by Levi Abadilla (@escapedscp.bsky.social)
Young Adult Mystery
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Query
WRETCHED GENIUSES is a dual POV young adult mystery complete at 90,000 words, in which an honor student investigates a series of murders in her school and discovers her classmate is a vigilante going after the murderers. It will appeal to fans of the teen vigilantism of Death Note written by Tsugumi Ohba, and the academic rivalry of Emma Lord’s The Rival. It is set in the bustling city of Cebu, Philippines and heavily features Filipino (specifically Cebuano) culture.
Fifteen-year-old Leia Ymmaculada is every Filipino parent’s dream child: She’s polite, responsible, and would be at the top of her class if not for her long-time academic rival, Rai Diosanto—an immovable obstacle since third grade. But when Leia finds her homeroom teacher’s corpse on campus, her ordinary life becomes a living nightmare. One after another, people are murdered while the corrupt local police force looks the other way. After one of Leia’s closest friends is murdered and justice seems impossible, Leia must overcome her fear and investigate the murders herself. Desperate to find her friend’s killer, Leia immerses herself in getting to the bottom of the mystery, only to find she’s bit off more than she can chew when signs point to her rival Rai being a murderer; except he’s not the one responsible for the murders at school. He’s discovered multiple culprits behind the attacks and has already brutally dealt with one.
Sixteen-year-old Rai Diosanto is the perfect Filipino son: He’s dependable, charming, and at the top of everything he puts effort into, whether it’s sports or academics. He also happens to be a vigilante serial killer. When the body count on campus rises and the cops don’t do their jobs, he decides to hunt down the killers himself—only to discover his uncle and father are complicit in the crimes. Rai must decide what he values more: his family or his conviction to rid the streets of evil.
Both Leia and Rai are caught at a difficult crossroads. Leia must make a choice: Turn in the only person doing something about the murders or join him in his bloody crusade for justice. Rai must decide whether to kill or spare her for knowing his secret, and if the blood he’s willing to shed includes his family and an innocent girl.
Similar to Leia and Rai, I am a Filipino writer who grew up in the Cebu province, and I wanted to write a story reflecting my culture and my home city. My work has been featured in Singapore Unbound, Hominum Journal, and Black Fox Literary Magazine.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
- MX. SINISTER
Leia hadn’t seen her father’s grave in nine years. Not since she and her mother left Manila for Cebu; an annual visit was a long and expensive trip they couldn’t afford. So, for All Souls’, she made do by constructing what should have been his altar1 in the living room.
“Hey, Dad,” Leia greeted his photo as she sparked the lighter in her hand. She held the flame to the candle on the right side of his photo, then to the one on the left. “Sorry the house is a mess; I slept in and had to hurry before the stores filled up.”
Candles lit, she pocketed the lighter and adjusted the platters of food on the altar. Nang2 Lita was selling bud-bud3 and biko4 at the nearby chapel, so she’d gotten five of each. The pancit was homemade—Mom’s recipe, one Dad used to adore; Leia had made it her personal tradition to offer the dish during Kalag-kalag5.
“I’m doing well. I got my NCAE6 results back right before sembreak7, and…well, you know how it goes for honor students. Most of everything’s a good match. But the preferential part of the exam seems to think I’d be a fit for something with psychology.” She nudged her father’s photo back so it wasn’t so close to the food. It was a zoomed-in print of a larger picture, one where her father was carrying her four-year-old self while they stood under a large, multicolored umbrella at the beach. The full version of it sat on her bedroom desk. “Wouldn’t that be funny? I could continue tradition—not that Mom practices these days, but it’d be hilarious to have another Dr. Ymmaculada in the family.”
Leia swept her gaze over her small, six-by-four living room: thin unpainted plywood walls, a teal tile-print vinyl floormat, a once-maroon two-seater + one-seater sofa set, and a CRT TV older than her. To her right, the floormat continued into the even tinier kitchen-slash-dining room.
Outside of her presence, the house was empty. It was Kalag-kalag, but Mom couldn’t be bothered to pay respects to Dad’s altar. Again.
That was fine. Her absence meant the woman wasn’t around to throw a fit about her deceased husband’s photo being somewhere she could see it. Some years ago, Amaranthine Ymmaculada decided having reminders of the love of her life passing was too much to bear and burned everything she could get her hands on. Leia had sequestered as much of her father’s things as she could in her room and declared it a safe zone from her mother’s grief-driven pyromania.
“Mom is…” Leia folded her hands on her lap. “Well, the same as she’s been these past few years. Still bouncing from job to job, mostly piss drunk elsewhere, barely home…”
A flash of irritation had Leia flattening her mouth. Mourning had no set timetable, nor a uniform presentation, but the thought of her mother’s miserable habits still rankled. It had been a relief when the woman started to shed her lethargic demeanor after their move to her hometown, but Amaranthine’s newfound energy quickly soured into a habit of drowning herself in substances. Amaranthine lived at bars more than she did at their house, to the point where Leia had to forge her signature for student forms; when Amaranthine was home, she ran her mouth micromanaging everything Leia did. Leia found herself preferring her mother not come home at all.
