The Laneways
Today’s Horoscope: There is much to be gained by leaving your heart on your sleeve, and you know that better than anyone else, Gemini! Making yourself a bit vulnerable may inspire that vulnerability in your partner as well. Treat each other with care, all will be well.
Kira Luz was a firm believer in certain things that she knew had absolutely no basis in reality. When her palms itched from a soil allergy (it happened sometimes), she was sure she was about to come into some money. When people packed away the food while she was still eating, it meant she was never going to get married. Of course you had to go somewhere else after going to a funeral, the dead could follow you home.
And it wasn’t necessarily because she believed them to be a hundred percent true, but those little beliefs, those practices were a part of her life now, and had led to good moments. When her palms would itch and she actually found money. When she laughed off those superstitions and got a boyfriend like Anton Santillan. When those little last-minute convenience store trips before going home led to conversations about life, and death, and reminiscing just a little bit longer about the person who passed. She was only human, and these little things helped her make sense of a world that really didn’t.
So she wasn’t sure what to make of it when she kept getting burned all day.
It started in her window garden, when she found that one of her rosal leaves had a burn mark, which seemed to have come from nowhere. She put the plant in a slightly shadier spot and moved on. Then she made it to breakfast, where her father was very obviously waiting for her to bring something up, and burnt her tongue on her arroz caldo.
“The meeting is in two days,” he unhelpfully reminded her as she drank a cupful of water. “Are you ready?”
She was not. Santi’s half-an-idea was moving, but it was slow going. It involved Chloe Aglia and some kind of deal with Altair, but Kira had a strange feeling that it wasn’t going to turn out the way she wanted. So she’d stayed where she was and tried to find an alternate way. Her own way.
“The more plans we have, the better.” Santi, ever the Virgo, agreed. “We just have to pursue all the avenues until we run out of them.”
So far, Kira had been meeting dead ends left and right. She was already considering renting a smaller space, considering renting just a small kitchen as a commissary. Gabriel never used the kitchen in the house he rented from them, maybe that could be her chocolate-making space?
But the burns just kept on happening. When she got to the Laneways and started to microwave a bowl of dark chocolate in fifteen-second bursts to make ganache, she’d burned the chocolate beyond use. When she pulled a tray of chocolate crinkles out of the oven, she’d forgotten that the pan was hot and burned the tip of her pointer and middle fingers.
“What is happening?” Kira muttered as she ran her hand under cool water. She didn’t know if there was an old belief surrounding burns, but she took it as a bad sign. A very bad sign.
“Knock, knock,” a deep voice said by the open door of the kitchen, and she turned to find Mang Roldan standing there, looking nothing like his fifty years of age, carrying half a sack of something in hand. He really did look like Keanu Reeves, especially with the beard. “Hmm. That didn’t sound like me.”
“Mang Roldan!” Kira said brightly, smiling at him as she patted her poor fingers dry on a towel. She must remember to add aloe vera on it later. “Not that I’m not happy to see you here, but did I expect to see you here?”
“Not really, but I realized I needed to pay you back for that cup of tsokolate and brownie,” he told her, and Kira was about to protest when he held up a hand.
“Kira,” he said gently (but then again, did Mang Roldan have a mode that wasn’t gentle?). “That cup of tsokolate changed my life for the better. I feel I need to give you something back. So here.”
He indicated the sack on the ground. Kira didn’t need to open it to know what it was. She could recognize that heat that the bag seemed to radiate, recognized the sour scent in the air. Mang Roldan had brought her a sack of fermented cacao beans, at least five kilos of it, judging from the way it looked.
“Oooh, where are these from?” Kira asked, kneeling in front of the sack and untying the knot to reveal the treasure inside. Her eyes lit up at the sight of the beans, still in their little shells. Yes, the scent was almost pungent, but she was used to that pungency. There was so much potential in this little sack. They could be fruity, or raisiny, they could taste perfect with a little more milk, or truly stand out when they were dark.What would you taste like?she wondered.I think you’re going to be delicious.
“Tomas Farm.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. Which duh, of course. He was the farm manager there, after all. “This is the first batch we’ve managed to ferment, and I wanted you to be the first to try it.”
“Wow, that’s—wait.” Kira gasped when she realized what Mang Roldan was offering her. Nearly fell completely on the floor, really.
When she started Gemini Chocolates, she knew that she couldn’t make it from Davao beans forever. It would defeat the entire purpose of setting up the business in Lipa if she did. Especially when at some point in history, Batangas had been the only coffee and cacao supplier in the country (at one point Lipa had been the only place in the wholeworldyou could find coffee, but that was a different story). The history of her family was in the land, in the trees that grew, and she knew that she was going to have to figure out how to get her Batangas beans soon.
She’d been waiting. She’d known Sam Tomas found the cacao in the Tomas land in Sta. Cruz, but she didn’t realize that they had cleaned up the area already. That they had even started fermenting the cacao.
Her hands were shaking. There was so much that these beans still had to go through to turn into chocolate—they needed to be sorted, cracked, winnowed, roasted, melanged, all of it—but there was no doubt in Kira’s mind.
They were going to be amazing.
“Mang Roldan,” she said, and she didn’t realize she was about to start crying until she said his name. “This is...this is amazing.”
“Ala eh. Like I said, I owed you,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “I... I also tried to make tsokolate with it, just so you had an idea of the taste.”
He handed her a thermos, and Kira immediately stood up, taking the thermos in her hand. She looked up at Mang Roldan with an excited smile.
“Should we try it?”
Moments later, after Kira helped Mang Roldan pour the cacao beans into an airtight plastic box, she offered him a mug of tsokolate again. His, this time. They sat across each other in the shop area, in that bistro table and those old chairs that Kira loved, a mug of the tsokolate in each of their hands. Judging from the scent, Mang Roldan had slightly burnt the cacao, but she didn’t blame him. That was traditionally how the big manufacturers made their tableya, and the roast was going to be her contribution to the thing.
“I think we should toast?” she told him. “To love.”
