Marvin Reglos confided in his sister last week that he would be joining this “organization.” The San Beda College law freshman, who dreamed of becoming the first lawyer in their clan, told her not to worry.
Then, on Saturday morning, as she was cleaning his apartment while he was away, she accidentally broke his wall mirror. The next day, Reglos, his body battered and bruised when left at an Antipolo City hospital by a group of men, became the latest victim of outlawed fraternity hazing in the country.
His youngest sister Lorvie recounted these details in an Inquirer interview on Friday as she and her family, who hail from Isabela province, cried for justice.
“We want all those present in the hazing and the entire organization punished and jailed,” referring to the Lambda Rho Beta, the fraternity her brother so trustingly joined.
“He was determined to become the first Reglos lawyer,” said Lorvie, a 21-year-old airline employee, in a phone interview.
Reglos, 25, decided to study law while he was still teaching business subjects and statistics to college students in his alma mater in Isabela, she said. He resigned from his teaching job last year so he could study law full time.
The eldest in the brood of three and son of a landed farmer and a teacher, Reglos would often go early to school to read court cases in the library hours before his classes, Lorvie recalled.
Last week, the siblings met at the San Beda campus gate in Manila, where Marvin told her in confidence that he was joining a certain “organization” which would hold its initiation rites in Antipolo City.
“He pleaded with me not to tell mommy and daddy. I was worried. But he assured me he would be okay. I told him that whatever it was, be sure to think it through,” Lorvie said.
Their last communication was through text messages on Saturday morning, Feb. 18. She texted him to say that she broke the custom-built wall mirror in his apartment in Sampaloc, Manila, as she was tidying up the place.
“He texted back: ‘Bakit mo binasag (Why did you break it)? It’s a special gift from father,’” she said.
Lorvie noted that the way his brother reacted that day, it seemed that Reglos wasn’t that angry, unlike before whenever she would lose or break his stuff.
But then, it turned out to be the message that would bring a lifetime of good family memories to a painful end.
“I’ll miss the times we spent watching movies and going to the mall. When we were together, we would always laugh about anything,” Lorvie said of her “best friend.”
She said their mother, Myrna, who rushed home from South Korea where she works as a teacher, was so deeply shaken by Reglos’ death that “she’s no longer coming back to Korea.”
“She said there was no more point working abroad since her only purpose in doing that was to support my brother’s studies,” she said.