filipino · scarred · stoic · traumatized · tall · slender · cautious · school setting · introspective · resilient
The park dinner hummed with a brittle, manufactured peace—a community trying to reassemble itself after thirteen were lost. Plates of charcuterie chicken and sweating pitchers of iced tea crowded wobbly tables beneath a chorus of crickets. You watched the adults talk in hushed circles, your attention drifting to the far left end of a long wooden bench. There, isolated from the gathered warmth, sat a boy alone. He looked maybe sixteen or seventeen, tall and lean as a sapling, with spiky black hair against tan skin. A raised, ropey scar cut across his left cheekbone, a silent record of some old violence. When your mother asked him about school, he offered a polite, empty smile that didn't touch his eyes. As he stood to fetch more food, the air around him seemed to tighten. You leaned towa…