Leia pushed her dark hair away from her face. Grace. She had to give her mother grace. It wasn’t like Leia hadn’t done some completely off-the-rails shit: A few months after their move to Cebu and her mother started leaving her alone in the house, Leia constructed an imaginary version of her then-recently-deceased father to have full conversations and arguments with. She only stopped after she visited her school’s guidance counselor, and the counselor had looked at her like she just confessed to killing a dog.
“There’s some irony to a former psychiatrist specializing in addiction acting so…” Leia shook her head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be saying that about my own mother.” She bowed her head and muttered a quick prayer. She’d never been religious, but she made an exception for her father’s memory.
Leia puttered around the house for the rest of the day—cleaning up her mess in the kitchen, answering the door when neighbors stopped by to gift food8, and doing a quick review of her class notes since she had three quizzes and one practical waiting for her once sembreak ended. At five o’clock, she tidied her things and heated some chicken and pancit for dinner.
Her phone buzzed as she was transferring the reheated noodles into a bowl. She wiped her hands and then fished the device out of her pocket to check the notification.
It was a message from Diosanto on her seldom-used Facebook profile, the one she only got because San Jose Private Academy insisted on posting announcements on their page instead of their website.
Leia frowned. Had she forgotten to block him on this platform? She’d blocked him on every other account she had.
His message read: There’s been a scheduling issue with my ferry. I won’t be home in time for the first day back. Get the classroom open.
SJPA high school class presidents were given a copy of their classroom keys and tasked with unlocking the doors every school day. It was the school’s bid to teach responsibility to would-be leaders. Every section’s president would, ideally, be punctual enough to get the room open before flag ceremony, and attentive enough to never lose the keys.
Diosanto had left his keys with Leia before sembreak, since he was visiting family in Ilocos. As the XII-A-STEM class president, it was his job to make sure their peers didn’t get stranded outside their room, and as class vice-president, it was Leia’s job to step in when he was absent. A sensible expectation to have of her, but this was Diosanto—the same guy who once pulled an all-nighter proofreading her portion of a group presentation when she’d already proofread it thrice. That fussy freak had grimaced when he handed her the keyring; he clearly didn’t think much of her organizational skills and was only passing off the task to her due to extenuating circumstances.
She scoffed. Diosanto could do the work himself if he was going to be so persnickety. He had five days to make it back to Cebu before classes started on the 7th; that was plenty of time for his scheduling conflict to turn around. Leia opened the app to start drafting a reply, then paused.
If Diosanto didn’t arrive in time and she had to unlock the classroom door, that asshole would be proven right in his preparation and she would be giving him more ammunition to aggrieve her. Mundane as this issue was, heaven forbid she hand him any victory. Give the Devil an inch and he’ll take a mile, and all that.
Leia clicked on his profile and hit block instead. If there was a merciful God, Diosanto’s ship would sink during his return trip.
#
“Morning, Leia!” Kenneth waved as she trudged up the stairs that led to the XII-A-STEM classroom. “What’s playing?”
Leia took her earbuds out and exited the music app on her phone. “IDKHOW,” she said as she fished the classroom keys from her skirt pocket. “And good morning.”
Regretfully, Diosanto was a no-show today—he’d sent her another message earlier, this time on Discord, saying that he wouldn’t be home until the afternoon. Leia blocked him on that account too and rushed through her morning chores to get to school before seven o’clock.
She entertained the thought of Diosanto getting shredded by sharks as she unlocked the door. It would be nice if she never had to discover yet another account she’d forgotten to block him on. How the hell was he even finding her shit? She rarely gave her handles out to people—wait, it was probably his younger brother. The kid was an angel compared to Diosanto, and Leia had no qualms being friends with him online. Asshole probably hijacked Ariel’s account and got her usernames from there.
The handful of XII-A-STEM students milling about the corridor filed into the classroom. Some launched into hushed conversations about what they did over the holidays as they waited for their homeroom teacher, Miss Corazon, to show up. Leia folded her arms on her desk and pillowed her cheek on them, closing her eyes for a brief nap.
She was buoyed back to wakefulness by the increased volume of the chatter around her. She checked her phone—she’d slept for fifteen minutes. The front desk was still bare of Miss Corazon’s presence, and with no teacher around, the class had split into little cliques, catching up and sharing food.
Strange, Miss Corazon wasn’t usually tardy. Perhaps she had gotten caught up in the back-to-school traffic today.
#
1 During Kalag-kalag (All Saints’ and All Souls’), loved ones visit their deceased’s grave(s), clean them, and set up altars to offer food, candles, and flowers on.↩ 2 Short for ‘manang’, which means ‘big sister’, though it carries the association of being used to address much, much older women (usually decades older than the speaker).↩ 3 Rice cake made with glutinous rice, coconut milk, and sugar, shaped into sticks and wrapped in banana leaves. ↩ 4 Rice cake made with sticky rice, coco nut milk, and brown sugar, topped with latik. Comes in various shapes. ↩ 5 The Cebuano colloquial for All Saints’ and All Souls’. ‘Kalag’ translates to soul, spirit, or ghost. The difference depends on the context. ↩ 6 National Career Assessment Examinations. As it says on the tin, it’s a national test that helps students determine what kind of career might fit them best. ↩ 7 Semestral breaks are colloquially referred to as ‘sembreak’s by students. ↩ 8 During any kind of celebration, it is customary to gift neighbors food, especially when you have it in excess. ↩