The Man Who Won the End in the World

Half of Everything

The letter arrived on Wednesday, delivered by courier to Atty. Ocampo's office in Ortigas.

Joaquin read it twice in her air-conditioned conference room while the traffic crawled along Julia Vargas Avenue below. Thick cream paper. An embossed letterhead from a Makati law firm he'd seen on billboards.

*Re: Demand for Liquidation and Delivery of Community Property*

*Our client, Mrs. Katrina V. Mercado, has come into possession of information that her lawful husband, Mr. Joaquin R. Mercado, received a PCSO jackpot prize during the subsistence of their marriage. Under the Family Code of the Philippines, property acquired by either spouse during the marriage forms part of the absolute community. Accordingly, our client demands one-half (1/2) of the said winnings, in the amount of no less than Two Hundred Eighty Million Pesos (₱280,000,000.00), and further demands that Mr. Mercado refrain from disposing of any community assets, including real property registered under Kalinaw Ventures, Inc.…*

Joaquin set the letter down very carefully.

"How did they find out?" he asked.

Atty. Ocampo slid a folder across the table. "SEC records are public. Kalinaw Ventures was incorporated two days after the draw, with you as sole shareholder and eighty-five million pesos moving into a property purchase within the week. Anyone with a good investigator and a friend at a bank could put that together." She tapped the folder. "Your Mr. Salcedo has both."

"Is she right?" Joaquin asked quietly. "About the law?"

Atty. Ocampo took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She was the kind of lawyer who didn't soften bad news, and he respected her for it.

"On paper, yes. The annulment hasn't been decided. Legally, you're still married. Winnings acquired during the marriage generally fall into the community." She put her glasses back on. "There are ways to fight it. The adultery evidence helps us enormously, and I have a few ideas. But they take time. Months, sometimes years."

*Time.*

Joaquin looked out the window at the hazy blue sky over Ortigas.

Forty-nine days.

"And while we fight," Atty. Ocampo continued, "she can petition the court to freeze the accounts. The property. Everything."

He thought of the cellar in Tagaytay. The drums of rice. The shielded batteries. The medicine still on order. The water tanks Tomi hadn't finished installing.

If they froze the money now, he'd never finish.

"Do whatever you have to," he said. "But finish it fast."

---

He turned his phone back on in the elevator. It exploded.

Forty-three notifications. Missed calls from numbers he hadn't seen in years. Messages from relatives who had called him a thief and a madman only three weeks ago.

*Tita Baby: Joaquin, anak, we were always praying for you. God is good!! ❤️🙏*

*Tito Ramon: Pare, let's have coffee sometime. I have a business idea I think you'll like.*

*Cousin Jun-Jun: Kuya, can I borrow 50k for my motor? Pay you back promise.*

*Unknown: Is this Joaquin Mercado? This is Pastor Edwin from your mother's church…*

He scrolled through them in silence. It was almost funny. The same people who had cheered Trina's F******k post now wanted coffee.

In his first life, on day thirty-three after the storm, Tito Ramon had come to Joaquin's gate asking for rice. Joaquin had given him two kilos. The next night, Tito Ramon had come back with three neighbors and a crowbar.

Only one message was different.

*Carmela: Kuya. Trina's telling everyone you owe her 280 million. The whole family is going crazy. Be careful. They're planning something. I don't know what.*

Joaquin stared at it for a long moment. Then he typed back.

*Thank you. Stay away from them if you can.*

---

He walked out into the Ortigas heat and was halfway to the parking lot when his phone rang.

*Nanay.*

He almost didn't answer. The last time she'd called, she had told him he wasn't her son. But his thumb moved on its own.

"Nay."

"*Anak.*" Her voice was warm. Soft. Trembling with emotion. It was the voice she used to use when he was a boy with a fever, and hearing it now made something in his chest ache and curl at the same time. "Oh, anak. I've been so worried about you."

"You told me I wasn't your son."

"I was angry! I was confused! A mother says things." She sniffled. "But I've been praying, anak. Every night. And God told me this family needs to heal."

Joaquin stopped walking. A jeepney roared past him.

"What do you want, Nay?"

"I want you to come home. That's all." Her voice turned coaxing. "Trina called me. She's been crying so much. She's pregnant, you know, and the stress is terrible for the baby. She says if you just sit down with her, like adults, she'll forget all this lawyer business. You can be a family again. Think of Bea, anak. Bea misses her papa."

He closed his eyes.

"Bea isn't mine, Nay. And the baby isn't mine either."

"Blood isn't everything!" Nanay Lorna snapped, and for a second the sweetness cracked. Then it came back, smoother. "You raised that girl for eight years. You can raise another child. Trina is willing to forgive you. Do you know how many women would forgive a man who humiliated them in front of the whole family?"

*Forgive me.*

Joaquin almost laughed. He felt the kitchen floor again, the cold tiles against his cheek, Trina's soft voice whispering that at least tonight he would finally be useful.

"No, Nay," he said quietly. "I'm not going back."

Silence on the line. Then a long, heavy sigh.

"You were always so stubborn," his mother said. "Just like your Lola."

And then, in the background, faint but unmistakable, he heard another voice.

Thin. Elderly. Slightly querulous.

"*Lorna? Lorna, where did you put my pills? The nurse always gives me the white one at noon…*"

Joaquin went cold from head to toe.

He knew that voice better than his own.

"Nay," he said, very slowly. "Who's with you?"

"Oh, that?" Nanay Lorna's voice was light. Almost cheerful. "Your Lola came to visit. Isn't that nice? She missed her family. We picked her up this morning."

"Picked her up. From Tagaytay."

"Of course from Tagaytay. Where else?" A pause. "She's welcome to stay with us as long as she likes. Until you come home and we can all talk properly. As a family."

The line went dead.

Joaquin stood frozen in the middle of the parking lot, the midday sun burning the back of his neck. His fingers were shaking as he dialed Isay's number.

She picked up on the first ring. She was crying.

"Joaquin! I've been calling you all morning! Your phone was off!"

"Isay. What happened?"

"Your mother came at nine, with your Tito Ramon and two other men. They said there was a family emergency. They said *you* sent them." Her voice broke. "They showed me a letter, Joaquin. A signed letter from you, telling me to let Lola go with them. I didn't want to, but Lola recognized them, and Tomi was in Batangas buying rice, and they said you'd approved it, and—"

"Isay." Joaquin's voice came out hoarse. "I never wrote any letter."

A terrible silence on the line.

"Then who signed it?" she whispered.