Redline
The London trip was Myla’s idea from the very beginning.
She said they needed something that wasn’t volleyball, wasn’t pressure, wasn’t schedules dictated by coaches or tournaments. Just two weeks where they could be ordinary women in a city that didn’t expect anything from them.
Aiza agreed almost immediately. Jonah took a little convincing, but eventually she said yes, especially when Myla promised she would document everything with her Fujifilm.
The first week passed easily. They walked along the Thames on their first night, freezing but laughing, with the skyline glowing behind them.
They crossed Tower Bridge, posed in front of Buckingham Palace, and rode the London Eye just before sunset.
Myla cried quietly during a West End musical and denied it afterward. They got lost inside the British Museum and spent too long at Camden Market because Aiza kept stopping for food. Everything felt light. Everything felt earned.
By the second week, they slowed down. They had a picnic in Hyde Park, wandered through Covent Garden watching street performers, and spent a whole afternoon shopping along Oxford Street.
Then, two days before their flight back to the Philippines, they found themselves near Parliament Square. The iconic red telephone booths stood nearby, bright against the gray London afternoon. That was when Myla suddenly stopped walking and said there was one last thing she really wanted to do before they left.
She wanted a photo inside the red telephone booth.
It sounded simple and a little cliché, but that was exactly why she wanted London. Aiza agreed but mentioned she was starving and would quickly grab food from a nearby café. She told them not to disappear and said she would follow right after. It was casual. None of them thought twice about separating for a few minutes.
So it was just Myla and Jonah by the booth. It wasn’t empty of people; tourists moved constantly around Parliament Square, crossing streets, taking photos, talking loudly.
Myla stepped inside the booth and laughed at how small it felt. She adjusted her coat, posed dramatically with one hand near the receiver, and told Jonah to start shooting.
Jonah took several photos first, adjusting the focus carefully, capturing Myla’s smile through the glass panels and the slightly open door.
After a few shots, Myla asked Jonah to take a video too. She said photos were nice, but she wanted movement — something that felt alive. Jonah switched the Fujifilm to video mode and framed her carefully inside the booth. Myla looked directly into the lens, smiling in a way that felt intentional, almost lingering.
A few seconds into recording, people began walking between Jonah and the booth. A group crossed from the left, then a couple stepped directly into the frame. For about two or three seconds, Myla was partially blocked from view. Jonah, though, didn’t stop recording; she simply waited for the crowd to clear.
When the people passed and the view became unobstructed again, the booth was empty.
At first, Jonah assumed Myla had crouched down as a joke. She lowered the camera slightly and walked closer, calling her name in a half-laughing tone.
When there was no answer, she opened the booth fully and checked inside. It was empty. She looked behind it, around it, scanning the nearby pavement, expecting to see Myla running out and laughing.
But there was no sign of her.
Jonah called her name again, louder this time, and then immediately dialed Aiza. Her voice was already shaking when Aiza answered.
By the time Aiza returned, still holding a bag of food she never opened, Jonah had replayed the video twice. They watched it together on the camera screen. Myla smiling. Pedestrians blocking the frame. Then an empty booth. There was no visible moment where Myla stepped out, no captured direction of escape, no sudden struggle.
They began searching the area immediately. They ran around Parliament Square, along Whitehall, toward nearby streets and crossings. They asked strangers if they had seen a Filipina woman in a purple coat.
Most people shook their heads apologetically. Some didn’t stop walking. They tried calling Myla’s phone repeatedly. It rang at first, then eventually went to voicemail.
Hours passed. They checked the nearby park. They scanned entrances to Underground stations.
They returned to the booth multiple times, hoping she had somehow circled back.
As the afternoon turned into evening, they went to the police and filed a missing person report.
Officers reviewed available CCTV footage in the area, but there was nothing definitive — no clear image of Myla leaving the square, no recorded altercation, no direction that made sense.
