Chapter 205: Normal Afternoon Part 1

November 9, 2029Taguig, BGC

TG Tower, 21st Floor

4:18 PM

Rain hit the glass in thin streaks. The kind that never fully commits to a storm but still makes the city slow down. Outside, BGC traffic crawled with headlights on, vehicles moving in short bursts, stopping again, then moving again like they were being dragged by a rope.

Timothy sat alone in the executive conference room, not because he needed the space, but because his office had turned into a routing hub. People came in too easily there. Here, the door stayed shut unless someone knocked.


A stack of folders sat on the table. Most had the same label: TG Foundation. Some were printed memos. Some were site reports. Some were just checklists.

He had already spent the morning on calls he did not want. Meetings he could not avoid. Statements that had to be approved in writing so they could not be twisted later.

Now it was late afternoon. The part of the day when people either slowed down or tried to catch up.

Timothy was doing neither. He was working through the plain work that came after headlines. The things that could not be broadcast.

He opened one folder and scanned the first page. It was about office space. How much floor area the foundation would take. Where it would sit. Which departments would share utilities. Which IT systems could be isolated.

A foundation still needed printers. Internet lines. Fire exits. Access cards. The boring infrastructure that turned an idea into an organization.

He signed one sheet and set it aside.

His phone buzzed once. Not a call, just a message. Hana.

On my way up. Two things only.

Timothy left it on the table. He did not reply. He turned to the next folder.

This one was procurement rules. Not the national government kind. Their own. Internal guardrails. How bids would be done. How suppliers would be screened. Which kinds of donations would be rejected. Which kinds of branded partnerships were allowed, if any.

He skimmed a paragraph about naming rights and drew a single line through it with a pen. He wrote one sentence on the margin.

No naming rights. No plaques. Only documentation.

He closed the folder and leaned back in the chair. The room was quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioning and the faint noise of the rain against the glass.

He watched a bus crawl through the intersection below. Diesel smoke traced behind it for a second before the wind scattered it. The bus stopped again. People pressed near the windows, shoulders tight, faces blank. It was the same scene he had been watching for years. Only now he was involved in trying to change it.

A knock came at the door.

"Come in," Timothy said.

Hana entered carrying a thin folder and a paper cup with a plastic lid. She had her hair tied up and her sleeves rolled. She looked like she had been walking fast through hallways that never stopped asking for her attention.

She placed the cup on the table without asking.

"You skipped lunch," she said.

"I ate," Timothy replied.

Hana gave him a look that said she did not believe him, then sat down across from him. She opened her folder but did not start talking yet. She waited for him to look at her.

He did.

"All right," Timothy said. "Two things."

Hana nodded. "Office placement and the first public batch."

Timothy tapped the stack of folders. "Office placement is already on my table."

"Good," Hana said. "Because I’m not letting the foundation operate out of random empty rooms. We need a real floor plan. A reception area, a document room, storage, and a small meeting room. Not executive-sized. Just functional."

Timothy nodded. "Pick a floor."

Hana blinked. "That’s it?"

"Pick a floor that keeps it away from corporate noise," Timothy said. "Close enough to support. Far enough to avoid interference."

Hana looked down and wrote something. "Twenty-third," she said. "There’s a space near legal and internal audit. That’s where it should be."

"Do it," Timothy said.

Hana took a breath like she had been preparing for more resistance than she got. Then she moved to the second item.

"The first public batch," she said.

Timothy watched her hands. She opened the folder and slid out a single sheet. It was a list of provinces and municipalities. Next to each were simple notes: urgent repairs, classroom shortage, power instability, disaster damage, water issues.

Timothy didn’t reach for it yet.

"Site evaluations are still ongoing," Hana said. "But we have enough to do an initial public release. If we don’t, people will assume we announced this and then disappeared."

Timothy finally took the sheet and looked at it.

Nueva Vizcaya was there. Eastern Samar. Negros Occidental. Two more provinces he expected. One he didn’t.

"This one," he said, pointing.

"Camiguin," Hana replied. "Small, but the report is bad. The school cluster has severe structural issues. No stable power. They rely on small generators and inconsistent municipal supply."

Timothy read the notes again. The list was not dramatic. It was clinical. It looked like the kind of list an engineer would make.

"How many sites?" Timothy asked.

"For the first public batch," Hana said, "twenty. Not twenty schools. Twenty sites. Some sites are multi-school clusters. Some are single schools."

Timothy set the list down. "What’s the problem?"

Hana didn’t hesitate. "The moment we publish this, everyone else will ask why they’re not on it."

"That’s not a problem," Timothy said.

"It is when local officials start calling," Hana replied. "They will call the foundation office. They will call TG Tower. They will call you. They will try to push their district into phase one."

Timothy stared at the list.

"We already knew that," he said.

Hana nodded. "Yes. I just want us to be ready to say the same thing every time."

Timothy leaned forward. "Then we write the criteria and we keep repeating it. Nothing else."

Hana watched him for a second, then said, "Okay. Next question."

"Ask."

"What are we doing about donations?" Hana asked.