Chapter 5: The Saturday Bloom
Saturday at the University of Remembrance was a different kind of reality. The usual hum of a thousand voices was replaced by the rustle of leaves and the distant, rhythmic scuff of the guard's boots on gravel. The school felt less like an institution and more like a sleeping giant, breathing deeply in the weekend sun.
Leo and Maya stood at the heavy iron gates, their breath hitching as the guard inspected their passes. It was an unspoken rule that the campus was off-limits on weekends unless you had a specific reason, but "Remembrance" had its loopholes. The guard, a man named Mang Ben who had seen generations of dreamers pass through these bars, looked at the two of them—the boy with the protective stance and the girl who looked like she was holding a secret. He didn't ask for a club permit or a library slip. He simply nodded and slid the bolt back.
"Don't stay out and linger too late until dark, okay?" Mang Ben said with a knowing glint in his eye. "You might run into the 'unseen ones' behind the auditorium."
"Avisala, Mang Ben," Maya chirped, flashing a grin that made the old man chuckle.
They made their way to their usual spot—the ancient Narra tree that stood like a sentinel near the edge of the courtyard. The shade was deep and cool, a pool of ink-blue against the scorched grass. They sat there for an hour, doing nothing and everything. Leo was sketching—not buildings like Marcus, but the way the light filtered through the leaves—while Maya lay on her back, using her bag as a pillow, staring up into the green canopy.
"Why do you think it's so quiet here on Saturdays?" Maya asked, her voice barely a whisper. "It's like the school itself is recovering from all the 'what ifs' we release during the weekdays."
"Maybe," Leo replied, his pencil scratching against the paper. "Or maybe it's just that without the people, the rules of physics finally get a chance to settle back into place. Gravity feels... heavier when no one is trying to fly."
Maya sat up, her eyes sparking with that familiar mischief. "Let's explore. I want to see the part of the campus that doesn't exist on the map."
They walked deeper into the grounds, past the silent laboratories where Reinn's chemicals sat in glass cathedrals, and past the auditorium where the ghosts of a thousand speeches lingered. They eventually found themselves back at the stone fountain—the same one where, only a day ago, they had stood in the rain.
The fountain was still dry, its basin filled with the gray dust of neglect. But as they approached, the air began to vibrate. It wasn't a sound, but a feeling—the way the air tastes right before a lightning strike.
"Leo, look," Maya breathed, grabbing his sleeve.
At the base of the fountain, where the stone met the parched earth, a single green shoot cracked through the concrete. And then another. It happened with a speed that defied every biological law Professor Reinn had ever taught. Before their eyes, vines began to spiral up the mossy stone like emerald snakes. Tiny, tight buds formed on the stems, shivering with a life force that seemed to draw energy from the very ground they stood on.
Then, in a silent explosion of color, the flowers bloomed. They weren't ordinary roses or daisies; they were iridescent, their petals shifting from deep violet to a glowing gold. The scent hit them a second later—a fragrance that smelled like old books, rain on hot asphalt, and the first day of childhood.
"What the..." Leo stepped back, his hand instinctively reaching for Maya's. "Biology shouldn't do that. Entropy, right? Things are supposed to fall apart, not grow out of nowhere."
Maya stepped closer, her face illuminated by the soft, impossible glow of the petals. She reached out, her finger trembling as she touched a golden bloom. The flower didn't wither; it leaned into her touch, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic light.
"It's the school, Leo," she whispered, her voice thick with wonder. "It's remembering. Maybe someone once loved this spot so much that the universe forgot how to let it die."
She looked at him, and for a moment, the "what ifs" weren't just stories. They were the ground beneath their feet. In the silence of the Saturday afternoon, surrounded by flowers that shouldn't exist, Leo realized that he was no longer just a keeper of her memory. He was becoming a citizen of her world—a place where the impossible was just a Saturday occurrence.
But as he looked down at their joined hands, he noticed that Maya's grip was tighter than usual, and for the first time, he saw a shadow of exhaustion behind her bright eyes. The magic was beautiful, but he wondered, for the first time, what it was costing her to see it.
Leo didn't look at the flowers. He looked at Maya.
In the hyper-saturated light of the garden, she looked ethereal—almost translucent. The vibrant violets and golds of the blooms reflected in her eyes, making them look like twin galaxies. For a second, the scientific part of his brain, the one that respected Professor Reinn's laws of thermodynamics, tried to scream. He knew that for something to grow this fast, it needed a massive surge of energy. He wondered where that energy was coming from.
