---
*Haziq* was waiting outside the coffee shop he had chosen — not a big place, not somewhere that needed a reservation, just a corner shop with wooden chairs and the smell of coffee that was genuinely coffee and not the smell of air conditioning. He saw me from a distance and raised his hand in the way of someone who never felt awkward waiting.
"You're punctual." He smiled when I arrived.
"You're even earlier." I sat in the chair across from him.
"I'm usually early." He pushed the menu toward me. "Bad habit of IT people — if a system can crash in two minutes, a person can be late in two minutes."
I laughed — it came out on its own, without effort, in the way I hadn't realised I had missed until it was there.
We ordered. The coffee came. The conversation flowed in the way of conversations that didn't need to be worked at — about work, about the office, about *Syahmi* whom *Haziq* said he had known since university.
"How did you meet *En.* Zayriel?" I asked at one point — not planned, it came out the way a question that had been in the head too long finally came out.
*Haziq* turned his cup once. "He interviewed me when I applied for the job." He looked at the cup. "But before that — I had a friend who used to work with him. He said *En.* Zayriel was a bit different from ordinary bosses."
"Different how?"
"Different like — " *Haziq* stopped. Looking for the right word in the way of someone who had the word but wasn't sure it was a safe word to say. "Like he knew more than he should know. About people. About situations. Like he had already read a script that other people hadn't gotten yet."
I said nothing.
"That friend of mine left after four months." *Haziq* shrugged. "Said he felt tired. But I'd known him a long time — he isn't the tired type."
I looked at my coffee.
*Farhana isn't the resting type.*
*Haziq*'s friend isn't the tired type.
Two people. Two different sentences. One same thing in them.
---
An hour passed without my noticing an hour had passed.
*Haziq* talked about an old project — a system he had built when freelancing, that had a strange glitch he had never found a logical explanation for. The way he talked about that glitch had something different from the way ordinary IT people talked about technical problems — there was something in his eyes that was more than simply curious. More than simply wanting to solve a problem.
Like he genuinely believed there were things beyond logic that deserved to be taken seriously.
"Do you believe in things that can't be explained?" I asked.
He looked at me. Briefly — in the way of someone who hadn't expected that question from that direction at that moment.
"I do." Short. Without qualification. Without adding *but* or *in certain contexts*. Simply *I do* in the way of someone who had long settled that question within themselves.
Then his eyes dropped — briefly, not quite a second — to my wrist.
To the bracelet.
His hand moved — slightly, toward the bracelet, in the way of someone not realising their hand was moving — then stopped. Pulled back. Slowly. Like something within him deeper than conscious intent said *not now*.
Back up to my face.
He didn't say anything about the bracelet.
But the way he said nothing was different from the way people said nothing because they hadn't seen — it was the way of someone saying nothing because they had seen, and were aware, and had decided this wasn't the moment to mention it.
I slowly moved my arm under the table.
The conversation continued.
But something had changed in the air between us — not bad, not uncomfortable. Just different. Like two people who had just realised they were in a conversation deeper than the surface appeared.
---
My phone vibrated.
I looked at the screen — *Mak*.
"One moment." I answered the phone.
"*Aina*, where are you right now?" *Mak*'s voice was ordinary but there was something behind that ordinary that made me sit up straight. "Can you come back for a bit? *Mak* needs help lifting some things. Heavy, *Ayah* can't do it alone."
"What things, *Mak*?"
"That old wardrobe. *Mak* wants to move it." Short. Closed. The way *Mak* spoke when she didn't want further questions.
I looked at *Haziq* across the table.
He had already read my face — had known from the way I was holding the phone.
"Need to go back?" he asked.
"*Mak* called." I put the phone down. "Sorry — "
"It's fine." He smiled. Genuine, without the trace of disappointment being made or being hidden. "Another time."
I stood. Took my bag.
And in the moment I stood — in the short moment between sitting and standing — I realised something.
That old wardrobe.
The wardrobe that had been in the storage room since I could remember. That *Mak* had never moved in ten years. That was heavy in the way old wooden wardrobes were heavy — but *Ayah* had moved it alone before, when they repainted the house three years ago, without asking anyone for help.
I smiled at *Haziq*.
"Thank you for earlier."
"Thank you for coming." He leaned back in his chair. "Take care of yourself."
I went out.
---
The entire drive home, my mind was doing the work it did.
A wardrobe that didn't need to be moved.
An *Ayah* who could lift it alone.
*Mak* who called exactly an hour after I had left — not an hour and a half, not two hours. An hour. As though a time had been counted.
I rationalised — maybe *Ayah* had a bad back yesterday and I didn't know. Maybe *Mak* genuinely wanted to move the wardrobe today. Maybe it was a coincidence that made sense if I gave it enough room to make sense.
But there was a small part of my mind that wasn't satisfied.
That kept holding onto the question.
That kept weighing it.
---
When I arrived home, the wardrobe hadn't been moved.
*Mak* was in the kitchen with a pot on the stove — turned when I came in, ordinary smile, ordinary way.
"The wardrobe?" I asked.
"Hmm?" *Mak* looked at me.
"*Mak* said she wanted to move the wardrobe."
"Oh — that." *Mak* turned back to the pot. "It's fine now. *Ayah* helped earlier."
I stood at the kitchen doorway.
Looking at *Mak*'s back that didn't turn again.
The pot cooking. The ladle moving.
And then *Mak* turned — with a smile that was the right size, in the way of a smile I had known since I was small. But her eyes didn't follow the smile. Eyes that looked at me with something in them that was further away than the distance between the kitchen doorway and where she stood.
