‘I’m Everybody’s Ate, But the Ate Behind Me Is Mara’

When Chantelle Hernandez walked into the PKL broadcast room for the first time, Mara Aquino was already there—smiling, waiting, the way an older sister might wait for the younger one who finally decided to come home.

The dressing room felt like the South Pole, the air sharp and cold. Mara and Chantelle sat before the mirrors, getting their makeup done, eating pomelo and puto bumbong between laughs. We intruded into this moment. 

“Mara, anong reaction mo when Chantelle joined you in PKL?” we asked. 

“Oh, I was really, really happy,” Mara says, her words rising like the hum of reunion. “I’ve been wanting her. I wanted her to move with me, but at that time, she wasn’t ready yet.”

Now she is.

“When she finally made the choice,” Mara continues, “it’s like when you go to college away from home and then you go back home to see your friends again. It’s just like that.”

It sounds simple, but it isn’t. It’s rare, in a scene that moves as fast as esports does, to have someone waiting for you on the other side.

Chantelle listens, nodding. “Totoo, sobrang totoo,” she says. “People see me as their ate. Pero ang hindi nila alam, ang ate behind me ay si Mara.”

You can tell the weight of that word, ate. How it moves between them, part shield, part anchor. They’ve shared the same air of studio lights before, the same quick rhythms of production. And even apart, they fall into sync again without trying.

The move to PKL didn’t come easy. But it was Mara who helped her through it. “She was an eye-opener to things and to exploring things,” Chantelle said. 

Still, when she arrived, she was nervous. It’s strange to think of Chantelle—steady, sure, the voice of reason—shaking. But she was.

“Two different things ang MLBB at HOK,” she says. “Ayaw ko naman na i-present ang sarili ko na mababa doon sa standard na nai-set ko before.”

There’s a kind of honesty in that fear. The kind that doesn’t weaken a person but defines them.

“Mara’s very stable as a support,” she adds. “Kasi initially, takot na takot ako, but with her guiding me, sabi ko, kaya ko ito.”

And she did. 

Some people call it a transfer, a career move, a new start. But for Mara and Chantelle, it feels more like a return.

To what, exactly, is harder to name—maybe to friendship, maybe to the rhythm of work that doesn’t feel like work anymore.

Maybe just to each other.

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