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“Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation – a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel
"Not everything has to be said. But I guess it would be nice if some people understood you."
― Gitling (Hyphen), 2023
Manon
September
Sophia doesn’t cry when they go to the Philippines.
It was a 16 hour long flight from LAX to NAIA and Manon’s lower back is screaming for the relief of an actual bed with actual pillows. Humidity envelopes them once the plane doors open to reveal the tarmac, where a private airport bus waits to pick them up and drives them closer to the airport doors. Her denim long sleeves start to cling to her arms. She sees Lara take her sweater off, her dark sunglasses getting caught in the fabric. Yoonchae is kind enough to assist her, which is great, because Manon doesn’t feel like she has the energy to lift her arms at the moment. Dani clings onto Sophia, still half asleep, while Megan is suffering from the drowsiness from her last painkiller intake.
They’re all just about ready to crash when the production team signals that they’re going to start filming. Great, but also, it is good that they are already camera ready because when they walk across the airport towards the private lounge, cellphones after cellphones start recording them.
“Sophia is a Philippines princess!” she hears Lara tell the camera. And they all already knew it. Number one pick and all that. A whole country behind her when everyone else was scrambling for votes. Sophia walks tall, smiling and waving at fans like she’s been practicing it since she was eight, which, knowing her, she probably has been.
The floodgates start bursting when they reach the private lounge, and already standing there anxiously waiting for them is Sophia’s mom. She’s so much shorter than Sophia, but she looks just like her. She has this air of confidence that Manon only really saw in her bandmate. Her face gets animated when she tells anecdotes of Sophia the same way her daughter does when she’s explaining the plot of a Disney original movie. She hugs Sophia so tightly, spilling affirmations about how proud she is of her daughter.
The medley of emotions and exhaustion takes Lara first, her shoulders sag as tears trickle down her cheeks. She holds her hands close to her chest as she watches the reunion, as if absorbing the moment right into her chest.
Lara’s mother is there, too. She flew separately from New York and arrived earlier. So did Megan’s. And really, Manon is just so tired. She wants to kick open their hotel room door and flop down on the bed until dinner, but she has also never seen Sophia with her mom before. It feels like an event she couldn’t miss. Lara’s, Megan’s, and Daniela’s families would constantly visit, being only states away from them. Now in a room with so many of her members and their mothers together, Manon can’t help but feel the absence of hers.
While everyone else shares niceties while introducing their mothers, Yoonchae and her just, kind of, stand there. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. She’s focusing on a spot on the wall, trying to hold back her emotions, when Sophia’s mother’s arms find her and Yoonchae. She hugs them like they were her own, and for a brief moment when Manon closes her eyes, she lets herself believe that it’s her mother’s arms instead. And she joins Lara in crying.
The production team loves this and points to their faces after they separate. “Why do you look so red?” Sophia chuckles at them.
They head to a press conference where they finally see Sophia’s dad. He hugs each one of them. Sophia’s mom records everything on her phone. And Lara just keeps crying.
“Stop it! Oh my god,” Sophia waves them off. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
On the way to Sophia’s house, they succumb to the traffic of a long stretch of road called EDSA. In the lull of the van, Manon starts to notice small ounces of shifts in Sophia, how she fell into a sense of calmness amidst all the giddiness, how her accent alters into a variation that used to only slip through cracks in Sophia’s perfect North American diction that even Manon couldn’t replicate.
They’re welcomed by practically her entire clan and then some. Suddenly, Manon understands why Sophia cackles when she laughs, why she dances and sings in the middle of the room like it’s her own personal stage. She understands where all her warmth comes from. Standing in the middle of the living room where her bandmate grew up, all she feels is the same comfort she feels around her–the comfort she finds herself gravitating towards everyday. Everything about them, the house, the food, the mannerisms just screams Sophia, and Manon feels dizzy at the amount of information she finds herself wanting to absorb.
So many things are happening around them. Reunions, introductions, a whole buffet catering. They’re meeting Sophia’s dog and cats. Somewhere in the living room, Sophia’s dad opened a karaoke machine. In the middle of it all, Sophia is all smiles. So when the production team came, Manon made sure to slip out from the door to the backyard.
The chaos of the house is replaced by silence and buzzing cicadas. The air is chilly in contrast to the heat from earlier. She takes a moment to take in the backyard, where Sophia probably spent her childhood running around and playing. Sometimes Manon forgets that there was ever a time when they were girls from different sides of the world who didn’t know the other existed. To her, meeting Sophia was an inevitability, but the realization that so many factors completely out of their control came into play makes her heart tighten. If the stars didn’t line up perfectly in her favor, she wouldn’t be here standing in Sophia’s house, being welcomed into her family with four other girls.
When she comes back into the living room, Tita Carla, which is what Sophia’s mom insists they call her, leads them to Sophia’s childhood bedroom. Sophia doesn’t come with them.
“Hey, you’re quiet,” Manon finally says after watching Sophia read through their two-page 13 pt font size script for about the seventh time.
Sophia looks up at her from her monoblock chair. “I don’t know. We performed in LA and in, like, freaking Korea,” she says quietly, waving her hand around. Manon remembers the BTS posters on Sophia’s childhood bedroom walls.
She looks around the empty studio. It wasn’t small, but it also wasn’t really big. She doesn’t know how many people it can fit yet. When they were told that they were going to perform and make an appearance, she searched “It’s Showtime” on YouTube to mentally prepare herself. But she gave up after a few minutes of laughter that she really couldn’t comprehend.
I grew up watching this, Sophia had spoken to the camera earlier.
People used to describe Sophia as unfazed. And Manon thinks that’s because they’re never accidentally eaten the carrot cake the Filipina was saving for after practice. Or spilled Sophia’s matcha latte on Missy’s office desk. Or had the unfortunate fate of being around her line of fire when they found out that their first ever live stream started with Manon blurting out a gazillion curse words as Sophia meticulously read through their script a few feet beside them. Manon has, though.
She thinks of words to comfort her bandmate, but realizes that she can’t possibly imagine what this feels like nor how to ease the pounding in their chest. This will be their first performance in the country. Manon feels nauseous just thinking about it and she’s not even from here. A staff member wearing a wireless comm-set approaches Sophia and tells her something Manon doesn’t understand. She watches Sophia nod along, her brows furrowed and lips parted–the way she does when she mentally writes down long lists of reminders that the Hybe x Geffen staff blurt out to her.
Manon doesn’t understand what Sophia says back. Their leader has a habit of not telling them things they don’t need to worry about, but sometimes, Manon just wants to be the one person who can worry with her.
The staff member leaves them. Sophia’s eyes return to the script at hand, teeth biting the inside of her bottom lip. Something stirs inside Manon, deep inside her stomach, like her soul desperately trying to reach for something she’s scared she won't ever reach. So instead, she searches for the right words to say.
“I think I saw where their pantry’s at.” Sophia looks up at her again, eyes lighting up, and Manon knows that she got it right.
Sophia doesn’t cry when all (as they eventually find out) nine fucking thousand of her own people chant her name every time she tries to speak. Manon wonders if the people in Lucerne even know her name. She looks at the sea of people and thinks, soon, they will.
