In the end, nobody was really ever able to figure it all out.

The taxi driver said it was the fault of the couple on the motorcycle.

He said they zipped past him on the driver side and—plop!—man and woman were thrown about ten feet from the cab’s front bumper, onto the pavement, just missing the abutment of the sidewalk by a chip of skull. And had they been any unluckier, right smack into a house by the very roadside whose exterior walls were made of jagged rocks because it was designed to look good that way.

The guy who drove the motorcycle said to one of the two men who comprised the rescue team who had arrived minutes after the accident that he carried with him no license but it was definitely not his fault.

The medic, of course, had no business figuring out who was at fault. His job was to check if the couple was still stitched up together. He seemed certain they were. He looked them over and said he’d radio for the investigator. And then he lit up a cigarette.

The taxi driver lit up one of his own and just stood there.

The other medic, with the stretcher, set it out for the couple but did not make any move to put them there. He didn’t smoke.

By then the couple were sitting on the concrete-with-set-decorative-stones plant box by the wall of jagged rocks of the house by the roadside. He stroked her shoulders while she sighed and stroked her scraped ankle. They had no helmets on. The guy was dazed. His bloodshot eyes stared out both in relief and disbelief that they were alive. His dreadlocked hair was shooting out in shock.

They were, in fact, alive.

More than two motorcycle riders were not when they found themselves on the same spot one luckless night. One reportedly rammed right into the wall of jagged rocks.

What is wrong with this spot? It’s a little section of road in San Roque Marikina, where the shoe museum is, that almost runs parallel the Marikina River and seemingly following its curve. There’s a blind spot there somewhere. There is also a narrow road dissecting the main road that seemingly appears out of nowhere as you negotiate the curve. Apparently, many people upon seeing this narrow road have the compulsion to take it and so make an abrupt right turn. That’s when the motorcycles start hitting the wall of the house standing on the corner of the main road and the narrow one.

I live two blocks down that narrow street. It was 3 AM, I was still awake standing by the front gate, smoking. And then I heard that sound. It was really a plop—kind of like a moving plastic part hitting an inanimate object. I knew then that another motorcycle had lucked out on that favorite corner.

I went to the scene. I went because it was 3AM and this is what you do at 3AM.

We made a small, curious crowd: Two gasoline boys from the Shell station beside the house of jagged rocks; two middle-aged men who had somehow materialized there; a tricycle driver who waylaid himself to formulate his own theory of the accident.

And there were these two teenage boys. I figured they were passengers of the cab because they obviously weren’t from the neighborhood. They also didn’t seem to be walking to anywhere near the neighborhood. They were just there. And they were drunk.

Drunk teenage boys are funny.

One boy kept saying to the couple, “kasalanan nung taxi ser” over and over again. He went up to me and said, “ikaw ser, anong opinion mo, kasalanan ng taxi ser ano?”

His companion took the role of the pacifist. This is how drunk teenage boys do it in a strange neighborhood.

And then the loud boy suddenly exclaimed, “minor injury!” to no one in particular. I figured, gin. Gin did that.

So there we were: the chain-smoking taxi driver, the dazed couple and their hapless motorbike, the two medics, the gasoline boys, the men who materialized from nowhere, the tricycle driver, and the two drunk teenage boys.

We looked at each other until we decided among ourselves that it was time to go home.

It was almost 4AM and this is what happens at 4AM.