"Hungry? Nearly ready." *Mak* turned back to the pot. "*Mak* made what you like today."
Topic closed.
With the right smile.
With eyes that didn't.
I went to my room.
Sat on the edge of the bed.
And sat with a question I didn't know how to ask the person I trusted most in this world.
---
In the afternoon, *Mak Cik* Ira came with Ara.
I saw the car from the bedroom window — coming down in the ordinary way, in a way that had already become ordinary even though it had only been a month, in a way that no longer needed a particular reason to be ordinary.
Ara rushed into the house with a doll in her hand — a worn cloth doll she carried everywhere, that I had seen from the first day Ara came into this house.
"*Kakak*!" Ara headed straight for me on the stairs.
I sat on the bottom step, let Ara sit close beside me. The smell of child's shampoo and the smell of someone else's house already settled into Ara's clothes.
"Ara brought a friend." Ara held the doll up to my face. "Her name is Putri."
"Putri is pretty." I smiled at the doll. Black button eyes. Brown thread hair. Stitching at the neck that had loosened a little.
Ara nodded seriously. "Putri likes *Kakak*."
*Mak Cik* Ira and *Mak* had gone to the living room — a conversation that flowed in the way their conversations always flowed, with a rhythm that had existed before I had noticed it existed.
Ara and I sat on the steps.
Ara talked about kindergarten, about a friend who had taken her pencil, about the neighbour's cat she had seen earlier. Stories that jumped about in the way a small child's stories jumped — without structure, without conclusion, but with something genuine in every jump that adults had forgotten how to have.
An hour later, *Mak Cik* Ira stood to leave.
Ara was sleepy — eyes half closed, head already tilted onto my shoulder. *Mak Cik* Ira lifted Ara in the way a mother lifted a child whose weight she was used to — Ara whimpered briefly, then was quiet, then asleep within ten seconds.
"Sorry for disturbing." *Mak Cik* Ira smiled at me.
"No trouble." I stood. "Drive safe."
They went out. The door closed.
I turned back to the living room —
and saw Ara's doll on the floor, fallen from Ara's hand when *Mak Cik* Ira had lifted her. Lying at the foot of the table with its black button eyes facing the ceiling.
I picked it up.
Looked at it for a moment — an ordinary doll, worn in the way a small child's truly loved things became worn. Nothing extraordinary about it.
I carried it upstairs.
Set it on the desk.
"I'll return it tomorrow," I said to no one.
And Putri's black button eyes looked at my room in a silence that had nothing in it.
Or perhaps had something.
But I didn't know how to listen anymore.
---
That night I sat at the desk with a notebook in front of me.
Images in my head — the symbols on the bracelet, eighteen beads, eighteen somethings I hadn't fully read yet. I wrote what I remembered. The first symbol — two crossing lines, a point above and below. The second symbol — an incomplete circle, three lines coming out from the opening.
The third symbol — the one I had almost seen that night before the phone vibrated —
I closed my eyes. Tried to remember.
It was there. At the edge of memory, in the part that didn't quite remember but didn't quite forget either.
But every time I tried to focus — it went dark.
Like something that didn't want to be remembered.
Or something that didn't want me to remember anymore.
I put down the pen.
Looked at the bracelet at my wrist.
Then at Ara's doll on the desk — black button eyes looking forward, toward a direction that held nothing, toward a direction that shouldn't hold anything.
I turned the doll away — faced it toward the wall.
Lay down.
Closed my eyes.
---
The dream came — but different.
Not the forest.
For the first time since the dream began — not the forest.
A house. Old, with walls whose paint had peeled, with floorboards that made sounds, with the smell of damp wood and something deeper than the smell of damp wood. Light from outside came through dusty windows — afternoon light, yellow and tired.
I stood in the middle of an empty room.
Empty — except for one thing.
A mirror. Large, black wooden frame, standing in the corner of the room in the way of a mirror that had been there a long time and had never been moved. I looked at the mirror from a distance.
And in that mirror — I saw myself.
Standing. In the same clothes. With the same bracelet.
But my reflection in that mirror wasn't doing the same thing as me.
I wasn't moving.
My reflection raised its hand — slowly, with purpose — and pointed at something behind me.
I turned around.
Nothing.
When I turned back to the mirror —
my reflection was gone.
The mirror was empty.
And in that emptiness, in the mirror's surface that should have shown the room and the walls and the afternoon light —
there was writing.
Small. Written with something dark. In a language I knew but a sentence I didn't understand — didn't understand in a way that wasn't because I didn't know the words, but because the words weren't arranged in a way the mind could process.
Except for one word.
At the very end.
One word I recognised — that I could read even though all the other words around it made no sense —
my name.
I woke up.
Dark room. Fan turning. Ara's doll on the desk that I had faced toward the wall — but when I looked from the bed, in the darkness that wasn't truly dark because light from outside was coming in —
the doll was no longer facing the wall.
It was facing me.
Black button eyes in the dark of my own room.
I didn't move.
One second. Two. Three.
Then I got up, took the doll, put it in the desk drawer, closed the drawer.
Lay back down.
And in my mind that couldn't be quiet — in a mind arranging tonight and the wardrobe that hadn't been moved and *Mak* who smiled with eyes that didn't smile and a reflection that pointed at something that wasn't there —
one question that sat the way questions sat when they wouldn't leave before being answered.
The writing in the mirror.
That had my name at the end of it.
Who wrote it.
And when.
And for the first time since all of this began —
I wasn't sure whether I was looking for the answer.
Or whether the answer was looking for me.
— END OF CHAPTER 7 —