Until the last goodbye

Rain tapped softly on the roof of the tiny home in San Marcelino, a sleepy town nestled between sprawling rice fields and misty mountain ranges. The kind of place people left, not lived in. But inside that weathered bungalow, a young girl named Isabel Reyes sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through the pages of a worn-out book about Clara Barton, her eyes wide with wonder.

The scent of tinola filled the cramped kitchen, mixing with the aroma of the rain-soaked garden outside. Her mother, Liling, stood over the stove humming an old kundiman while her father, Ramon, came through the door with muddy boots and a tired smile.

"Top of your class again, anak?" Ramon asked as he ruffled her hair with the same hands that built walls and bridges for strangers.

Isabel nodded, grinning. "I want to be like her. Clara Barton. She helped people. Saved lives."

Her parents exchanged a glance, a mix of pride and fear. They knew what dreams like that meant in a place like this. They knew what kind of heartbreak came from reaching for stars with bare hands.

Years passed. Dreams hardened like polished stone under pressure. Isabel's brilliance caught the attention of a scholarship foundation, and at sixteen, she found herself boarding a bus to Manila, her heart beating to the rhythm of possibility.

University life was harsh, humbling, and filled with hunger-not just the kind that gnawed at her stomach during late nights without dinner, but the kind that whispered you have to make it every time she looked around and saw everything she wasn't.

She studied relentlessly. Law books during the day, social work papers at night. On weekends, she volunteered at community kitchens and urban shelters. She saw poverty not as an abstract concept, but as the faces of hungry children, battered mothers, and the homeless elderly who blessed her with stories in exchange for rice.

By twenty-five, Isabel had become a voice on television interviews, a name featured in broadsheets-the lawyer with a heart, as headlines called her. And while the country debated policies in air-conditioned offices, Isabel was on the ground building something tangible.

Her foundation, Kalinga sa Bayan, started with a single mobile clinic. With enough donations to last three months, it served rural towns abandoned by mainstream services. But her integrity, passion, and transparency attracted benefactors with deeper pockets-and deeper hope.

One by one, her projects grew. A women's shelter in Zambales. A literacy program in Palawan. An environmental initiative for sustainable farming in Mindoro. Isabel stood tall through it all, elegant in her simplicity, always with her signature pearl earrings and denim jackets, speaking with warmth that lit up any room.

Still, despite the cameras, the applause, the standing ovations at conferences, Isabel would return to her apartment-modest, plant-filled, and too quiet. There, she curled up on her couch with folders and spreadsheets and watched the rain tap against her windows, just as it did in San Marcelino all those years ago.

She had the world's respect-but not yet someone to come home to.

It was during one particularly prestigious fundraising gala at The Peninsula Manila, golden chandeliers gleaming overhead and a symphony quartet playing in the background, when Isabel's story began to take an unexpected turn.

She had just stepped off the stage, having delivered a powerful keynote about bridging social inequality. Applause still rang in her ears, and well-wishers queued to shake her hand.

That's when she saw him.

He wasn't the flashiest man in the room, nor the most powerful-looking. He stood quietly near the bar, a glass of red wine in hand, wearing a simple black suit and an expression of thoughtful detachment.

Their eyes met.

And the world, for a single breathless moment, seemed to forget its spin.

"Excuse me," he said moments later, as she stepped aside for a plate of canapés. "That was an extraordinary speech."

"Thank you," she replied, voice steady but her heart suddenly unruly. "Are you with one of the sponsors?"

"No," he chuckled softly. "I'm actually a donor-small scale, relatively speaking. I prefer to keep a low profile."

She arched an eyebrow, intrigued. "Name?"

"Marco. Marco Villanueva."

The name meant nothing to her then, but something in the way he said it-gentle, sincere-lingered in the air like perfume.

He didn't praise her like a fan. He asked thoughtful questions about how she sourced local volunteers. He brought up a literacy drive he had quietly organized in Marikina after the last typhoon, his face lighting up with stories of kids who now read their first full sentences.

They didn't flirt. They talked.

And it was intoxicating.

Hours passed like minutes. The gala ended, people drifted out, and she found herself standing beside him outside the hotel entrance, the humid night air wrapping around them like a blanket.

"Well," he said, hands tucked into his pockets, "this was unexpected."

"Pleasantly so," she replied, offering a rare, unguarded smile.

She turned to leave-but something made her pause.

"Would you... like to meet again?" he asked, suddenly looking every bit as unsure as she felt.

Isabel hesitated. For years, she had kept her heart tucked neatly away, behind charity reports and humanitarian missions. But now...

"Yes," she said.

Just one word.

But it would change everything.