The tin roofs were still there, but rust had turned them dark brown. Vines crawled across the walls and wrapped around the wooden beams like thick ropes. The fences leaned sideways, half swallowed by tall grass.
Nature had been slowly reclaiming the place.
For a moment, Roger felt a sharp stab of regret.
All the money he had spent.
All the sleepless nights.
The loan from the bank that took three years to fully repay.
He remembered Marites crying when the creditors called. He remembered the long bus ride down the mountain the day he finally gave up, unable to look back.
“I thought everything here was gone,” Roger said quietly.
Mang Tino shrugged.
“I thought so too.”
They walked closer.
The old pathway that once cut through the farm was almost invisible now. Wild plants had grown where sacks of pig feed once lay stacked. The deep well pump Roger installed was rusted but still standing like a lonely monument.
Roger stepped forward and pushed aside a curtain of hanging vines.
Then he froze.
A sound drifted through the quiet morning.
“Ngrok… ngrok…”
He didn’t move.
For a moment he thought his mind was playing tricks on him.
But then he heard it again.
The unmistakable grunt of a pig.
Roger slowly approached the fence, which was now barely visible beneath tall weeds. His hands trembled slightly as he pushed aside the grass and looked inside the old pen.
And suddenly his breath caught in his throat.
Pigs.
Dozens of them.
Some large and thick-bodied, their backs shining dark under the morning light. Others small and restless, chasing each other in circles through the mud. Piglets squealed as they ran between their mothers.
Roger blinked hard.
He couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
“How…?” he whispered.
Mang Tino sat down on a rock nearby, as if he had already gone through this same disbelief days earlier.
“When you left,” the old man said slowly, “some pigs were still alive inside the pens. A few days later, they broke through the fence.”
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