Dito Lang - By Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera

Written By: Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera

Category: Horror & Gothic Fiction

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the evocative short story "Dito Lang," Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera presents a gripping narrative that navigates the complex interplay between truth and belief. As part of Hashtag Kalakar's Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this entry delves into the world of journalism where the protagonist grapples with the loneliness of truth and the power of storytelling. Set against a backdrop of societal challenges, the story explores themes of resilience and the indomitable spirit required to confront and narrate uncomfortable realities.

About the Work

"Dito Lang" unfolds with a poignant and introspective tone, capturing the essence of a journalist's struggle against apathy and resistance. The story masterfully intertwines moments of melancholy with unexpected encounters that reignite purpose. Through vivid imagery and a reflective narrative style, Valera explores the intricate dance between skepticism and belief, ultimately conveying a message of courage and perseverance in the face of doubt.

Dito Lang

Original Submission by Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera

Dito Lang

The journalist had begun to suspect that the truth was a rather lonely thing.

He had spent six years chasing it through government offices, crowded courtrooms, barangay halls, and the damp, overheated rooms where men in barong Tagalog spoke of public service while refusing to answer the simplest questions. He had written about funds that went missing, contracts awarded to friends, families driven from their homes, and promises made at podiums beneath banners bearing the faces of men who had never learned the meaning of shame. He had learned to recognize the careful language of a lie, the practiced smile of a politician, and the particular silence that fell over a room when somebody important had been mentioned.

He had believed, once, that a good story could change things. That if he gathered enough evidence, asked enough questions, and wrote clearly enough, people would understand. He had imagined readers putting down their newspapers with clenched fists, demanding answers from their representatives, refusing to be fooled a second time. He had imagined that somewhere, at the end of every long night spent writing, there would be a small but undeniable difference between the world as it was and the world he had helped make it.

Instead, his articles were read by a handful of people, shared by fewer, and forgotten by the following morning. The comments beneath his investigations were filled with accusations that he was biased, paid, bitter, or simply jealous. Readers defended the very men whose names appeared in his reports. They called his evidence fabricated and his sources liars, often without reading beyond the headline. Sometimes his stories were drowned beneath celebrity gossip, election surveys, and the latest quarrel between politicians who had spent their careers mistaking public office for a family heirloom.

His most recent investigation had taken him three months to complete. He had followed a trail of public funds through a series of suspicious contracts, interviewed people who had been frightened into silence, and stayed awake until sunrise checking every date, every figure, every quotation. When the story was finally published, it barely made a ripple. The politician at its centre went on television two days later, laughed at the allegations, and received a standing ovation at a rally that evening.

The journalist watched the footage from his apartment, then closed his laptop.

For the first time since he had entered the profession, he wondered whether he had mistaken stubbornness for purpose.

That afternoon, he drafted his resignation.

He did not send it. Instead, he printed it, folded the paper twice, and placed it inside his bag. He told himself he would deliver it to his editor the following morning. Until then, he needed somewhere to sit where nobody would ask him to write anything, defend anything, or explain why he had not yet managed to change the world.

He found himself in a small public park in Quezon City, several streets away from the newsroom. The afternoon was unusually mild for October. A few clouds had gathered over the buildings, and the trees cast long shadows across the footpaths. Children played near the rusted swings while their parents sat beneath the shade, watching with the weary vigilance of people who had spent the entire day working and still had another household to return to. Somewhere nearby, a vendor was calling out the price of ice cream. A basketball struck the concrete in steady, hollow thuds.

The journalist settled upon a wooden bench, took out his notebook, and stared at the blank page.

He had been staring at it for nearly twenty minutes when a voice interrupted him.

“Kuya, are you sad?”

He looked up.

A little girl stood before him, perhaps eight or nine years old, with untidy black hair and a yellow shirt that hung loosely over her shorts. Her knees were dusty, and one of her shoelaces had come undone. She held a small plastic windmill in one hand, its coloured blades turning whenever the breeze passed through the park. She was looking at him with the sort of unembarrassed curiosity that adults spent years learning to suppress.