They’re in the middle of the mall, surrounded by a crowd of people screaming for them. “This is like a pinch me moment. Pinch me.” When Megan does so a little too harshly, Sophia utters a Tagalog word into the microphone in surprise. The crowd goes nuts for her.
It’s exhilarating. Manon hasn’t gotten drunk since she started training, but she thinks she never will again. No drugs or vices can compare to how she feels on stage–her and the girls in motion as if one being, and the deafening crowd responding to their every move. Somewhere beside them, Dani starts bawling in the middle of her speech, and Megan can’t stop her lips from trembling by the end of their last number.
Sophia’s eyes dart between the crowd and her members–her two worlds colliding. Manon doesn’t know what that feels like yet, but maybe it’s like bringing your rowdy best friends home to your family, which she realizes Sophia already did.
“I wanna stay here. I really do, we all want to,” Manon says into the microphone. From the corner of her eyes, she sees Sophia smile at her–the kind of smile that makes her question the line between friends, bandmates, and something more.
That night, Sophia knocks on their door. Manon shares the room with Megan, who is already knocked out, the ice pack pressed onto her back now melting into her mattress.
“Can’t sleep,” Sophia rubs her eyes, whispering. “I got you guys some snacks. I have so many in my room.” In her arms are boxes and packs of snacks she hasn’t seen before. Most of them have little sticky notes or fan letters taped on the packaging.
“It’s…” Manon squints at her phone. “12:43 am.”
But the leader is already taking a bite out of a single slice marble cake. “So?,” she says with her mouth full. Manon could never say no to her.
They sit on the floor, investigating every food pack and reading fan notes. Manon leans her back to the bed behind her, while Sophia lies down on her lap. Manon doesn’t look down. She doesn’t even breathe. She feels like if she dares to speak a little loudly or move too suddenly, the moment will end, or worse, that Sophia will somehow hear the loud thumping in her chest.
“So-phi-a. So-phi-a,” Manon whisper-shouts, imitating the chants roaring from the mall crowd. Sophia gives her a big smile, playfully rolling her eyes.
“And you? You drove them crazy, popstar.” Something inside Manon stirs. She thinks back to nights in the academy just like this, missing home and whispering affirmations into each other’s ear after bad days. Except this time, it’s not empty promises and manifestations to the universe. They are popstars. No one could take that away anymore, and yet it’s something so unbelievable that Manon doesn’t dare question this little routine of theirs, doesn’t question what they have, in fear that it will make everything disappear.
“Why don’t you sleep in your house?,” Manon asks. Sophia looks down at her fingers, chipping the glossy paint on her perfect acrylic nails.
“Tomorrow, I will,” she looks up at Manon. “I just want to make sure you guys are settling in first.”
The older girl looks at the open packs of snacks by their legs and the unopened gifts stacked on top of each other on their vanity table. “I think we’re settling just fine.”
Her hand inevitably falls on top of the younger girl’s hair. It’s soft and a little damp from her night routine. Sophia’s eyes flicker close as Manon runs her fingers through her hair, softly humming a song Manon doesn’t recognize. “But we’re only here for three days.”
“I’ll be here for Christmas.” When Manon’s hand stops, she nudges it with her head, urging her to keep going.
They spend the night staring at the hotel room ceiling–a view that they’ll never see again the day after tomorrow.
“Tell me this is real,” Sophia pleads.
Manon pinches her, lighter than Megan did on stage. It reminds Sophia of the cheers, the crowd chanting her name after uttering a single word, and she laughs.
Manon silently thanks the heavens when she is seated in between Sophia and Yoonchae and not the window seat. She’s too afraid of heights to look outside when the plane finally takes off to head to Tokyo. She closes her eyes and tries to get lost in the melody playing in her large headphones, pretending they were in a tour bus on solid ground instead. When she takes a peak, she sees Sophia quietly watching the scattered lights of Metro Manila fade away behind her.
The first time Manon woke up in her own bed in Switzerland after three years of training, she almost tripped running down the stairs, her heart pounding as she looked around to make sure that the last two years had not been a dream. She stopped in her tracks when she saw her mom drinking her morning coffee on the kitchen counter. Except her mother now had shorter hair, and was wearing a blouse she’s never seen before, and they have a new coffee machine, and the cat likes the dining chairs better than the couch now. So, she broke down. Because it was not a dream. And she had missed so much.
So she knows that it is only a matter of time before it hits Sophia, too.
January
It comes in the form of a thousand bowls of something called kare-kare at 2 am on a Tuesday.
Manon can’t sleep, which means Daniela can’t sleep. And Manon can’t really tell her to just suck it up because the younger girl was practically willing to sleep on the floor of the studio after practice out of exhaustion. So, Manon wills herself to get out of bed long enough just for roommate to fall asleep in silence.
She doesn’t really know what she expected to see when she goes down to the kitchen but it surely wasn’t Sophia hunched over a steaming casserole while a number of their other assorted-colored casseroles lined the table, each holding the same dish. She’s wearing her pastel pink apron with her pajamas underneath, her hair tossed up in a careless bun with the loose strands sticking to her face, which was looking down on the cooking casserole like it came from a different planet.
“Uhh..” Manon approaches carefully. “Are we, like, going into a bunker or…”
Sophia doesn’t even look surprised with her presence. She just looks defeated at the seemingly impossible task in front of her. That’s when Manon notices that she’s crying. “What’s going on, Soph?”
She takes a couple of steps towards her, but stops herself a few feet away. Considering Sophia saved this breakdown for months later in the middle of the night when all of them were supposedly asleep, Manon tells herself not to coddle her. Sophia hates it when people see her cry, and Manon wonders if she knows it’s okay to be someone other than the strong and stable group leader.
Met with an uncomfortable silence, she decides to instead pick up a spoon, a new one (knowing Sophia would freak out if she chooses one of the seven already used ones), and lets herself have a taste of the thick brown broth. This time, Sophia looks at her expectantly, her eyes glassy and cheeks red. Manon’s eyebrows raise at the surprising taste of rich peanut sauce dousing her tongue. “Oh, wow, that’s good.”
Manon takes a seat, sleep now long forgotten, and holds one bowl close to her as she takes consecutive spoonfuls of the broth, making sure to get some bok choy too.
“I don’t want it to taste good,” Sophia responds, frustrated and sniffling. She opens the pantry cabinet and stares at it in silence. What is she missing? “I want it to be like, I don’t know, like how my dad makes it.” She rummages around the cabinet, sighing after reading the brands of spice after spice. It’s futile. She’s one who bought most of the supplies in their pantry anyway, so whatever she’s looking for, she already knows isn’t there. Looking around and seeing the mess she’s made of the kitchen, her shoulders slump and she begrudgingly puts down her wooden spoon on a small sauce plate.
Manon is mid-devouring another spoonful when Sophia grabs her bowl from her, only to dump a cup of steamed white rice in it. “Eat it with rice,” she scolds. Manon doesn’t complain because it is so fucking good. She actually wonders how long Sophia has been standing in this kitchen boiling the dish because of how soft the meat was.
