The janitor saw the girl entering the hotel room with her new stepfather every night, peering through the window, shocked by the scene before her eyes…
Lani is a long-time janitor at a mid-range hotel in Malate, Manila. The job is unglamorous but steady, enough to support her and her college-aged son. Every day, she cleans the rooms, changes the sheets, tidys the hallways, and silently witnesses the many lives that come and go. For Lani, the hotel is like a station of life – people come, rest, and then disappear, leaving behind stories that are never told.
Lani has noticed a special guest recently: a young woman named Maya, in her twenties, who often appears with a successful middle-aged man. Every night at eight o’clock they would enter room 405 together. The man wore a neat suit, shiny leather shoes, and an elegant demeanor but his eyes were hard to read; Maya wore casual clothes – a white T-shirt, jeans, and a small backpack.
What worried Lani was the repetition. Not once or twice – every night, like a habit. In her years as a janitor, she had witnessed many shady things in hotels: secret loves, secret meetings, couples hiding their true identities. From the front desk, Lani had vaguely heard that the man was the girl’s “new stepfather.” The information made her shiver: a stepfather and a stepchild sharing a hotel room every night – a story that was hard to hear, hard to accept.
What Lani observed only strengthened her suspicion: conversations echoed in the hallway, the man’s deep voice mixed; One night they even ordered a late-night snack, they ate together in the room. Her curiosity and imagination grew by the minute.
One night, after cleaning the seventh floor, Lani walked down the hallway to the fourth floor. The light was yellow, quiet, only the sound of my footsteps. At that moment, room 405 echoed with noises: laughter, then loud voices, then a mess of sounds like an argument. Lani stopped; The girl seemed to be begging, the man answered rudely. Then silence. After a while, sobbing came.
Curiosity overcame Lani, and she crawled to the small window next to the hallway. Through the half-closed curtain, she looked inside. And then… she was spellbound.
In the room, the man stood very close to Maya, his hand on her shoulder; Maya covered her face and cried. It seemed like a dramatic scene they were acting out, but to Lani, it was just a scene of a man dominating a young woman.
She quickly backed away, her heart pounding, and ran down the hallway, trembling and scared. That image haunted her all night. Since that day, Lani had looked at them with pity and anger. She blamed herself for being helpless – she was just a poor young woman, how could she interfere in the affairs of the rich? But inside, a fire was burning: if her guess was right, how pitiful that child must be.
The opportunity came one Sunday morning. While Lani was cleaning the room at the end of the hallway, door 405 suddenly opened. Maya was alone, holding a pile of papers and a few thick books. Seeing Lani, she smiled politely.
Lani hesitated, and then dared to ask:
— You… You come here often, right?
Maya nodded, and replied softly:
— Yes, you and I are rehearsing for a new play. We have an international festival coming up soon, so we need a quiet place to rehearse.
Lani was stunned:
— Teacher?
— Yes, Mr. Miguel Reyes — everyone calls him Direk Miguel — is my drama coach. He used to be a famous stage director at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), and now he is my direct instructor. We practice here every night because this place is private and no one can disturb us.
As if to prove it, Maya held the script in her hand. The title of the play was clearly written on the cover: “The Stranger Father.”
Lani felt as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over her. Suddenly everything became clear. What she had heard – laughter, crying, seemingly intimate movements – had turned out to be just a rehearsal for the play. He was not the real stepfather but the director, the teacher. And Maya was not the victim, but a young actor striving for her dream.
Lani smiled shyly, her face turning red. All the assumptions and “scripts” she had built in her head crumbled. She was the only audience for a real-life “play” woven from her imagination.
That night, as she passed by room 405 again, Lani heard laughter coming from outside. She laughed to herself – both relieved and amused. Sometimes curiosity leads people to write stories that don’t exist. And he said to himself: from now on, I’ll just do my job properly — as for drama, I’ll just leave it to the Manila stage.