“No,” he said.

She tilted her head.

“Then why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like somebody ate your favourite food and didn't leave you any.”

Despite himself, he laughed. It was a short, unwilling sound, but the girl seemed pleased with having produced it.

“I'm working,” he told her, gesturing toward his notebook.

She peered at the page.

“There's nothing there.”

“I'm thinking.”

“About what?”

“Work.”

“Isn't that boring?”

“Sometimes.”

“Then why do it?”

He looked at her. She looked back, entirely satisfied that she had asked a reasonable question and was entitled to a reasonable answer.

“Because somebody has to.”

The girl considered this for a moment, then pointed toward the empty stretch of pavement in front of them.

“Will you play with me?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I have work to do.”

“But you're not doing anything.”

“I'm thinking about doing something.”

“That sounds even more boring.”

He shut his notebook.

“Don't you have friends to play with?”

“They went home.”

“Then why don't you go home, too?”

“Because I don't want to yet.”

She climbed onto the bench beside him without asking permission, swinging her legs above the ground. He considered moving to another seat, but something about her persistence reminded him of a younger cousin who had once followed him around the house for an entire afternoon, demanding that he watch her perform the same dance until he had memorized every step.

“What is your name?” he asked.

She told him, but a sudden burst of laughter from a nearby group of children swallowed the answer. He asked her to repeat it. She only grinned and asked his name in return.

He gave it to her.

“Are you a policeman?”

“No.”

“A teacher?”

“No.”

“Then what are you?”

“I'm a journalist.”

She frowned. The word seemed to require some careful consideration.

“What's that?”

He had explained his profession to countless people before, usually to officials who wished he would stop asking questions or strangers who wanted him to take their side in some local dispute. Never had he been asked by someone so small, with such genuine interest.

“I write stories,” he said.

“Oh! Like fairy tales?”

“Not quite.”

“Then what kind?”

“The kind that tell people what is happening in the world.”

“Like the news?”

“Exactly.”

She kicked her feet.

“Do you write about good things or bad things?”

“Both.”

“Which one do you like better?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“I suppose I write more about the bad things.”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes people need to know when something is wrong.”

“Like when somebody steals your lunch?”

“Something like that.”

“Or when somebody says they didn't break the vase, even though they did?”

He smiled. “Yes. Something like that.”

“Or when somebody hurts somebody else and says they didn't?”

The smile left his face, though the girl seemed not to notice.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Especially then.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Then you're like a person who tells on people.”

He nearly laughed again.

“That's one way of putting it.”

“Do they get angry when you tell on them?”

“Sometimes.”

“Even when they did something bad?”

“Especially then.”

She seemed to find this deeply unreasonable. For a while, she occupied herself with the windmill, blowing on its blades and watching them spin. The journalist watched her from the corner of his eye. There was something peculiar about the ease with which she had settled beside him, as though she had known him for years and had simply been waiting for him to finish whatever he was doing.

After a few minutes, she asked, “Then why are you sad if you get to tell people when somebody is bad?”

He looked down at his notebook.

“Because sometimes,” he said, “people don't want to listen.”

The girl stopped blowing on her windmill.

“But you told them?”

“Yes.”

“And they didn't listen?”

“Not enough.”

“Why not?”

He rubbed his eyes. He had spent the past several weeks trying to answer that question for himself. He had no intention of discussing it with a child he had met in a park, and yet the words began to come, slowly at first, then with the relief of water escaping a blocked pipe.

“Because people already have their minds made up. Sometimes they like the person I'm writing about. Sometimes they think I'm lying because the truth makes somebody they admire look bad. Sometimes they don't care what happened, so long as it doesn't happen to them. And sometimes the people who have done something wrong have so much money, so many friends, so much power that they can make the truth difficult to find.”

The girl listened without interrupting. Her windmill had stopped turning.