“Wait, what is this?” Manon asks, slurping the meat with some rice and broth.
“Oxtail,” she deadpans, staring off into the distance as she grabs a spoon from one of the bowls and jams it into her mouth. Manon whips her head towards her so fast it strains her neck, which is still sore from training, staring at the used spoon sticking out of Sophia’s perfect pouty lips. Oh, it’s so serious, she thinks but refrains from commenting on it.
“Oxtail? Where the hell did you get oxtail?,” asks Manon as Sophia takes a seat beside her. She almost pumps her fist into the air when she bites into a juicy piece of eggplant.
Sophia shrugs, wiping off the tears staining her cheeks. “Found an Asian Mart. And it doesn’t matter. It still doesn’t taste right.”
It doesn’t make sense because, to Manon, it is everything “right” is supposed to be. Where have you been all of my 22 years of life?, she wants to whisper to the soft meat and peanut dish in front of her.
Instead, she asks “What does ‘right’ taste like?” The question baffles the other girl who actually thinks about her answer.
She takes a deep breath before answering, mentally reaching for the memory of her and her dad’s kare-kare. “Some people either use peanut butter or make it from scratch. I like both. So it has that roasted peanut taste, plus the crunch of crushed peanuts. But I couldn’t find any of the ones my dad would use so I stuck with just peanut butter. Which is fine. It’s fine.” Manon doesn’t believe so.
“But there’s this unlabeled peanut butter that just makes it taste perfect back home that doesn’t exist here, so.” She tries to form the shape of the peanut butter packaging with her hands, as if trying to conjure the item from the Philippines to their shared LA house.
Manon stands up and opens the rice cooker to add rice to Sophia’s bowl. “And my dad uses beef or pork more often, but if I’m using grocery store bought peanut butter, which is too sweet by the way, I thought I’d balance it with actual oxtail.” She actually looks at the now empty jar of peanut butter like it offended her whole bloodline. Manon takes a mental note of what she says, nodding along.
“Well, I’ve never been more happy to be allergic to almonds instead.” In hindsight, maybe she shouldn’t take a bite out of food she doesn’t know the contents of, but she knows Sophia doesn’t keep almonds in the house. She closely inspects all of their groceries to make sure no one with allergies would accidentally go into shock if they steal each other’s food. Sophia smiles softly at her, “Maybe I can rope Dani in to make our peanut butter from scratch. The others can look for the peanuts. I got you.”
They sit there in silence, chowing down on their food. Eventually, after finishing her bowl clean, Manon feels the drowsiness hit her again, but before getting the chance to close her eyes, Sophia shakes her awake. Manon almost loses it when she realizes how near Sophia’s face is to hers. “Don’t fall asleep when you’re full.”[1] Manon has literally never heard of that rule, but she doesn’t question it. She doesn’t have the strength to question anything right now.
“Mmkay.”
After a few moments, Sophia speaks. “Manon?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you sometimes feel that the longer you’re here, the closer you get to losing it?”
Yes. Everyday, I feel like I’m going crazy, Manon thinks. But she studies how Sophia looks at her and it achingly reminds her of an earlier instance. (She remembers every single time Sophia stares, wishing that it meant something more than just friendly acknowledgement.)
That afternoon, they had left a building where they did an interview and were met with a couple of fans. Unexpectedly, they started talking to Manon in Swiss-German and it almost made her brain explode. It took her a few seconds to gather her words, switching gears back to her native tongue, but the syllables and ach-laut came back to her like it was how her mouth was always meant to work. Their bodyguards had to almost drag her out of the conversation before more fans gathered around them, but it just felt so good to hear and be able to speak in her first language again, without having to worry about perfecting her accent or lagging in words. Sophia looked at her then like she is looking at her now–with a kind of unreadable sadness that the younger girl immediately blinked away.
Lara called her a Philippines princess. They all do. The whole time in her home country, no one could stop saying how important it was for them to see Sophia leading a rising global girl group, her every achievement immediately feeling like being theirs too. She knows Sophia loves it. Manon, herself, does too, but she isn’t a stranger to the weight that responsibility can carry.
“Yeah, I do.”
In truth, Sophia has never been the best at Tagalog. She waltzed around the comfort of her mother tongue and the language of the comfortable. In Manila, she spoke in a negotiation between two languages. One when needed, mixed them when she was at a loss of words in the other, but for the most part, she spoke a language morphed from the two. It was almost impossible for her to speak a sentence without borrowing her words from English. Born in Queens and raised in Manila, she danced between two tongues, two realities without problem, without anyone ever forcing her to choose.
But in the global stage where English is the language of chart topping songs, interviews, tiktoks, and executive meetings, her Tagalog exists in a limbo. It takes a backseat in most of her work–which is what most of her days are composed of. Yet, it’s also the language branded to her, what makes her her in the public eye and in the group. “Hi, My name is Sophia and I’m from Manila, Philippines. Magandang araw. Ako po si Sophia mula sa Pilipinas. Mabuhay sa inyong lahat.” She practically has the speech ingrained in her brain. One day she was one girl, the next, she’s one girl representing a hundred fifteen million people who speak over five hundred languages she doesn’t, each experiencing life differently than how she did.
Suddenly, Tagalog, no, Filipino, stopped being just one of the languages she could speak. It became the vernacular she could use to represent a whole nation who backed her, believed in her, and voted for her to reach her dreams even when they didn’t know her. A whole group of people deprived of the opportunity to see themselves on screen and on stage on a scale that they made reachable to her.
So, of course, she loves doing it. It isn’t lost on her how much of a privilege it is to have the platform that she has, to be able to eloquently speak in two languages so she doesn’t have to worry about her words being misconstrued. She just wishes it didn’t carry so many contradictions.
How is it fair that the same language that gives her opportunities to reach a wider audience and to represent her people to the world, is the same one severing her connection to them? The more interviews they do, the more comments she sees praising how she articulates herself in English, as if the language hasn’t been drilled into her head since grade school, as if they weren’t punished for uttering a word in their native tongue in English class. How hypocritical it felt to preach representation when the more she did her job, the farther she felt from her identity.
Sometimes, she speaks English so much that her Tagalog sounds foreign to her ears, like her brain lags behind her own tongue and trips over itself in the process. Coming back to Manila for the first time in years, she was so fear-striken that the crowd would hear her mess up and see her mind blanking on the words they use everyday, that she barely spoke any Tagalog in front of them. Their reactions to her suddenly exclaiming “Aray ko!” were expected, because she remembers feeling the same way with her childhood idols, the way it mattered so much it almost felt silly. This international pop star is one of us. She doesn’t want to know what they would think if they find out how much mental labor it takes her now to form a complete sentence in their mother tongue.
No one ever told her how quickly you could stop dreaming in your first language.
February
Manon finds herself hunched over her laptop, covering her microphone so as to not wake her roommate up, at 4 o’clock am, because it was afternoon where her Tagalog tutor lives. The online instructor, a girl in her early twenties, insists that they could move the schedule to a later time, that it was her job to cater to the waking hours of foreign students. But Manon feels too bad about making someone, who she realizes is probably a student doing this for a part-time job, stay up so late just to teach her. Besides, her days already consist of non-stop rehearsals and promos, so waking up a few hours earlier was fine by her.
