Runway & Reverie

Stephen Lim was twenty the first time he understood what it meant to fall in love. Not with a woman, not with power, not with anything his family’s name could buy—but with the sky.

It began on a hot, blinding afternoon in Cebu, the air sticky with salt drifting in from the sea. Lim Aviation was still just a proud local company then, the name whispered with respect in certain circles but not yet the empire it would one day become. Their main office sat within the perimeter of Mactan Cebu International Airport, tucked close enough that the rumble of takeoffs rattled its windows every few minutes.

That day, Stephen arrived in his pressed business school uniform, sleeves rolled to his elbows, trying to look the part of the dutiful son. Beside him walked Sebastian, a year older, already sharp-eyed and unflinching, the kind of presence that made people straighten their backs when he passed. Their father, Charlie Lim, had insisted both boys sit in on the orientation: they were old enough to stop hovering at the edges of the business. They were heirs, and heirs needed to learn.

Charlie had built the company from scraps of ambition and grit, a boy from nothing who carved his place with calloused hands and discipline drilled into him by the military. To him, business wasn’t just an inheritance to be passed down—it was a battlefield to be guarded. And his sons, whether they wanted to or not, were soldiers.

But Stephen didn’t feel like a soldier when they reached the hangar.

The air inside smelled of grease and jet fuel, a sharp tang that filled his lungs and lingered on his tongue. Mechanics in blue coveralls moved like a choreographed dance beneath the wings of planes, their tools clinking against metal, their hands steady and confident. One of the pilots—a grizzled man with laugh lines etched deep around his eyes—was waiting for them, ready to give the young Lim men a “taste of the family business.”

It wasn’t the company Charlie imagined his sons running, not yet. Lim Aviation then was known for airplane parts, engines, and the quiet deals that kept fleets alive. Still, the pilot grinned at Stephen and Sebastian and said, “You can’t understand the heart of an aircraft until you feel her lift you.”

They climbed into the cockpit. Sebastian sat stiffly in the co-pilot’s seat, jaw tight, eyes cataloguing every instrument. He treated the panel like a puzzle to solve, his mind already turning to the mechanics, the systems, the vulnerabilities. Stephen, though—Stephen leaned forward like a boy at a carnival, eyes wide, palms itching to touch every switch.

When the plane lifted off the runway, the earth falling away beneath them, something cracked open inside him. The sky was endless. It roared around him, a freedom he’d never tasted, a vastness that drowned out Sebastian’s quiet brilliance, their father’s stern expectations, even the shadows of his sisters’ achievements. Up here, it was just him, the hum of the engine, the clouds swelling like kingdoms in the distance.

By the time the wheels kissed back against the ground, Stephen knew. He wasn’t meant to keep both feet planted. He belonged to the air.

That obsession rooted itself deep.

After that day, no amount of traffic could keep him from the hangar. He would drive for hours after classes, inching through clogged Cebu streets just to stand beneath wings, to breathe in that smell of fuel and steel, to ask questions of the mechanics who first looked at him as if he were another privileged son playing dress-up. He didn’t care. He listened, watched, learned. His notebooks filled with sketches of fuselages, equations for lift and drag scribbled between business school assignments.

On weekends, he volunteered to drive his sisters Samantha and Sofia when they came to oversee the company’s operations. Samantha, the eldest, already carried herself like the leader she was becoming, fierce-eyed and steady-handed. Sofia, barely a year younger, matched her stride for stride, her voice firm when she spoke to suppliers, her sharp wit cutting through negotiations. To most, the sisters were a terrifying pair: beauty matched with steel. To Stephen, they were simply Sam and Sof, who teased him mercilessly for sneaking off to the mechanics while they sat through hours of boardroom chatter.

“You’re supposed to be shadowing us,” Samantha would scold, arms crossed, though her smile betrayed her amusement.

“You’re going to run out of excuses one day,” Sofia added, shaking her head as she signed off on a delivery order.

Stephen only grinned, grabbed his keys, and vanished into the hangar.

It was there, crouched beside a mechanic explaining the guts of an engine, that he felt more alive than in any polished lecture hall or boardroom. His sisters might inherit the empire; Sebastian might perfect its security—but Stephen wanted the skies.

What he didn’t notice, not then, was the girl.

Maria Regina Dimasalang—Reina to the few who loved her—was eighteen that year, a quiet shadow moving through the same hangar he adored.

Her mother, Isadora, worked two jobs: days as a cafeteria cook for the Lim Aviation staff, nights as a cleaning lady when the offices emptied and the tarmac lights burned. Reina helped when she could—wiping tables, running trays, sometimes slipping into the hangar to deliver lunches to mechanics who forgot to eat.

She noticed Stephen long before he ever noticed her.

The boy who strode in smelling faintly of expensive cologne and city air, sleeves rolled carelessly, grin quick and reckless. He was different from Sebastian, whose gaze made her shrink back, too sharp, too unreadable. Different from the older sisters, whose presence felt untouchable, a world away from hers. Stephen had laughter in him, even when he tried to look serious, even when grease smudged the white of his shirt because he’d leaned too close to an engine.

Reina carried her crush like a secret. A harmless thing. A flutter in her chest when he brushed past her, eyes never landing, too absorbed in the gleam of metal and the mechanics’ stories. She pretended not to mind. After all, why would he ever look at her—the helper girl with secondhand shoes, whose world was bent around survival?

But sometimes, when she balanced trays in the cafeteria and overheard his voice carrying through the hangar, she allowed herself to imagine.

And sometimes, when their paths crossed in the dim hallways at night—him rushing toward the hangar, her carrying a bucket and rag—her breath caught. He’d nod absently, polite but distracted, his thoughts still soaring at thirty thousand feet.

To Reina, it felt like being invisible. To Stephen, it was nothing more than a boy consumed by his first love: planes.

The world spun on like that for months.

Stephen’s visits became routine: afternoons thick with questions to pilots, weekends spent sketching designs in the corner of the hangar while his sisters balanced ledgers. Sebastian, always nearby, studied their father’s empire like a fortress, noting every weakness, planning defenses Stephen couldn’t understand yet. Samantha and Sofia, dazzling in their competence, prepared to shape the company into something greater.

And Reina watched from the edges, the girl in the shadows who would one day step into her own light.

But for now, Stephen Lim belonged to the sky. He didn’t see her. He couldn’t. His gaze was fixed upward, chasing clouds, chasing freedom, chasing something none of them could name yet.

And Reina, heart steady and foolish all at once, let him.

Because everyone has their first love. His was the sky. Hers, though she’d never admit it—was him.