"Maya, let's go back to the tree," Leo said, his voice tight. "This is... too much. We aren't supposed to see this."
"But we are seeing it, Leo," she replied, her voice sounding distant, as if she were speaking from the other side of a thick glass wall. "Don't you get it? The school isn't just a building. It's a reservoir. Every 'what if' we talk about in class, every dream Marcus sketches, every second Elena counts—it all goes somewhere. It doesn't just vanish into entropy. It collects here, in the cracks of the fountain."
She knelt on the grass, her fingers hovering over a bloom that seemed to be made of spun glass. "It's like a save point in a video game. A place where reality is still being written."
She looked up at him, and the exhaustion he had noticed earlier was clearer now. There were faint, bluish shadows beneath her eyes that hadn't been there when they entered the gate. "Do you think... if we stay here long enough, we could become part of the bloom? No more syllabi. No more goodbyes."
Leo felt a cold spike of fear. He reached down and firmly took her hand, pulling her up. Her skin felt strangely cool, a stark contrast to the humid Bicol air. "No. We're going. Mang Ben said not to stay until dark, and the sun is already hitting the rafters of the auditorium."
As they turned to leave, the flowers did something even more impossible. They didn't wilt or shrivel. Instead, they began to dissolve into tiny, glowing particles—not unlike the bioluminescent moss from the library, but more intense. The particles rose into the air, caught in a sudden, localized breeze that swirled around them.
The spiral of light followed them for a few paces, a golden trail that felt like a silent "Avisala" from the campus itself. By the time they reached the shade of the Narra tree, the fountain area looked as dry and dead as it had for the last ten years. The vines were gone; the concrete was cracked and barren once more.
They sat back down under the Narra, the silence of the Saturday returning with a deafening weight. Maya leaned her head on Leo's shoulder, her breathing shallow but steady.
"I'm tired, Leo," she whispered.
"Sleep for a while," he murmured, putting his arm around her, pulling her close into the "protective sentinel" stance that was becoming his natural state. "I'll watch the sky. I'll make sure the world stays real."
As she drifted off into what he hoped was a normal, non-lucid sleep, Leo looked at his sketchbook. He flipped to a blank page and, for the first time, didn't draw a building or a tree. He drew a single, iridescent flower with petals that looked like they were made of light.
He realized then that Professor Reyes was right: energy cannot be destroyed. But he also realized what Professor Reinn had hinted at—that sometimes, to create a miracle, something else has to give up its heat. He held Maya tighter, terrified that she was the one providing the fuel for the University's magic.
The sun began its slow descent, painting the trunks of the Narra trees in hues of bruised purple and burnt orange. Under the heavy canopy, the world felt suspended in amber. Leo remained perfectly still, his shoulder serving as the only anchor Maya had to the physical world. He watched her chest rise and fall, measuring the rhythm against the ticking of his own heart.
He found himself thinking about Lecturer Ezekiel's warning. The cost of the bridge.
If the University of Remembrance was a place where "everyone matters," then perhaps the school itself was hungry for that significance. It was a beautiful thought until it wasn't. Leo looked back toward the stone fountain. The air there was still shimmering slightly, a heat haze that had no business existing in the cooling afternoon. He realized that the "magic" they had witnessed wasn't a gift—it was a leak. It was a puncture in the thin veil between the world of exams and the world of enchantments.
"Maya," he whispered, his voice catching. She didn't stir.
He looked at his sketchbook again, at the flower he had just drawn. In the fading light, the graphite seemed to vibrate. He felt a sudden, irrational urge to tear the page out, as if documenting the magic would make it more permanent, more demanding.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over them. It wasn't the jagged shadow of the trees, but the long, clean lines of a person. Leo looked up, bracing himself, half-expecting Mang Ben or a disgruntled professor.
Instead, it was a student he didn't recognize—a girl with a camera hanging around her neck and eyes that looked like they had seen too many Saturdays. She was standing a few feet away, watching them with a profound, quiet curiosity.
"She's dreaming of the rafters again, isn't she?" the girl asked. Her voice was soft, like the rustle of old parchment.
Leo tightened his grip on Maya. "Who are you?"