After the fateful and kare-kare-filled night with Sophia, Manon couldn’t stop herself from scrolling through Google for anyone who could teach her Tagalog. She likes to believe (although Dani and others disagree) that she can speak four, maybe even five languages. Six if counting the Korean lessons Sophia made them all take for Yoonchae. So she figures that another one won’t hurt.
That’s how she ended up paying 30 dollars per hour to a tutorial website and sitting in the same position in her bed for the last two weeks. They are way past the easy lessons about alphabet, counting, colors, and introductions. Manon is now memorizing probably the fifteen thousandth conjugation to “kain” when she realizes that there are actually levels to this.
And yes, she has learned languages with multiple conjugations, ones with complicated gender rules that Tagalog doesn’t have, like German, French, and Spanish, but it seems like the longer the originally four-letter Tagalog word gets, the dizzier she feels looking at it. The syllables blend into each other, repeating, and mixing to the point of being unrecognizable. The words look easy to pronounce because they’re spoken how they’re written and she doesn’t have a problem rolling her Rs, but she still spends her free time practicing the way her mouth opens when pronouncing /a/ and familiarizing her tongue with the repeating affixes she encounters in her lessons.
Why she doesn’t tell Sophia about this, she’s unsure. Maybe so that no one would ever have to know about it if she fails. Manon has been trying to ignore what learning a whole language for someone else means. She’s done it for Yoonchae and Dani, but this time feels different and she knows the reason all too well.
She accidentally lets it slip to Missy, of all people, when trying to negotiate her schedule in a one-on-one meeting, which turned into a lecture about the dangers of having a video call with a stranger everyday as a celebrity. Manon wants to say something like Angel from Bacolod City is not a stranger, but decides against further angering her. Also, Angel probably isn’t passionate about watching a grown woman trip over the same words they've been practicing for three days for a couple of bucks that the tutorial website probably takes a percentage out of. So she says goodbye to her but not before sending her a big tip to make up for the rest of the classes and for her patience.
Eventually, they assign her a lovely middle-aged lady named Evelyn as an on-site tutor, probably figuring that her lessons would be good for team bonding. Except Evelyn doesn’t only teach her how to speak and write Tagalog, no. She teaches her the language, even explaining the nuanced and historical difference between Tagalog and Filipino. One time during the academy, Megan asked Sophia what the difference was and the Filipina almost short circuited trying to explain.
Evelyn also makes it a point to trace back Filipino words that actually came from other regional languages. There were over five hundred of those, Manon learns, and she selfishly thanks the heavens that Sophia can only speak one. “I’m a Bicolana. Next time, I can teach you that,” and while she would genuinely love to learn it, she doesn’t think she has enough space in her brain for more for the foreseeable future.
Manon famously does not like school. She wasn’t good at it, and she feels like she isn’t doing well with this one either. But after her basic lessons, Evelyn begins to teach her how to speak more conversationally, and she decides that she enjoys this a lot. Manon actually starts watching It’s Showtime. She first rewatches the clip of them on the show, the words and humor starting to make sense in her head. First through context clues, and then the more she watches, the more she understands. Jokes that she didn’t know they were making now crack her up.
She also listens to Tagalog songs, as per Evelyn’s advice, trying her best not to get lost in the romantic melodies and to make sense of the words and cultural context. When she doesn’t get anything, she sends it to Evelyn, to which the instructor is gracious enough to translate. This is how Manon finds out that the songs that Sophia always plays in the shower and before performances are actually thirst traps. That was a conversation with Evelyn that she does her best to forget.
Learning about linking words and filler words, she starts noticing it whenever Sophia uses them. Their bandmate utters them in between sentences, but it always goes over their heads, like their brains filtering out what they can’t understand and chalking it up to one of her quirks.
“The staff said na, like–sorry, they said we shouldn’t be so loud.”
“Sorry, Yoonchip, can you maybe move to your blocking like this? I can’t see you eh.”
“Lara borrowed my cap and never returned it, so, ‘yun, I kept her sunglasses, but that’s not a crime right?”
“I guess we can ask to leave rehearsals early tomorrow, pero- sorry…but, we have to make up for it the next day.”
“Wait lang, what do you mean you haven’t watched Enchanted?”
She wanted to learn Tagalog so Sophia could maybe have someone to bounce sentences off with, but it has given her something more, something she didn’t expect. It’s like pieces of Sophia she didn’t know she was missing start to click and fit into place, showing her a version clearer than she ever thought possible. How did she ever go through life without knowing she was missing a whole other side of Sophia?
There was a movie she kept mentioning, something about sisters and a wedding [2]. It only took Manon a few minutes before finding the whole film on YouTube with rendered subtitles. She planned on taking notes while watching (Evelyn’s orders) but gave up in the middle of the first montage. It felt like being in Sophia’s house again–so chaotic and warm, it was hard to keep up. So, she lies down in bed, phone in hand and watches with her full attention. She wonders which jokes Sophia laughed at, whether she gravitated towards Gabbie or Bobbie more, even though she’s as theatrical as Teddie and can be spunky like Alex. She wonders if Sophia’s family has the same dynamic, or if she’ll ever have the chance to know.
She reaches the pivotal confrontational scene and before she knows it, she's crying into her pillow. Dani actually gets up to ask if she’s okay. “I can cuddle with you if you want,” she says in a sleepy voice.
“It’s okay, it’s just a movie,” Manon sniffles. “You have to watch from the beginning.”
She plays the video again and Bobbie, the family breadwinner and middle child who studied and worked in New York, starts her monologue. “Kaya kahit gustong gusto ko umuwi. Kasi ang lungkot. Ang hirap-hirap mag-isa. Miss na miss ko kayong lahat. Pero lahat ‘yun tiniis ko. Nagpakatatag ako, nagpakatigas ako kasi kailangan ko.” (That’s why even if I really wanted to go home, because it’s so lonely. It’s so hard to be alone. I miss all of you so much. I had to be strong, I had to be tougher because I needed to be.) [3]
In the academy, she was so grateful to have her sister with her. She was her anchor, her rock during the hardest years of her life. And despite having her and her best friend there, she still couldn’t get a hold of all the insecurities, the home sickness, the clawing feeling of isolation. She remembers wishing she was as cool and collected as Sophia, who was even farther away from her family and yet never let it shake her. Manon knows better now. She wonders why anyone would ever think someone like Sophia could be unbothered about distance.
April
It’s almost midnight and the other girls are already resting in their rooms. They had just released their new single a week before and everyone was eager to take all the rest they could get with promos filling up their calendar. Meanwhile, Sophia is out with some family who visited at the last minute. Alone and awake, Manon finds her peace in front of the piano, mindlessly guessing chords and humming lyrics to a song she can’t get out of her head.
Something people don’t tell you about learning a new language past your developmental years is that you’re actually aware about how it takes over your entire mind. It’s like when you’re suddenly conscious that you’re breathing. While Swiss-German feels like an involuntary action to her, like how her heart beats without her having to tell it to do so, any new vernacular she learns feels like actively rewiring her brain. And then noticing every new way it processes information. Unfortunately, this also means that as a result, especially with a language where meanings are designed to be in relation to other people, her thoughts are always on the one person she’s learning it for.