When night came, the square felt colder and harsher under artificial lights. They returned to the booth once more, both exhausted and crying.
That was when Jonah remembered that earlier, before taking photos, Myla had taped a small folded piece of paper inside the booth. Jonah had teased her about it at the time, assuming it was something random or sentimental.
The paper was still there, clinging to the inside panel of the booth as if it had been waiting for them to come back. The tape had loosened from the damp London air, one corner peeling slightly, the edges soft from the mist that had settled over Parliament Square.
Get Blake Ann’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
For a moment, Jonah just stared at it, her chest tightening with a kind of dread she didn’t yet have the courage to name.
Her fingers shook as she reached for it. The paper felt colder than it should have, almost fragile, as though unfolding it too quickly might cause it to tear.
Aiza stood beside her, silent now, no more frantic questions, no more shouting — just the sound of her uneven breathing in the night air.
London continued around them: footsteps passing, distant traffic, the faint chime of Big Ben cutting through the dark. The world had not paused for their grief.
When Jonah finally opened the paper, the handwriting hit her first. It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t messy. It was Myla’s familiar script — the same loops and curves she had seen on birthday cards, on random notes slipped into gym bags, on small reminders written during training camps.
Seeing it there, under the harsh glow of a streetlamp in a city thousands of miles from home, felt violently intimate.
She read it once. Then again, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something else.
“Please don’t look for me. Carry me in your memories instead. I love you both more than words ever allowed me to say. Maybe, in another lifetime, we’ll find each other again.”
The short letter was gentle. That was what hurt the most. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t desperate. It sounded like goodbye wrapped in affection, like someone tucking you in before turning off the light forever.
Aiza’s knees gave out first. Jonah didn’t realize she was crying until her vision blurred and the ink began to swim in front of her.
She thought about the first night in London, about Myla stretching her arms toward the skyline and saying they were small in a city this big.
She thought about the way Myla laughed inside this very booth just hours earlier, about how she had asked for a video “for memories,” about the way she had smiled at the camera as if she already knew it would be the last frame.
The paper trembled in Jonah’s hands. It felt impossible that something so small could carry so much finality. She pressed it against her chest without meaning to, as if holding it there might keep Myla from slipping further away.
But the space beside them remained empty, and the red booth — once a silly tourist stop — now stood like a monument to something they could never undo.
They then realized that the letter suggested that Myla had planned something, yet nothing about the disappearance felt physically possible. There was no logical explanation for how she could vanish in seconds in the middle of a crowded public space without being seen leaving in any direction.
London’s night wrapped around them, indifferent and vast, and Jonah understood with a sharp, unbearable clarity that the last thing Myla ever gave them was not a photograph.
It was goodbye.
=====
Even with the letter, they extended their stay for another day, continuing to search and returning to the police for updates. Nothing changed. No new footage, no witnesses, no calls.
Eventually, they had no choice but to board the flight back to the Philippines without her.
Jonah kept the camera in her carry-on, unable to delete the video. Aiza kept replaying the moment she chose to leave for food, wondering if staying would have changed anything. The red telephone booth in Parliament Square remains the last confirmed place Myla was ever seen.
All that remains is a short video that ends with an empty frame and a letter that says they should not look for her — and that she would love them until the next lifetime.
===============================================================
Redline — a story about the moment everything changed.
It is the thin, invisible line between before and after — between laughter inside a red telephone booth and the silence that followed. In the span of a few seconds, a life disappears, and the color red becomes more than a tourist landmark; it becomes the last trace of someone loved.
Redline is about crossing a point of no return — about memory, absence, and the quiet ache of a goodbye that feels both deliberate and impossible.
=====
CHARACTERS:
Myla Pablo of NXLED Chameleons
Jonah Sabete-Escamillan of NXLED Chameleons
Aiza Maizo-Pontillas of Galeries Tower Highrisers
These three athletes, however, are former teammates of the Petro Gazz Angels.