“So what do you do?”

“I write.”

“And then?”

“I publish the story.”

“And then?”

He looked at her.

“Sometimes nothing happens.”

She appeared to think about this.

“Then you write another one.”

He stared at her for a moment, then laughed—not because it was funny, but because she had made something he had spent months agonizing over sound so painfully simple.

“Is that what you would do?”

She shrugged.

“If the first one doesn't work, maybe the next one will.”

He leaned back against the bench. Above them, the branches stirred in the breeze, and a few dry leaves drifted onto the pavement. He found himself telling her about his first published article, how he had been so proud that he had bought several copies of the newspaper and carried them home as though they were precious things. He told her about the first time an editor had praised his work, the first time a source had trusted him with a story that frightened them, and the first time he had watched an official stumble over a question because the answer would have revealed too much.

He told her about the stories that never made it to publication, the people who had begged him to write about their suffering and then begged him not to reveal their names, the nights he had spent checking facts because one mistake could destroy a person's credibility. He told her about the strange loneliness of being certain of something that nobody else seemed willing to believe.

He had not realized how much he needed to say these things until he found himself saying them.

The girl asked questions whenever she did not understand. She did not pretend to grasp the intricacies of political patronage or the ways in which money could turn a public institution into somebody's private kingdom. She did not know why an editor might hesitate to publish a story or why a politician's supporters might defend him even when the evidence was staring them in the face. She only knew that if something bad happened, somebody ought to tell people about it.

“Even if they get angry?” she asked.

“Even if they get angry.”

“Even if nobody believes you?”

He hesitated.

The girl waited.

“Even then,” he answered, though the words felt unfamiliar in his mouth.

She nodded, apparently satisfied. Then she asked whether he had ever written about children.

“A few times.”

“Did you write about children who were hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Did people listen?”

He looked toward the playground, where a boy was crying because another child had taken his ball. Their parents had already begun negotiating the matter with the grave seriousness of diplomats.

“Some people did,” he said.

“Then those stories were important.”

He looked at her again.

“How do you know?”

“Because they happened.”

For a long moment, the journalist said nothing.

He had spent years learning how to make a story compelling, how to find the angle that would draw a reader's attention, how to place a fact beside another fact until the two together revealed something neither could say alone. He had learned to think about headlines, audience engagement, public interest, and whether a story would survive the endless competition for attention.

He had begun, somewhere along the way, to believe that a story nobody read was a story that had failed.

But the girl did not understand any of those things. She had no use for circulation figures or trending topics. She did not know how many people had shared his latest investigation or how many had dismissed it. To her, the matter was settled by a simple distinction: something had happened, and therefore it deserved to be told.

He wondered when he had stopped believing that.

The afternoon passed around them. The vendor's calls grew fainter as he moved toward the park entrance. Parents began gathering their children, wiping dusty knees and fastening bags. A streetlamp flickered to life beside the footpath. The journalist checked his watch and realized that nearly two hours had passed.

He could not remember the last time he had spoken about his work without feeling the need to defend it.

“Do you like being a journalist?” the girl asked.

He considered the question carefully.

“I used to love it.”

“Why did you stop?”

He looked at his notebook, then at the folded resignation letter inside his bag.

“I think I got tired of trying.”

The girl swung her legs.

“Maybe you just need a rest.”

He smiled faintly.

“Maybe.”

“Then rest. But don't stop forever.”

He looked at her, surprised by the sudden firmness in her voice.

“Why not?”

“Because then the bad people win.”

It was such a childish answer, and yet it struck him harder than any argument he had heard in the newsroom. She said it without grandiosity, without pretending that the world was simple or that good people always prevailed. To her, it was merely obvious that if somebody was doing something wrong, the person who knew about it ought not to walk away.

He felt something shift within him—not a revelation, not a sudden return of the certainty he had possessed as a young reporter, but a small loosening of the knot that had been tightening in his chest for months.

