glow must have been showing on your face. My steps must have had a little bit of spring in them.
You looked back at the old lady. Already, you were half-convinced that they did not look alike, even though you could barely remember the details of the man’s face. “Are you sure he’s not your son?” you asked. Even the question sounded absurd to you.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said again. “I thought he was your friend.”
You held her gaze for a second. The eyes always betrayed a person’s deceitful nature, but you couldn’t find anything in the cloud-like rheum that covered her irises. If anything, she returned your look with the expressionless stare she’d had since you talked to her. There was no fake sympathy in it nor a trace of satisfaction that one usually got after pulling a stunt. It was blank. You sighed in exasperation. You looked around again and tried to search for any sign of the man, but to no avail. The other people waiting and guarding their stalls were all occupied with their own activities. You were the only customer around, too; everyone was rushing towards the overpass or to the entrance of the mall. The two guards there were too busy opening and poking their sticks in people’s bags and couldn’t have possibly noticed what had happened.
“I’ll just wait for him to return then,” you told the old lady, crossing your arms. You held the plastic bag that had the earbuds more tightly.
You could go to the nearby police station and report the incident, though you doubted they could do anything about it. They probably received reports like this every week, if not daily, and had started treating petty thefts as commonplace. Someone in the station might even scoff at you for reporting the incident, given that it was just a thousand pesos you had lost.
A thousand pesos! The amount, you thought as you waited, was almost three days› worth of food, dessert after dinners included. It meant brewed iced coffee from Tim Horton’s or from other cafés not as pricey as Starbucks for five mornings. You could have given that thousand- peso bill to your mother instead, who had been asking for extra money on her biweekly allowance because she wanted to try a new brand of fish oil supplement for her weakening heart. Or to your father, who had been eating lots of costly cashew nuts and broccoli that could allegedly help with his aching arthritic knees.
You had been standing there for more than 15 minutes, shifting your weight from leg to leg, when you accepted the fact that the man wasn’t ever going to return – at least not while you were there. He could have an accomplice around who was telling him if you had gone or not. Or maybe he had moved his modus operandi elsewhere. Either way, the sun was already starting to set. The shadows of a billboard advertising an energy drink had hit your face, and the blaring horns on the road had become more frequent, reminding you it was time you go.
“You give up,” you told the old lady. While you waited there, she had done nothing but look at your face, then at the plastic bag you were holding, and at the other stalls around. You still couldn’t tell if she was a part of the scheme. “You can have the money,” you added bitterly.
You wanted to cry a little when she took the plastic bag from your hands. The expression on her face was now of sheer bewilderment, which made you think that maybe she wasn’t even aware of what had just happened. With a heavy heart, you walked away from the stall and into the entrance of the mall, shaking your head at your own stupidity, and at the fact that it happened to you out of the hundreds of people walking around Pasay that afternoon.
You saw the man again the following year, on a sunny Sunday morning in January. You had already forgotten about the whole incident; the long year-end celebrations with your family in Indang had happened without much hiccups, and surprisingly, the money left from your holiday pay was bigger than expected despite what had happened.
Just a few minutes after passing the turnstiles, and on your way to the shopping mall connected to buy pasalubong, you found the man sitting Indian-style on a sheet of blue-and-orange tarpaulin that he laid on the ground near the makeshift stall. He was hunched forward, eating instant noodles from a plastic bowl. Before him were also small plates of vegetables and plastic cups of water. The old lady was there, too. She sat on her monobloc chair while nursing a similar bowl in her hands. The shock took you aback for a beat, though you were surprised less by the fact that they were indeed related and that the old lady had duped me but more by that sight of them so casually together at the stall again. Didn’t they think you or their other victims would take the MRT again and see them? Didn’t they think you would remember?
As you slowly, tentatively resumed walking to the entrance of the mall, eyeing them, you also thought that perhaps, their scheme was only a one-time thing, and you had been their only victim. Perhaps, they only had to do it that one time because their sales had been rough for months and they needed extra funds to celebrate the holidays. You were the only customer around that time after all. Every time you passed by the area, all of the stalls barely had customers. You watched the two eat their meal in silence as people walked past in front of them, ignorant of the dust particles their hurried steps might have put into their bowls of noodles. Back home, you suddenly remembered that your parents still had the leftovers you had had during New Year’s Eve. The feast their neighbors also gave had been plenty, now in tupperware containers and zip-lock bags inside their fridge.
You could have ignored the man and the old lady. You probably should have. Instead, your feet dragged towards their stall.
They did not look up when you reached them nor when you took the box of earbuds on the display that you were supposed to buy the year before. They probably thought you were just another random customer who needed more time to pick among the array of products.

“How much for this wireless earbuds, kuya?” you asked. My voice did not remind them of anyone. The man, who was now wearing an oversized white t-shirt with a huge print of an anime character on it, barely looked up to see what you were holding.
“Two hundred pesos,” he said, and then he returned to slurping soup from his bowl.
You took out your wallet and produced two one-hundred-peso bills. “I’ll take it,” you said.
The man set down his bowl, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then wiped the hand at the side of his basketball shorts. He set his wares aside, stood up, and took the money from your hands. He was about to get a plastic bag near the old lady when he glanced up at your face. Unsurprisingly, instantly recognized your appearance, and for a second, his movements froze. His eyes looked like deer caught in headlights, and his mouth was left slightly parted. The old lady picked up on this and she looked up as well. Upon seeing your face, her hand, which held a fork where strings of instant noodles were dangling from, stopped halfway to her mouth.
“It’s okay, Kuya. Just give me a plastic bag,” you said. The man did as he was told, but without leaving his gaze on your face. “Happy New Year po,” you added as you took the plastic bag and put the box of earbuds in it. You paused, and you made sure to give them a warm smile and a slight nod. Then, you walked away.
You could still feel their eyes following you as you approached the entrance of the shopping mall, got your bag inspected by a guard, and disappeared from their view. They probably wondered if you would tell them to the police, which you didn’t. They probably wondered why you didn’t make a scene, insisted to get your thousand-peso bill back or at least scolded them for what they did. They probably wondered why you still bought from their store, and in a way, helped them. Thinking about it now, that wasn’t really what you were trying to do. You were trying to tell them, by not telling them, that you were offering your forgiveness. Or that at least, you understood why they did what they did. You wanted them to realize that there shouldn’t be much shame on their part because they were just victims themselves and that their hardship wasn’t completely their own doing.
But on your bus ride home that day, and even on the bed that night, there was a weird heaviness that pressed on your chest, right in the middle of your rib cage. You should have felt good; you showed kindness even when you had been taken advantage of. But thinking that just made the heaviness even heavier, and made it difficult for you to fall into sleep.