"I'm just a collector," the girl said, lifting her camera. "I take photos of the things the school tries to hide. I saw the fountain bloom, Leo. I've been waiting years for it to do that again."
"Again?" Leo's heart hammered against his ribs.
"It only blooms when someone brings enough 'What If' to wake it up," the girl explained, stepping closer. "But the school is a mirror. It doesn't create beauty; it just reflects what we give it. She's giving it everything, isn't she?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She snapped a single photo—the flash a sharp, white needle in the twilight—and turned to walk away. "Be careful, Keeper. When the flowers bloom, the gardener eventually comes to collect."
The girl disappeared into the shadows of the auditorium before Leo could find his voice. The encounter left a cold, metallic taste in his mouth. He looked down at Maya, who let out a soft, subconscious sigh, her hand clutching the strap of her bag where her "contraband map" was hidden.
"Time to wake up, Maya," Leo pleaded, shaking her shoulder gently. "Let's go home. Let's go back to the real world. Please."
Maya's eyes fluttered open. For a terrifying split second, they were still gold and violet, reflecting a sky that wasn't there. Then, they cleared, returning to the deep, familiar brown of a girl from Room 302.
"Leo?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. "Did I miss it? Is the portal gone?"
"It's gone," he said, his voice thick with a relief that hurt. "It's all gone. Let's go before the stars come out."
As they walked toward the gate, the guard Mang Ben didn't say a word. He just watched them pass, his eyes lingering on Maya's pale face. He looked like a man who had seen this story before—a witness to a masterpiece that was already beginning to fade at the edges.
The walk to the gate felt longer than the walk in. The silence of the university, once a sanctuary, now felt like a predatory thing, waiting for the next spark of energy to consume. Leo kept his arm firmly around Maya's waist, half-guiding, half-carrying her. She was quiet, her usual chatter about multiverses and Enchanta spells silenced by a fatigue that seemed to seep out of her very pores.
As they reached the heavy iron bars of the entrance, the streetlights of the city outside flickered to life. The harsh, yellow hum of the "real world" felt like an intrusion.
"Maya, look at me," Leo said, stopping just before the threshold.
She looked up, her face pale under the fluorescent glow of the guardhouse. "I'm okay, Leo. Really. Just... the bloom took a lot out of me. It was so beautiful, wasn't it? Like the gardens of Lireo."
"It was just flowers, Maya," Leo said, his voice cracking. He needed to believe his own lie. "Just some weird biology. Reinn will explain it on Monday. It wasn't magic. It wasn't a portal."
Maya didn't argue. She just gave him that small, cryptic smile—the one that made him feel like he was the student and she was the professor of a subject he was failing. "If that's what you need it to be, Leo, then that's what it was."
Mang Ben stepped out of the guardhouse, the jingle of his keys sounding like a funeral knell in the quiet. He didn't ask for their passes this time. He just pushed the gate open, the metal screeching against the pavement.
"Careful on the way home, you two," the guard said, his voice unusually soft. He looked at Maya, then at Leo, and for a second, the mask of the campus employee slipped. "Take care of her, hijo. Some lights burn too bright for the wick they're on."
Leo nodded, a lump forming in his throat that made it impossible to speak. He led Maya out onto the sidewalk, where the smell of diesel and street food replaced the scent of the magical bloom. They waited for a jeepney in silence, the neon signs of the city reflecting in the puddles at their feet.
When the jeepney finally arrived, Leo helped her climb in. As it pulled away, Maya looked back at the University of Remembrance. The Narra trees were now just dark silhouettes against a starlit sky.
"Leo," she whispered over the roar of the engine.
"Yeah?"
"In that dream I had... under the tree... you weren't a keeper anymore."
Leo looked at her, his heart skipping a beat. "What was I?"
"You were the story," she said, leaning her head against the vibrating metal frame of the jeep. "And I was the one who got to read it."
She closed her eyes then, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep. Leo watched the city lights blur past, his hand gripping his sketchbook so hard his knuckles turned white. He looked at the drawing of the iridescent flower, the graphite still smudged on his thumb.
He realized then that the "Story of Us" wasn't a fantasy book with a guaranteed happy ending. It was a ledger of moments, a collection of "what ifs" that were being traded for time. He didn't know how many Saturdays they had left, but as the jeepney carried them further from the gates of UR, he made a silent vow to the stars: he would remember every petal, every spark, and every shadow, even if it meant he'd be the only one left to tell the tale.