Silent Echoes

Meanwhile, inside the sacred halls of the University of Saint Louis Tuguegarao, Maria and her
mixed bag of friends struggle within an academic world that is, in their case, colored with
discrimination and despair. For the magic of the academic sanctuary is not strictly promising
anything at all in the final outcome of their personal battles against injustice. In Maria, a broken
childhood, it was brought on by abandonment, how she lost her father to Oplan Tokhang, her
father, killed while trying to run for his life, shot in the back by people who didn’t know any better…
Even after years have passed, this fateful day left her with wounds to her soul which would never
heal, even if the world was turned upside down.

With her were her friends Ezrihel, in time for yet another battle of discrimination, this time in
gender orientation; Hira, an Indigenous student learning to deal with racism; Joseph, firm only in
finally being recognized beyond the problem with his eye; and Yvai, who stood unshaken in faith
despite religious discrimination.

This joyful quintet is joined together by the shared experiences to be advocates for social change
and activists who wade people starting up campaigns against discrimination, and other forms of
activism that champion for the same cause by amplifying voices against discrimination. Only such
a loud cry for equality has only fallen on deaf ears to leave them disillusioned and fragmented.

Even as the vision of this better society life came crumbling down right before their very eyes,
Maria stuck by her principles and convinced herself that those views held by many about a better
life could and should be changed. Although the same could not be said for her friends, as they
easily let go off an already tired spirit from the relentless waves of discrimination and accept it to
be a solid harsh reality that their change might just be a dream too far. The erstwhile unbreakable
bond of the group seemed to be pulled down under the crushes of expectations and hopes getting
smashed into pieces.

Seeking a way to achieve relief from mounting pressure, Maria turns to drugs, unwittingly setting
the stage for a downwards spiral and a nightmarish scenario that is beyond surrealistic. The pills
that are meant to relieve stress and anxiety set in motion another gateway to drug addiction.

Maria was the tragic architect of desolation, and as her mind was burdened, bumped, and bared in
the delusion, she becomes suddenly aware that she has become an unwilling architect of a
grotesque tragedy with nightmarish acts pouring out following each other-one part of the repetition
of the very events that led to her father's death under the sign of their own sufferings and with the
reverb of others suffering down the hallowed corridors of the university.

Staring, hallucinating, misunderstanding, all it took was a simple thought, and it was already for
naught. Nothing could now stop Maria, having the misconception that her once mighty friends
acted as obstacles, acted as villains in her mission to fight for human rights, and suddenly she had
a knife, and a twisted and gut-wrenching plan to get rid of the “obstacles”

The heart-stopping climax comes when Maria, staring at the person she then had considered as a
friend in a re-enaction of her father's fatal encounter, was pushed back to the harshness of the
reality she had created. A chilling notion that she had done this came into her mind, like a tidal
wave of remorse crashing into the shores of her conscience.

After the storm, he gives Maria an awful ultimatum. The same quest for justice toward which she
has pursued so fiercely redounds on her as an albatross around her neck. Racked with guilt, she
is forced to acknowledge the bitter truth: her war against the very monstrosity of prejudice has
rendered her guilty of committing the very same crimes she has struggled to abolish.
Maria dies a graceful death in a denouement of leaving to bestow not a cohesive whole, but a
cracked one that left behind broken ideals, fractured friendships, and silent echoing voids. 'Silent
Echoes' is an icy cautionary tale into the shadows circling activism, its corroding effects of
discrimination, and the heartrending result when a chase for rectification starts spinning into a
symphony of despair.