Perhaps he had mistaken exhaustion for the end of his purpose. Perhaps the work was difficult precisely because it mattered. Perhaps he had been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of wondering whether the world would listen, he ought to have been asking whether he could live with himself if he stopped speaking.

He opened his notebook again.

The girl leaned over to look.

“Are you writing now?”

“Yes.”

“What are you writing?”

He glanced at the page. He had not written anything about politics, or money, or corruption. He had simply written a sentence.

‘Something does not cease to be true merely because nobody is willing to believe it.’

He stared at the words for a moment, then underlined them.

The girl nodded approvingly, though he doubted she understood why he had written them. She asked him to draw a house beside the sentence. He did, and she insisted that it needed a chimney. He added one. Then she asked for a cat, and he drew a cat so poorly that she laughed until she had to hold her stomach.

It was the first time in weeks that he had forgotten to be miserable.

By the time they stood to leave, the sky had turned the colour of bruised peaches, and the air had grown cool. The journalist slipped his notebook into his bag and walked with the girl toward the park entrance. He found himself matching his pace to her short steps, slowing whenever she stopped to inspect something on the pavement.

At the gate, he turned to her.

“Where do you live? I'll walk you home.”

The girl pointed vaguely toward the trees.

“Dito lang.”

He looked in the direction she had indicated. Beyond the park stood a row of houses, their windows beginning to glow in the evening light.

“Which house?”

She pointed again.

“Dito lang nga.”

He chuckled.

“All right, all right. But you should go home now. It's getting dark.”

She nodded. Then, after a moment, she looked up at him.

“Kuya?”

“Yes?”

“Will you write another story?”

He looked at her for a long time.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I will.”

She smiled.

“Good.”

His phone began to ring.

He took it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and saw his editor's name. He almost let it go to voicemail. Then he remembered the resignation letter in his bag and decided that, if he was going to quit, he ought at least to tell his editor himself.

“Wait here,” he told the girl. “I'll just take this.”

She nodded and wandered a few steps toward the trees.

“Hello?”

“Are you still planning to resign?” his editor asked without preamble.

The journalist looked toward the girl, who had begun spinning her windmill again.

“No,” he said.

There was a pause.

“No?”

“No. I'm not resigning.”

His editor let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief. "Good. Very good. Because I've got something for you, and I think you're the right person to handle it."

The journalist straightened.

“What is it?”

“A school shooting. It happened several weeks ago. A student was killed. The administration has been giving statements that don't quite match the accounts we've received from people who were there. There are allegations that certain details were deliberately withheld, and the family has been struggling to get answers. Nobody wants to touch the story because the school has connections, and you know how these things go.”

The journalist's stomach tightened.

“Have the authorities investigated?”

“Officially, yes. But there are inconsistencies. We're still verifying what we can, and I don't want us publishing anything we can't substantiate. I need someone to speak with the witnesses, examine the timeline, and find out what happened. No assumptions. No sensationalism. Just the facts.”

He looked at the park, at the children leaving with their parents, at the little girl waiting beneath a tree.

“When did it happen?”

His editor gave him the date.

The journalist felt a faint, inexplicable chill.

“What's the student's name?”

His editor told him.

For a moment, the world seemed to draw inward.

He knew that name.

He could not say how. It was not a name he remembered seeing in the news, nor one he had encountered in his investigations. And yet, hearing it spoken aloud produced the same peculiar sensation as recognizing a face in a crowd, or remembering a dream the moment before it disappears.

He looked toward the tree.

The girl was standing very still.

“Are you there?” his editor asked.

“Yes,” he answered, his voice suddenly hoarse. “I'm here.”

“Do you know the name?”

“No. I mean—no, I don't think so. It just sounds familiar.”

“Strange. Anyway, I need you in the newsroom tomorrow morning. We'll go over the details then. And listen, I'm glad you're staying. You're a good reporter. Don't let the noise convince you otherwise.”

The journalist swallowed.

“Thank you.”