Ba't 'di pa sabihin ang hindi mo maamin?
Ipauubaya na lang ba 'to sa hangin?
(Why don't you just say what you refuse to confess?
Will you just leave it to the wind?) [4]
The words roll off her tongue smoother than it would if she were to speak them. She’s still far from being fluent, so she likes the way the song emphasizes the syllables and makes it easy for her mind to catch up with her mouth as she sings. Evelyn tells her to stop translating sentences in her head and instead learn the meanings first so her brain can practice figuring out how the grammar works around them.
It frustrates her at times, knowing that the English translation will never match the depth of the melody and emotions, and that she’ll never truly get it unless she already spent her life living by the words in the culture that created them. There’s always going to be a distance from her understanding to the actual meaning that she’s going to be chasing.
She stops as soon as the door knob jiggles and slowly cracks open. Sophia peaks her head in, making sure to be as quiet as possible. Her tired eyes light up as she sees Manon and the older girl does her best not to read into it. Sophia smiles at her as she takes her shoes off and places them on the rack by the door.
“Why are you still up?,” Sophia whispers, her voice sounding concerned despite being exhausted herself.
Manon shrugs and gestures at the piano, “It’s like the only time of the day Lara isn’t hogging this thing.”
Taking a seat next to her, Sophia traces her fingertips over the glossy white and black keys. “I wish I knew how to play.” Manon contemplates playing the song for her, but Sophia is already standing up again. “I got something for you, actually!” She reaches into an insulated bag to reveal a big tupperware.
“Kare-kare?, ” asks Manon, to which Sophia responds with a smile.
“Yeah, I kind of, like, monopolized my cousin’s kitchen after we got back from dinner. I asked them to bring some ingredients over before they flew here.”
She places the warm tupperware on Manon’s hands. “Thank you, Sophia,” she says earnestly. “Wait, is that why you’re home so late?”
A bashful smile paints Sophia’s face. “You liked it so much. I don’t think I can live with myself if you don’t get to try the real thing.”
Kilig /ˌkiˈliɡ/
A borrowing from Tagalog. Philippine English.
adjective
- Of a person: exhilarated by an exciting or romantic experience; thrilled, elated, gratified.
- Causing or expressing a rush of excitement or exhilaration; thrilling, enthralling, captivating.
Noun
- Exhilaration or elation caused by an exciting or romantic experience; an instance of this, a thrill.
Kilig has no direct English translation, Manon learns. “You’ll know it when you feel it,” Evelyn tells her.
Maybe it’s how she feels right now, looking at the way Sophia’s eyelids hang low, still smiling at her and fighting exhaustion. “Can you get some, ano, utensils? You have no idea how much self restraint I have not to finish this on the way home.” She’s actually seen her do that. One time, they bought egg tarts for the girls after running errands, but had to pretend they never existed when they reached home because Sophia couldn’t help but finish it all in the Uber. The driver kept eyeing them, so Manon had to promise they’ll pick up the crumbs dropping on the backseat.
She stands up and heads to the kitchen, grabbing Sophia’s spoon and fork–a pair of utensils with pink handles–along with the rice cooker and some bowls on the way back. “Okay, wait, just a couple of bites and let’s save the rest for breakfast? You really shouldn’t be sleeping when you’re full, you know, nightmares freak me out.” She almost stops in her tracks when she realizes what she just said, but thankfully the other girl doesn’t notice the slip up.
“Is that even scientifically accurate?,” says Sophia without looking at her, eagerly closing the piano so they can use it as a makeshift table. She opens the tupperware and takes a dramatic sniff of the dish. There are crushed peanuts and instead of oxtail, there is crispy pork resting on top.
They end up finishing the entire tupperware, and then staying up for a few more hours just to keep each other awake. No one gets nightmares that night.
September
Months into learning the language, and she is still yet to speak a word in Tagalog to her bandmate. Don’t get her wrong, she has tried to multiple times, but she always backed out. She has this recurring nightmare that the words won’t come out of her lips right and Sophia would just laugh at her. Manon is a closeted perfectionist. Not to mention that confessing she’s been learning her first language sounds dangerously close to confessing something she shouldn’t–something too early, too delicate to even touch. But she was already in too deep to stop now.
So when Sophia, while reviewing the budget overview that the management sent her, asks her what the extra allowance Geffen was giving her every month, she panics and says something about getting more Spanish lessons.
Thankfully, she’s saved by Dani, who is adjusting Megan’s head on her shoulder, the younger girl asleep. “Trust me, she needs it.”
They’re seated inside a van, somewhere in Long Island, on the way to UBS Arena. “Dude, it’s the VMA’s. Can we not?,” Lara complains. Sophia looks like she’s moving on to another budget item, when Yoonchae snatches the phone from her hand.
“Sorry! If I don’t think about this. I’ll think about meeting Lady Gaga…or Sabrina Carpenter…” she gasps, eyes wide. “Oh my god, Ariana.” Manon remembers the days when none of them could keep listening to Break Free. Sophia was particularly heartbroken.
They always knew that a day like this would come but it still feels unreal. Everything comes as a blur, interview after interview on the red carpet, two pre-show performances, “Oh, look. It's Drew Barrymore. It’s Drew Barrymore!”. It feels like a fever dream. So it doesn’t really register until Touch starts playing in the speakers and the–actually heavy–Moonman is in her hands that they actually fucking won a VMA. Lara, friend and bandmate she sees everyday, speaks into the microphone in front of a sea of their faces belonging to their childhood idols. Then Sophia speaks and all the noise in Manon’s ears quiets down. “Maraming, maraming salamat po!,” she realizes she no longer needs to translate it in her head for it to start making sense.
Getting off the stage is just as chaotic. They’re blinded with a barrage of flashes, microphones and video cameras being jammed into their faces, Megan is bawling, someone takes the Moonman from her hands for safekeeping, and Lara is still jumping. The marshalls usher them out of the area, which Manon is thankful for because, really, none of them knows where to go or what to do.
In the middle of it all, Sophia’s hand finds hers. They move closer, holding each other's waists in front of everyone, in front of the dozens of cameras on them. “Hey, popstar,” Sophia whispers. “You’re Switzerland’s first. I Googled on the way here.”
“First what?,” she asks dumbly.
“First VMA.”
Manon didn’t even know that could be a thing. A face-eating grin grows on her face. It’s almost numb from all the smiling that day. A whole country’s first VMA.
There are almost 80 words for “look” in Tagalog [5]. She learns them by categorizing how Sophia’s eyes land on her whenever she thinks Manon isn’t looking. Tingin, masdan, hanap, sulyap, titig, This one, though, she doesn’t have a word for yet.
