The Man Who Won the End in the World

The Perfect Victim

"PCSO will never disclose the identity of another winner," Atty. Ocampo said over the phone. "Not to you, not to me, not even with a court order unless there's a crime involved. Why?"

Joaquin stood at the window of his rented room, watching tricycles crawl through the Cubao heat below. "Because he knew my numbers before I bought them."

A long silence on the line.

"Mr. Mercado," she said carefully, "are you in some kind of danger I should know about?"

*Everyone is,* he thought. *In seventy-nine days.*

"No," he said. "Just curious."

---

He had made three decisions the night he walked out of the PCSO office.

First, the money would stay invisible. Atty. Ocampo had moved it into a trust under a holding company with a boring name, Kalinaw Ventures, and not a single peso would touch his personal account.

Second, he would stay in Cubao. The rented room, the wobbling fan, the landlady who thought he was a monster. As long as the world believed Joaquin Mercado was broke and ruined, nobody would come looking for his money.

Third, he would stop trusting his phone. The anonymous message had come to it. Someone might be reading it.

So that night, he bought a cheap spiral notebook from the sari-sari store, the kind schoolchildren used, with a cartoon cat on the cover. He sat on the mattress and began to write in small, careful letters.

*SURVIVAL LIST. 79 DAYS.*

Shelter. Water. Food for two years. Medicine. Fuel. Solar power, shielded. Weapons for defense. People.

Under *People*, he wrote only one name before his pen stopped.

*Tomas Reyes.*

---

Trina's post went up on Wednesday morning.

Carmela sent him a screenshot with no message, just three angry emojis. It was long, written in careful English, with a photo of Trina holding Bea on a beach in Boracay, both of them smiling.

*For eleven years, I stood by a man who slowly became someone I no longer recognized. The jealousy. The paranoia. The silent treatment. I kept quiet for my daughter's sake. But last Sunday, he humiliated me in front of his entire family with FAKE documents and edited photos. I am not posting this for sympathy. I am posting this because I am scared. If anything happens to me or my child, you all know who to blame.*

Two thousand reactions by noon. Hundreds of comments.

*Stay strong, Trina!*

*Men like that should be in jail.*

*Poor Bea, praying for you both.*

Joaquin read every single one. Then he put the phone face down on the mattress.

In his first life, Trina had written almost the same words about the neighbors who refused to share their rice. *We are the victims here. They are monsters.* He had believed her then too.

He did not respond. Not one comment. Not one message.

Let her build her stage. The bigger it was, the harder it would be to fall from.

---

On Thursday, Dodong called.

Dodong was a forklift operator at the Alcaraz warehouse in Valenzuela, loud and cheerful and always borrowing money he never returned. In the first life, he had shared his last bag of pandesal with Joaquin in the second week after the storm.

"Pare," Dodong whispered, as if someone might hear. "What did you do? Sir Lorenzo called a meeting with HR yesterday. He said you resigned because the audit found missing funds from your department. Two million pesos. He said the company might file a case."

Joaquin closed his eyes. Of course.

"Do you believe him?"

"Pare, you once walked back to a Jollibee in the rain because they gave you ten pesos too much change." Dodong snorted. "No. But everyone else does. Watch your back."

"Dodong," Joaquin said. "Do you have family in the province?"

"Huh? Yeah. Nueva Ecija. Why?"

"Just… think about visiting them in June. For a long time."

Dodong laughed, confused, and hung up.

---

His mother called on Friday night.

He almost didn't answer. When he did, Nanay Lorna didn't bother saying hello.

"Is it true you stole from your company?"

"No, Nay."

"Trina says you're sick in the head. Your Tito Ramon says you're on drugs. The whole barangay is talking about us." Her voice shook. "Do you know what you've done to this family?"

"Nay—"

"Don't call me that." Something cracked in her voice, and then it went cold. "Until you apologize to Trina on your knees, you are not my son."

The line went dead.

Joaquin sat very still for a long time. Outside, a karaoke machine started up somewhere down the street. Someone was singing "Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang," badly and happily.

He opened the notebook and, under *People*, did not write his mother's name.

---

Tomas Reyes ran a small motorcycle repair shop in Caloocan, wedged under a flyover where the air tasted like exhaust and rust. When Joaquin found him on Saturday, he was lying half under a Honda XRM, his arms black with grease to the elbows.

In the first life, Tomi had been Joaquin's neighbor for exactly forty days after the storm. A former Army combat engineer, quiet and broad-shouldered, discharged after an injury in Mindanao. He had built rain collectors from plastic drums, rewired a car battery to power a radio, and taught Joaquin how to hold a bolo properly.

On day forty, when looters broke through the fence, Tomi had pushed Joaquin into the storage room, locked it from the outside, and stayed to fight alone.

Joaquin had found him in the morning.

"Can I help you, boss?" Tomi slid out from under the motorcycle and wiped his hands on a rag. He didn't recognize Joaquin, of course. In this life, they had never met.

"You're Tomas Reyes. Former Army Engineering Brigade."

Tomi's eyes narrowed instantly. "Who's asking?"

"Someone who needs an engineer." Joaquin glanced at the two young men lounging on a motorcycle across the street, watching the shop with bored, predatory eyes. "And someone who knows you owe forty thousand pesos to a five-six lender named Boy Kulot. Due Monday. With interest."

Tomi went very still. "You're not with them."

"No." Joaquin pulled an envelope from his jacket and set it on the workbench. "Forty-five thousand. The extra five is so you never have to talk to them again."

Tomi didn't touch it. "What's the job?"

Joaquin looked at the flyover, at the traffic, at the sky, bright and blue and innocent.

"I need you to build me a place," he said, "that can survive the end of the world."

Tomi stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed, short and disbelieving. "You're crazy, boss."

"Probably. The salary is a hundred thousand a month. Starting today."

The laugh stopped.

Tomi looked at the envelope. He looked at the two men across the street. He looked at Joaquin again, longer this time, as if trying to read something written behind his eyes.

"Okay," he said finally. "I'm in. But when this turns out to be a scam, I'm breaking your nose."

"Deal," Joaquin said, and for the first time in weeks, he almost smiled.

---

He got back to Cubao after ten that night.

The door to his rented room was open.

The lock had been forced, the wood splintered near the latch. Inside, everything was chaos. The mattress had been slashed open, stuffing spilling out like white guts. His duffel bag was turned inside out. His clothes were scattered across the floor. Even the ceiling fan had been unscrewed, its cover hanging loose.

His wallet was still on the mattress. Untouched. His old laptop was still on the chair. Untouched.

Joaquin's heart slammed against his ribs as he dropped to his knees and searched the floor. Under the clothes. Under the mattress. Behind the door.

Nothing.

Only one thing in the entire room was gone.

The cheap spiral notebook with the cartoon cat on the cover.

*SURVIVAL LIST. 79 DAYS.*