“All right. I'll see you tomorrow.”

The call ended.

For a moment, he remained where he was, phone pressed against his ear, listening to the silence left behind.

Then he remembered the girl.

He turned toward the tree.

“Hey!” he called. “Wait a minute!”

She was standing several metres away, beneath the spreading branches. The windmill hung loosely from her hand. She seemed smaller now, though he could not tell whether it was because of the distance or the fading light.

He hurried toward her.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “That was my editor. I have to go back to work tomorrow.”

The girl smiled.

“I know.”

He stopped.

“You know?”

She only nodded.

He looked at her more carefully. Something about her face unsettled him. Not her expression, which was as bright and ordinary as it had been all afternoon, but the way the evening light fell across her features. The light seemed to pass through the edges of her hair, leaving the branches behind her strangely visible.

He blinked.

For an instant, she appeared perfectly solid.

Then she shifted her weight, and he saw the tree trunk through the sleeve of her yellow shirt.

His breath caught.

The girl looked down at herself, as though she had only just noticed.

“Oh,” she said softly.

He could not move.

The windmill slipped from her fingers. It struck the ground without a sound.

“What's happening?” he whispered.

The girl looked up at him. She did not appear frightened. If anything, she seemed a little embarrassed, as though she had been caught doing something she was not supposed to do.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

She glanced toward the darkening park.

“I think I have to go now.”

He reached for her, but his hand passed through the air where her shoulder should have been. The cold that rushed over his fingers was so sudden that he recoiled.

“No,” he said, though he did not know what he was refusing. “Wait. What is this? Who are you?”

The girl smiled sadly.

“Kuya, you promised.”

His heart seemed to stop.

He stared at her, trying to understand, trying to force the afternoon into some shape that made sense. The questions, the windmill, the way she had spoken about stories that nobody wanted to hear. Her insistence that something did not stop being true simply because people refused to believe it.

Then he remembered the name his editor had given him.

He remembered the school shooting.

He remembered that the student had been dead for weeks.

His mouth went dry.

“Your name,” he whispered. “Tell me your name.”

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she spoke it.

The same name.

The very same name.

He stumbled backwards.

“No,” he said. “No, that's—”

But the girl was already fading. Her yellow shirt grew pale against the darkening trees, and the outline of her face became indistinct. For one terrible moment, he could see the park through her entire body, as though she were no more than a reflection upon glass.

She gave him a small wave.

“Goodbye, Kuya.”

Then she ran.

She ran toward the trees, her little legs carrying her across the grass, and the journalist stood rooted to the spot as her figure grew fainter and fainter until the darkness swallowed her whole.

He called after her.

He ran toward the place where he had last seen her.

He searched beneath the trees, along the footpaths, beside the empty swings. He asked a vendor whether he had seen a little girl in a yellow shirt. The man looked at him strangely and shook his head. He asked a security guard whether a child had been playing near the gate. The guard said the park had been nearly empty for the past hour.

Nobody had seen her.

Nobody remembered her.

The journalist stood alone beneath the tree, his hands trembling. He looked down and noticed something on the grass near his shoe.

A small plastic windmill.

Its coloured blades turned gently in the evening breeze.

He bent to pick it up.

The plastic was cold.

For a long time, he simply stood there, holding it in his palm.

Then he went home.

He did not sleep that night.

He searched the news archives, official statements, and public records until his eyes burned. He found the reports about the shooting, the brief announcements, the carefully worded statements from the school administration. He found photographs of the campus and the names of the students who had been injured. He found a photograph of a little girl with untidy black hair, smiling at the camera, wearing a yellow shirt.

He stared at the photograph until the room began to blur.

It was her.

The same face. The same eyes. The same small, crooked smile.

The caption beneath the photograph gave her age.

Nine years old.

The article said she had died at the scene.

The official statement described the incident as a tragic but isolated event. The school administration expressed its condolences and asked the public to respect the privacy of those affected. No further details were provided. Within days, the story had disappeared from the headlines.