November
“...sakit is not a single sensation. Instead, it is a complex concept that could not be completely expressed, described, and understood by others by solely stating that something is painful” (Jamindang 85). [6]
Manon finds that, much like words, pain can also be untranslatable. When he walks inside the studio holding a bouquet of flowers, and Sophia runs up to him, hugging him like he was the word home personified, Manon’s brain doesn’t bother trying to explain how the pain zeroes in on her chest and head. She knows a number of metaphors and sentence structures that can be used to accurately do so, but nothing she learns from a tutor or a reading can compare to this–the decades of knowing someone like the back of your hand.
Sophia introduces him to them, and she tries–she really does–to smile through it all. When he makes comments in Tagalog, Sophia responds the same way. They start conversing so smoothly, so quickly, that Manon’s brain struggles to catch up. The truth is, she could only ever hope for passable fluency. The more she studies, the more she realizes the impossibility of truly understanding someone who has grown up in a different language. Swiss-German alone already consists of a number of dialects, all miles apart from the other, all containing different cultural and historical contexts.
But language isn’t all there is. He is sacred the way Sophie, to her, is sacred. A piece of their life that loved them before the world did, before they even knew the other five of them existed. A piece that is even bigger than this life, than Manon. She can spend years studying even languages like Cebuano, Hiligaynon, or Ilokano, and still never understand Sophia the way he can. She has this whole other life that Manon doesn’t get to touch.
So maybe she skips a few lessons that month, but she keeps her OPM [7] playlist updated. She keeps in touch with Evelyn and her kwentos about her son’s grade school talent show. When she does show up, she does her best to speak sentences in Tagalog. She speaks even with an uneasy stomach. Hilab. She does even with an aching chest. Kirot.
Evelyn invites her to a Sunday after-church brunch with some Titas, promising that she doesn't have to go to mass to join them. They challenge her Tagalog, make jokes with her, and teach her phrases and slang from their own languages. Palangga ta gid ka. Buang. Kaluguran da ka. Buray ni ina mo [8]. At some point, she loses track of which ones are love confessions and which ones are swear words, but the last one is something she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t say, at least to someone she likes.
They don’t really know much about KATSEYE. The most is Tita Marceline remembering Sophia’s mom from some teleserye years ago. So Manon uses her, admittedly, broken Tagalog to spill her guts to them. If there is a perfect crowd to tell stories about your complicated love life to, it must be a group of middle-aged Filipinas while eating tapsilog and sharing a 1.5 liter of Royal Tru-Orange.
And there she draws the conclusion that in the process of doing something for Sophia, she has fallen in love with a language so romantic, so fierceful, and colored in centuries of resistance that she can't bear losing it. There is so much more to love about this world she stumbled upon than just one person, no matter how great said person is.
December
They find out they’re going to have to spend their holidays in LA, and to make up for it, the management decides to go all-out for Sophia’s birthday party, which would double as their New Years Eve party. And the whole time until then, he stays. Manon doesn’t know if she has been unconsciously avoiding her bandmate or if she has just been hard to catch recently. Rehearsals are still constant, but the small moments that used to exist just for her and Sophia are rare and in between.
What hurts more is the fact that she can’t–wont–complain about it. They had just finished a month-long tour across the country when they got the news and they were all ready to crash out. They all mistakenly thought that they would be able to rest and celebrate with family. Yoonchae cried and didn’t let Sophia inside her room for a whole two hours.
Manon’s aunt already went on a vacation to Switzerland, while Sophie went home to her family’s vacation house. If there was one person from home or from before who could be with her through the holidays, she would thank the heavens for them. So she can’t take this away from Sophia.
Lara takes the lead on planning the party. Sophia had to beg her not to invite so many people, citing her limited social battery, so she dedicates most of the budget to an insanely expensive catering. When people start rolling in, Manon decides to disappear into the back, sneaking some pieces of cordon bleu from the buffet table, trying to eye where their youngest is. Lara does a great job of making her feel involved. It’s sweet, because if at the ripe age of 23 she wanted to tear down Hybe x Geffen’s door, she can’t imagine how Yoonchae is feeling.
“Your gift is small,” a voice from behind, makes her turn around. It’s Megan, chowing down on a paper plate of nachos and raising her eyebrows at her with a knowing smile. The music blares across the room
“W-What? My gift is fine,” she answers defensively, snatching the big nacho chip piece with the most cheese that Megan’s probably saving for last, and biting down on it.
“Hey!,” she takes another bite. “Dani’s been coming over the past month complaining about the smell of paint in your apartment.”
Oh. Well. Busted, she guesses. The gift she placed earlier on the gift table is a basket of homemade peanut butter she made herself. She placed sticky notes the way fans do when they give them gifts. It was all safe for work feelings that Sophia could open in front of everyone without the whole room turning to her with questioning looks.
In her room, however, is an already gift-wrapped 24x30in oil painting that took a week and a half to dry. It’s a bedroom wall that looks a lot like a photo Yoonchae took of Sophia’s childhood bedroom posters when they visited Manila and had sent to the group chat. It had almost every fixation Sophia had as a younger girl–BTS, Hannah Montana, Les Miserables 1993 Broadway cast, One Direction.
Except in Manon’s painting, there are posters of a certain girl group member, microphone in hand and dancing on stage with pride. Other posters had the girls too, and then a group photo of them together. In the midst of 12-hour rehearsals, interviews, and never ending promo shoots, it can be easy to forget what they’re doing it all for. It’s also a reminder of how far they’ve come. One year and they could be on little girls' bedroom walls beside their own idols. One year and Manon just hopes she can keep doing it with all of them together.
In one of the papers plastered on the wall, there is a QR code that is almost unseen. It would bring Sophia to her playlist if she ever finds it. Manon thinks she would never have to know if Sophia does.
Today also happens to be the day that Manon decides she would finally tell Sophia she’s been learning Tagalog. She figures she knows enough and can speak it decently enough that it wouldn’t be too embarrassing when she does so.
“Can I see it?,” Megan jumps on her toes, probably caffeinated.
“Not before she does!”
The other girl was going to protest, but stopped herself when she saw the birthday girl make a beeline in their direction. “Okay, bye! Goodluck!,” she says and leaves Manon by the buffet tables.
“Hey! What are you doing back here?,” Sophia’s hand takes its place on Manon’s waist like it was second nature. She’s wearing a silver tiara on her head and a Miss Universe-looking glittered-up sash that says “Birthday Girl”.
“I don’t know who in the right mind would trust Lara with the budget for all this, but I’m glad they did. This buffet is…wow,” Manon prepares two plates of nachos for them, but waits until the server refills the nacho tray with new, unbroken chips.
“Girl, it went through me first.” Sophia douses their plates with cheese sauce. “You have no idea what else she proposed in her budget line.”
“This is her toned-down invitation list,” Manon gestures to the crowd.
“I know. It’s still mind-boggling to me that this many people know me,” she raises her voice to be heard past the music. Mind-boggling?! [9], Manon resists from exclaiming in an exaggeratedly high-pitched voice. She still doesn’t fully get the humor, but the memory of how her Sunday brunch group of Titas kept doing it as they talked makes her laugh out loud.
“What’s funny?,” Sophia asks.
“Just a funny thought. I’ll tell you about it later.” She smiles, “Happy birthday, Sophia.”
Just as she says that, Sophia is called on stage by Lara. He’s already there waiting for her, and Manon can feel her heart drop.
