The quarterly projections meeting droned on. Tito Rodrigo's voice charted market share in flat monotone. Quino sat at the head of the table, his spine straight, his expression neutral. But his focus had a hairline crack, and all his attention was leaking through it, pulled toward the woman three seats down.
Luna's head was bent over her notepad, her pen moving in quick, fluid strokes. She wasn't taking notes. He could tell by the rhythm—long, sweeping arcs, not the short jabs of shorthand. A part of him, the CEO part, should have been irritated. Instead, he was fascinated. What could possibly be more interesting than Tito Rodrigo's analysis of agricultural commodity futures?
He let his gaze drop from the slide to the edge of her legal pad. And his world stopped.
It was a face. A woman's profile, rendered in stunning detail with a cheap ballpoint pen. She had a strong jaw, a set to her mouth that spoke of determination, and eyes that seemed to look toward some distant horizon. Her hair flowed as if in a magical breeze. And on her head sat a crown—a specific, seven-pointed crown with a tiny, stylized sunburst at the central peak. A vine, intricately detailed with both sharp thorns and delicate blossoms, wrapped around the shaft of a spear she held.
The Diwata Alon.
This wasn't fan art. This was the original design. The exact, canonical image from the cover of "Ang Mandirigma at ang Diwata, Libro III: Ang Korona ng Hiraya." The vine-wrapped spear was a piece of lore, a detail only the most devoted fans—or the creator themselves—would know and replicate with such authority.
Quino's coffee cooled in his hand. The numbers on the screen dissolved into meaningless blur. Tito Rodrigo's voice became a distant hum. The air in the room thickened. The casual doodle in front of him wasn't a sketch; it was a signed confession. The sticker, the murmured name, the perfectly quoted analysis—it all crystallized into one undeniable truth.
The meeting ended with the scrape of chairs and the rustle of agendas. Luna snapped her notepad shut with a quick, almost guilty flick of her wrist, tucking it into a folder. She stood, laughing at a quiet joke from Miguel, the sound bright and unstudied.
Quino remained seated, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the table.
"Luna."
She turned, the laughter dying in her eyes. "Sir?"
"The market analysis for the Villareal account. From last month." His voice sounded strange to his own ears, too tight. "I need it. Now."
"It's on the shared drive, sir. The 'Q3 Reports' folder."
"I'd like you to show me." He stood, his movements deliberate. He followed her to her cubicle, his pulse hammering in his temples. The ten-foot walk felt like a mile.
She sat, waking her laptop. The screen glowed, illuminating the faint worry on her face. He positioned himself behind her, close enough to see the faint dust on her screen, the chipped polish on her thumbnail as it hovered over the trackpad. Her desktop was chaos—files and folders scattered everywhere. And there, right beside a folder labeled "Montemayor_Assets," was one named "MD_Personal."
His throat went dry. Her cursor darted over it, a fleeting, nervous pass, before she quickly navigated away, clicking into the sterile structure of the shared drive.
"The report is right here," she said, her voice a little too high. She opened a PDF.
He didn't even glance at it. His eyes were locked on the ghost of that file path, burned into his vision.
MD_Book6_ChapterDraft_FINAL_v3.docx
Mandirigma at Diwata. Book 6. The long-awaited, agonizingly delayed final book. FINAL_v3. The hopelessly optimistic versioning of every writer who has ever battled a blank page.
It was her.
Luna Cruz, the temp who offered him pandesal, the woman with the stray cat sticker and the disorganized desk, was Liwayway. The architect of his private sanctuary, the weaver of the stories that held the broken pieces of his soul together, was sitting right here, smelling of ink and sampaguita.
"Sir? Is this the one?"
He forced himself to nod. "Yes. Thank you."
He walked back to his office, each step mechanical. He closed the door. The latch clicking into place was deafening. He stood there, his back to the glass wall, his hands braced on his desk, head bowed. The shock wasn't a single wave; it was a series of them, crashing over him one after another.
Liwayway. The name was a prayer in his mind. He'd imagined her a hundred different ways—a reclusive academic, a wise old lola, a sharp-tongued journalist. Never this. Never a whirlwind in a messy bun who challenged his finance head over brand recall.
He turned slowly. He looked out through the glass.
There she was. She'd pulled out a plastic container of turon and was now in a heated, gesticulating debate with Benjie from Finance. She waved a piece of the fried banana roll like a conductor's baton.
"Hindi, kuya Benjie, mali!" she insisted, her voice muffled but her passion clear through the glass. "The ROI isn't just in the direct sales from the link in their bio! It's in the top-of-mind awareness! It's in the kwento! When they see that creator holding the product, they're not just seeing a thing to buy, they're buying a piece of the story we're telling!"
Benjie crossed his arms, a skeptical frown on his face. "Anong kwento? We sell agri products, hija! We are not a publishing house!"
"Everything is a story!" she shot back, taking a triumphant bite of her turon. "The sugar in your coffee has a story! The cigar your boss's lolo smoked has a story! You're not selling commodities, you're selling legacy!"
Quino watched, utterly captivated. This was the mind that had penned Lakam's quiet devotion? This was the soul that had conceived the heartbreaking beauty of the Forest of Whispers? This vibrant, argumentative, turon-eating force of nature was the god of his favorite universe.
A wave of protectiveness washed over him. No one else could know. They would put her in a box labeled "eccentric creative" and miss the brilliant strategist. They'd pat her on the head for her "cute stories" and never understand that she built worlds with the same ease they built spreadsheets.
He was the sole keeper of this secret. The only person on this planet who saw both the woman in the cubicle and the author on the page.
He sank into his chair and opened his personal tablet. The fan forum was still open. SagisagNgLahi. Her most devoted follower. Her most critical analyst. And, impossibly, her boss.
He looked from the screen, where he'd just yesterday debated the political structure of the Eastern Clans, to the woman now making Benjie from Finance throw his hands up in exasperation.
So. This changed everything. The entire board. The game was different now. He knew something she didn't.
The question wasn't what he knew. The question, thrumming in the air around him, was what in the world he was going to do with it.