The journalist sat back in his chair.

He thought of the girl's questions.

‘Does that mean it didn't happen?’

He opened a blank document.

For a long time, he did not type. He simply watched the cursor blink upon the screen, a small, patient light waiting for him to decide whether he still had something to say.

Then he began.

He wrote about the shooting, carefully distinguishing what had been confirmed from what remained unverified. He documented the discrepancies in the official accounts, the unanswered questions, and the people who had agreed to speak on the condition that their identities be protected. He would need to make calls in the morning. He would need to revisit the school, speak to the family, and examine every document he could obtain. He would need to be careful. He would need to be thorough. He would need to be willing to have his work challenged, scrutinized, and perhaps ignored.

He wrote the girl's name at the top of the page.

Then he began again, determined to get every detail right.

He did not know whether the article would be widely read. He did not know whether it would lead to an investigation or whether the administration would issue another statement denying wrongdoing. He did not know whether the people who had defended the school would ever change their minds.

For the first time in months, none of those questions stopped him.

He wrote because a little girl had died.

He wrote because her story belonged to more than the people who wanted it forgotten.

He wrote because somewhere, beneath a tree in a public park, a child had sat beside a stranger and asked him to play, and when he had told her about the world, she had listened as though the truth still mattered.

He wrote because he had promised.

Outside his window, the city continued its restless life. Motorcycles passed along the road. A neighbour's television played through the thin walls. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked at nothing that the journalist could see.

He worked until dawn.

When the first light entered his apartment, he read the story from beginning to end. He checked every name, every date, every quotation. He removed a sentence that made an accusation he could not yet prove. He added a paragraph explaining what remained unknown. Then he sent the draft to his editor.

The reply came twenty minutes later.

‘Let's run with this. Keep digging.’

The journalist stared at the message.

Then, for the first time in a long while, he smiled.

He took the resignation letter from his bag, unfolded it, and tore it in half. He placed the pieces in the bin beside his desk and returned to the article.

Beside his keyboard lay the little plastic windmill.

He had placed it there the night before, though he could not remember bringing it home.

He picked it up and turned it between his fingers. One of the blades was cracked. The colours had faded slightly, and a thin layer of dust clung to its stem.

He thought of the girl sitting beside him on the bench, asking him questions no adult had thought to ask. He thought of her laughter when he drew the crooked cat. He thought of the way she had looked at him when he promised to write another story.

Then he turned back to his computer.

He would write about her.

He would write about what had happened, what was known, and what still needed to be answered. He would speak to her family. He would ask the questions nobody wanted to answer. He would keep going when the statements grew evasive and the comments grew cruel. He would not promise that justice would come, because he had learned enough about the world to know that such promises were not his to make.

But he could promise that the story would not disappear simply because someone wished it to.

And perhaps that was where journalism began again; not in the certainty that the world would listen, but in the refusal to let silence have the final word.

Years later, he would remember the afternoon in the park as the day he returned to his work. He would remember the windmill, the crooked cat, and the girl who had asked him why he looked so sad. He would remember the questions she had asked and the answers he had struggled to give.

He would remember that, for a little while, she had been alive beside him.

And perhaps, somewhere beyond the reach of official statements and forgotten headlines, the little girl had finally found her way home.

But on the journalist's desk, beneath the morning light, the windmill continued to turn.

Slowly.

Patiently.

As though somebody, somewhere, was still waiting for the story to be told.

And this time, he would tell it.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a celebration of literary creativity across genres. This prestigious platform invites writers to showcase their talents, offering a stage for diverse voices to be heard. Participants from around the world contribute to a vibrant tapestry of stories and poems, fostering a global conversation through the written word.

Thank you, Damielle Rovelyn V. Valera, for sharing "Dito Lang" with our community. Your story is a testament to the enduring power of truth and the courage it takes to pursue it. We are grateful for your contribution to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 and look forward to more of your compelling narratives.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.