When Sophia makes it to the stage, she takes a seat on the big red chair positioned to the right of the big screen in front. On the other side of the stage, there’s a timer counting down until the New Year. 10 minutes, 23 seconds.
“So as you all know, not everyone can make it here today, unfortunately. But a lot of them sent Sophia their love and greetings from afar,” Lara announces into the mic. “Let’s watch the video, bitches!”
The room lights dim, but she can still see Sophia’s face being illuminated by the screen. Megan, Dani, and Yoonchae take their place beside Manon in the middle of the room. The video begins with her high school friends, speaking in a mix of English and Tagalog. A sense of pride washes over her when she’s able to decipher it.
On stage, Sophia looks at him and he smiles back with a pleased look on his face. She realizes that it was probably him who contacted these people for the greetings. Manon should feel bitter about it, but the way Sophia is being showered with love makes her heart melt. With every video, her smile grows bigger. Relatives and her immediate family from Manila follow and Sophia’s eyes get glassier by the minute, biting her bottom lip to stop the tears from flowing
The video goes back to a lighter mood when the Dream Academy girls’ videos come on. The girls beside her react to each face showing on screen, while Dani’s hand reaches for hers, holding her tightly with reassurance.
At the end of Ezrela’s message, she says she also sent over her favorite video she took of Sophia. The video plays right after, and Manon recognizes the moment immediately. It’s the night before the live finale. They’re sitting around a bonfire outside of the trainee house. Inside their rooms, some of their bags are already packed–expecting the worst, but hoping for the best. Manon refuses to touch hers. Not until tomorrow. Not until they know for sure.
Ezrela’s hand pans the camera around the circle. They’re eating s’mores and bowls of instant ramen with blankets on their lap. They don’t see it but behind the camera, Celeste’s marshmallow drops on the floor and Emily makes her another one. Manon remembers because Emily made her one, too. While she works on the s’mores, Lara fiddles with the guitar the blonde girl brought.
Beside Manon, on her right, is Marquise, curled up into a ball with her blanket, and after her is Sophia. She remembers cursing the space between them. 22 hours. After a year and a half of spending every waking moment together, they may only have 22 hours left. She knows for sure Sophia will make it, and before it all dawned on her, she was sure she would get in too. But they’re told half of the score would be the judges’ decisions and she doesn’t know where she stands with them. In 22 hours, she might be booking a flight back to Switzerland while Sophia prepares to take over the world by storm.
“Can I borrow that?,” Sophia’s voice is low and a little hard to hear from where Ezrela is sitting. The phone microphone mixes the voices of the girls and the crackling of fire, but Manon can remember hearing it clearly. The video catches the moment Lara hands Sophia the guitar. Dani taps Megan’s arm beside her to tell her to pay attention.
They probably shouldn’t be doing it, but the girls have been singing the whole night. Without the heavy direction from their trainers, they were free to do so however they wanted. Manon is thankful that she gets to hear them sing like that, like themselves, before inevitably having to say goodbye.
Sophia hesitantly strums the guitar, asking Lara if it’s in tune. “Sorry, I don’t really know how to play.” Her phone sits on her lap with an Ultimate Guitar tab open. Everyone quiets down to listen to her.
She mumbles the first few verses, slowly forming the chords with her fingers. Her head nods along with every strum, every chord, while she looks down at her phone. She starts getting more confident around the second verse and they can hear her more clearly. It’s rare to witness her sing like this when the girls can usually hear her belting through the thin walls of their training house. With the unfamiliarity of the guitar strings on her fingertips blending with the solemnity of the night, her voice stays low and melodic.
Liliparin ang isipan mo't damdamin
Makarating pa kaya sa kanyang piling
Ika'y pumikit
(Your mind and emotions will fly away
Will it ever reach them?
Close your eyes)
Ezrela readjusts her position. The camera goes closer, catching Megan, Sophia, Marquise, and Manon in the frame.
Kung panalangin ko'y 'di marinig
Abutin man ng bawat sandali
Kailangan kong isigaw ako'y iyong iyo
Ang dalangin ng puso'y ikaw
(If my prayers go unanswered
At every moment's end
I need to shout it out, I am all yours
You’re what my heart yearns for)
Sophia’s eyes stay closed, fingers now familiar with the chords they have to form. None of them can understand the lyrics, but they start swaying to her voice anyway. The lyrics start making sense in Manon’s head. It’s like living the moment for the first time again now that she can understand.
Sandali 'wag mong pigilan ang iyong pagluha
Damdamin mo'y aahon sa tumigil na tadhana
Aabutin ng 'yong palad ang hangarin
Makarating pa kaya sa kanyang piling
Ika'y pumikit
(Wait a moment, don't stop your tears from falling,
You will rise from halted destiny
All of your desires will be at arms reach
Will it ever reach them?
Close your eyes)
Sophia turns to look at all of them, a smile forming in her face seeing how attentively they listen to her. Lara even hums along. In true Sophia fashion, she starts singing with more emotion, nevermind that they don’t know what she’s singing about. She knows the girls can feel it. Her eyes close as she fully strums the chords.
Kung panalangin ko'y 'di marinig
Abutin man ng bawat sandali
Kailangan kong isigaw ako'y iyong iyo
Ang dalangin ng puso'y ikaw
(If my prayers go unanswered
At every moment's end
I need to shout it out, I am all yours
You’re what my heart yearns for)
Manon is a little scared that the way she’s smiling at Sophia in the video is giving her away, but she doesn’t care much about that. She’s confused, really. At that time, she thought Sophia was singing to all of them. Probably something about forming life-long friendships or a goodbye song. But this is a love song. It’s not something on her playlist, but she remembers hearing it on shuffle one time when she fell asleep in the van.
At kung sa bawat higpit ng aking pagdaramdam
Ay hindi ka malapitan
Makikiusap na lang
(And if in each pain I suffer
I can’t bear to go near you
I’ll go on begging)
Her heart thumps against her chest as the gears in her brain turn. In the video, Sophia stops strumming. Manon sees herself close her eyes in the video, head leaning back to absorb the moment. She wanted to etch Sophia’s voice in her memory–the way she’s singing in this moment, in particular. Maybe that’s why she didn’t see it.
Kung panalangin ko'y 'di marinig
Abutin man ng bawat sandali
(If my prayers go unanswered
At every moment's end)
Because Sophia looks at her. She doesn’t take her eyes off Manon the entire verse.
Kailangan kong isigaw ako'y iyong iyo
Ang dalangin ng puso'y ikaw
(I need to shout it out, I am all yours
You’re what my heart yearns for)
Manon is stunned. She feels lightheaded, fighting the urge to open Google translate because she doesn’t trust the meanings making sense in her head. But there is no denying it. The way Ezrela angled the camera made it clear. Sophia was looking at her, singing to her.
From the stage, he’s teasingly nudging Sophia with a knowing smile, being one of the only two people in the room who can understand the song. That they know of.
Ang dalangin ng puso'y ikaw
Ang panalangin sana'y marinig
(You are what my heart yearns for
I hope you hear my prayers) [10]
The video ends and Sophia’s eyes land on her in the middle of the crowd. She’s smiling so hard at her. It must have been the look on Manon’s face because that smile drops, replaced with confusion.
And then with panic.
Sophia
Instead of a smile, she sees something else in Manon’s face. Her eyebrows are furrowed together, lips parted. She’s blinking in confusion. No, in comprehension. Like she’s deciphering the words in her head.
She knows. For some reason, Manon knows. No, Manon understands.
The lights open again, disorienting her even more. Suddenly, the distance from the stage to where the other girl is standing feels like a thousand miles away. Beside her, Lara starts counting down and is joined by the crowd. “Four…three…two…”
They are still staring at each other stupefied, both not knowing what to do and what the other is thinking.
“One!” Confetti explodes around them and the DJ plays the music at its loudest. "Happy New Year!" She loses sight of Manon in the chaos of the crowd. No, no, no, no, no. She needs to get to her, to say something, anything.
They haven’t seen much of each other, especially since the tour ended. Her best friend arrived and suddenly, she had someone else there to talk about her feelings. Someone outside of the group or work. It’s been eating her up the longer it gets, the bigger they all become. They're no longer girls hidden away in a trainee house. They're in the public eye now. It dawns on her how disastrous her unrequited feelings can get. And she misses her so much, but she tells herself that she’s alright with loving Manon from a distance if it means safeguarding their dreams.
But that’s out of the window now. As someone who always has a solution for every single roadblock they might encounter, she never really accounted for the possibility of Manon fucking understanding Tagalog.
Her feet take her off the stage, parting the crowd which seem to suddenly forget that she’s the main event of the whole party. She has to excuse herself multiple times just to move past them. Behind her, she hears Lara calling for her. She makes a mental note to shower her friend with thanks for planning the party, but that will have to come later.
She reaches the spot where her members are dancing. “Where’s Manon?,” she asks, grabbing onto Dani’s arm to keep herself upright.
“I think she went to get some air. Why?,” the girl asks, but she’s already walking.
Her eyes search the crowd and every corner of the studio for familiar brown curls. She almost walks past the balcony when she sees her. There. Manon is turned away, watching the LA skyline erupt with fireworks as her fists grip the steel barrier.
What does she say? More importantly, how does she say it? She opens the glass doors and closes them again, shutting off the noise from inside. The one person she has been yearning for stands a few feet from her, and despite the voices in her head telling her about all of the ways this can go wrong, she realizes she can no longer bear it.
Sophia takes a deep breath before approaching. “I can expla-”
“Gusto kita.” Manon turns to her, scared but certain. Sophia is taken aback, her head reeling. “Gustong gusto kita.”
Her accent is almost perfect and Sophia is so confused. She opens her mouth only to close them again. “Okay, sorry, you go first. I just wanted to say that. I’ve been wanting to tell you that since I learned it ten months ago and every version of that for two years.”
“Ten months ago?” She holds on to the railing, absorbing the information that’s hitting her like a train.
“Eleven, actually.”
“Wait, did you- did just say-”
Manon smiles tentatively. “I’ve been getting Tagalog lessons. That’s what the extra allowance was for.”
“No, what did you just say?,” she moves closer, feeling like she can hang on to every word Manon says in her first language. “Say it again.”
Manon looks at her softly, doe eyes melting at the request. And she gives in. This time, she says it with so much assurance and resolve that she can no longer question what she hears. "Gusto kita.”
Sophia closes the distance between them.
6486.6 miles
10439.2 kilometers
Manila to Zurich
Their lips meet each other. They have defied impossibility after impossibility together, but this, for the longest time, felt the most improbable. Manila was one life, the academy was another, and this one was the next. She has loved Manon for so long, has resigned herself to a fate of longing from afar for so long. And yet.
Manon’s hands reach for her jaw, kissing her back, hungry and desperate. Sophia’s hands fall on her waist, her fingers lightly brushing past her waist beads. She has dreamed about this for what feels like her entire life. Maybe before Manon even existed in hers, a part of her heart had known she was out there somewhere. If only she searched long enough and far enough, she would find her. And she did.
They separate to catch their breaths for a minute. “Wait, when did you start?,” Sophia asks.
Manon’s eyes are still closed when she answers “Some time after your kare-kare crash out.”
That earns a laugh from Sophia. “Ha?!”
And Manon doesn’t expect the opportunity to come this early, but having a twenty-year old-as your her first Tagalog teacher prepared her for this moment.
She opens her eyes slowly, makes sure to smile first, then answers, “Hatdog” [11].
Sophia cackles. Loudly. Before kissing her again. It feels so good, and Manon didn’t even have to do it. She’s already loved her for years, and never expected even the possibility of being loved back, let alone of being understood this way. When they separate again, they’re both dazed.
Manon pinches her, knowing what she needs even in silence. This is real.
They both jump at the sound of the glass door being moved open. From the other side, Megan is holding a plate of cake, which she drops. Her eyes almost pop out of her skull when she sees them. Without sound, she picks up the cake splattered on the floor, turns without looking, and walks away.
“Oh shit,” Manon laughs, not letting go of her. They will probably have to do some explaining later, but she has a feeling that most of them know anyway.
“You think they’ll get mad?," Sophia gestures above. Manon hopes she means management and not god.
“If they do, we’ll go like Bobbie and Alex on them.” [12]
“Ew, they’re sisters,” Sophia scrunches her nose. “And I can’t believe you watched that without me!”
In her head, she runs through everything she can now watch with Manon, to talk to her about, to experience with. She can share so much of herself now, parts that she didn’t even know could break the barrier from one part of her life to the other.
Sophia thinks of the right words to say. Maybe Manon beat her to learning an entire language, but she knows how to say this. She’s been practicing it in her tongue since the academy.
"Ig ha mi i di verliebt.” Her tongue trips over itself, not used to the guttural phonemes of Swiss-German. But Manon doesn’t think it could be any more perfect. She feels like the words were invented and went through centuries of revisions, traversed regions between Germany, Zurich, and LA just for her to hear it the way Sophia speaks it. So she kisses her again.
Ich habe mich in dich verliebt. Nahulog na ‘ko sayo. M'ate ahwe wo dɔ mu. I’ve fallen in love with you. 나는 당신과 사랑에 빠졌어요. [13]
In Sophia’s words, “Mahal kita, Manon.”
Geborgenheit / ɡəˈbɔrɡənhait /
German
noun
- feeling of security
“The emotional security, comfort and well-being that one feels particularly with someone they love.”
It has no direct English translation. But when Sophia read about it, her first thought was maybe they should have been translating it into her language instead. Tahanan. /taˈhanan/. It’s the Tagalog word for dwelling, abode, or residence, but to her, the closest match was home. And for every meaning lost in between the futile act of translating two distant languages, Sophia thinks, Manon is enough. Arm pinches, pantry raids, late night kare-kare. They have long been speaking in languages only the two of them understand.
Manon’s existence in Sophia’s life fills in more gaps than any direct translation ever could.
Geborgenheit. Tahanan. Manon.
"Everyone deserves someone who can speak their language." - Gitling (Hyphen), 2023 [14]