---
*Haziq* texted Wednesday morning.
*Ridhwan confirmed. Friday afternoon. He chose the place himself — an old coffee shop he always used to go to. Says he feels comfortable there.*
I read the message twice. Then put the phone down and worked.
But throughout that morning there was something in my chest that couldn't sit still — something that felt like almost reaching something, like a thread that had been dangling a long time and suddenly there were hands ready to take hold of its end.
Friday.
Two days.
---
Wednesday afternoon briefing — Zayriel, *Haziq*, two people from the technical department whose faces I knew but whose names I hadn't yet learned.
I was outside taking the meeting minutes.
Door half open. Zayriel's voice in the background — controlled, professional, with the rhythm of someone who knew every word that came out of their mouth had a purpose.
I typed.
And in the middle of typing, with my mind half in the meeting minutes and half somewhere else — I heard a name.
Not a name said loudly. Not a name said with the intention of being heard by me.
But I heard it.
*"— same as Ridhwan's project before — "*
I stopped typing.
One second.
Then started typing again — slowly, in the way hands did something mechanically when the mind was elsewhere.
Ridhwan.
Zayriel said Ridhwan's name in a technical briefing.
Not strange — Ridhwan had worked here, old projects had his name on them. There was a reasonable explanation. An explanation that made sense.
But in my mind, in the part that had learned not to discard certain things — the sentence sat with a weight that didn't ask permission.
*Same as Ridhwan's project before.*
Zayriel remembered Ridhwan's name.
Zayriel said Ridhwan's name two days before we were going to meet Ridhwan.
I looked at my laptop screen.
Kept typing.
---
Friday came with morning rain that slowed the roads and filled the parking and I arrived at the office eight minutes late for the first time.
*Haziq* was already there. The coffee was there — but this time only one cup, on his side. He looked up when I came in, read my face, and didn't ask why I was late.
"This afternoon," he simply said.
"This afternoon," I answered.
We worked.
But there was something in the way that Friday passed that was different from other days — like everything moved more slowly than usual, like the clock in the corner of the office moved more carefully, like the afternoon carried a weight it had been carrying since morning.
At two, Zayriel came out of his room.
Stood in front of my desk.
"There's a file from yesterday that hasn't been updated in the system."
I looked up. "Which one?"
"Wednesday's meeting minutes." He placed a document on my desk. "Page four has a typo. Correct it and resend before three."
I took the document.
"Okay."
Zayriel didn't move.
I looked up again.
He looked at me — in the way he looked that always held more than what was visible, with eyes deep in the way of eyes that were usually deep — and there was something in that moment, in the two seconds he stood and looked and said nothing more, that made everything in the room feel like it was holding its breath.
"You okay?" he asked.
Two words. Ordinary tone. A question people asked every day without meaning more than the surface.
But the way he asked — with eyes that were fully there, with the moment he chose to ask — wasn't ordinary.
"Fine." I smiled. "Just a bit tired."
He nodded once.
Turned. Went into his room. Door closed halfway.
I looked at the document in my hand.
Page four. Typo.
I opened the file in the system — scrolled to page four, read carefully, read again —
No typo.
I read it three times.
No typo.
---
After four, *Haziq* and I left with different pretexts — *Haziq* said he had bank business, I said I wanted to stop at the pharmacy. Not planned to leave together. But the same lift, the same parking, cars parked beside each other the way early arrivers' cars always ended up beside each other.
"Are you driving or coming with me?" *Haziq* asked.
"I'll come with you."
We didn't talk much in the car. The radio was in the background, the morning rain had stopped but the sky was still grey, Friday afternoon traffic with small congestion at certain junctions.
*Haziq* drove the way he always was — unhurried, knew the roads, in the way of someone who had grown up with this city and didn't need GPS for places he had been before.
"Did you know," I said at one point, "Zayriel said Ridhwan's name in the Wednesday briefing."
*Haziq* didn't turn. His eyes on the road.
"I heard," he said.
Brief silence.
"You didn't tell me."
"I thought you heard." He changed gear. "And I thought if I mentioned it, you'd think too much before this afternoon."
I looked at him.
"Do you think he knows we're going to meet Ridhwan?"
*Haziq* was quiet for a moment — not the quiet of someone without an answer, but the quiet of someone who had an answer but was deciding whether that answer would help or not.
"I think," he said finally, "we go and meet first. Then think about that question."
---
The coffee shop was at the end of a road I had never taken — an old coffee shop with wooden chairs and walls that had black-and-white photographs and the smell of a place that had held people for a long time, that had absorbed all the conversations and all the people who had ever sat within it.
Ridhwan was already there.
Sitting at the furthest table, in a corner that could see the entrance but wasn't easily seen from the entrance. A man — roughly *Haziq*'s age, thin in the way of someone who had once carried more weight but had lost it at a time that wasn't the right time for losing. Coffee in front of him already half finished. His eyes toward the door when we came in.
*Haziq* raised his hand.
Ridhwan didn't smile. But he didn't look away either.
We sat.
"Long time," *Haziq* said to Ridhwan, in a tone that tried to be light but held something beneath that lightness.
"Yeah." Ridhwan looked at his cup of coffee. "Long time."
A brief uncomfortable silence.
"This is *Aina*," *Haziq* said. "She's the one who took your place — En. Zayriel's PA position."
Ridhwan looked up.
Looked at me.
And in the way he looked at me — in the first moment his eyes met mine — there was something that moved across his face that others might not have seen but I saw because I had learned to see small things that moved in short moments.
Something that felt like — pity.
Not the pity of someone who saw someone in difficulty.
The pity of someone who saw something they had been through and didn't want others to go through but didn't know how to prevent.
"How long have you been there?" he asked. His voice quiet. Controlled. In the way of someone who had learned to be controlled.
"About a month."
Ridhwan nodded slowly. Looked at his coffee cup again.
"Ridhwan," *Haziq* said, more slowly than before. "I want to ask you something. And I want you to answer honestly."
Ridhwan didn't look up.
"Why did you really leave?"
Silence.
The coffee shop with its background sounds — other people talking, the sound of the coffee machine, rain that had started falling again outside — all present. But our table had a different silence from all that background sound.
"I was tired," Ridhwan said.
"Ridhwan."
"I was tired, *Haziq*." This time there was something in his voice — not anger, not sadness, something deeper than both. Something that felt like someone who had long been holding something heavy and had learned to make their face look as though it wasn't heavy. "Just leave it."
"Your exit interview is missing from the file."
Ridhwan went quiet.
"Farhana's file is the same." *Haziq* leaned slightly forward. "Two people. Two files. The same page missing."
Ridhwan looked at the table.
His fingers around the coffee cup — gripping, releasing, gripping again. The way of hands that needed to do something so they wouldn't do something else.
"You can't help her," Ridhwan said finally. Slowly. To the table, not to us. "If you think you can help her — you're wrong."
*Haziq* glanced at me briefly.
"Why?" I asked.
Ridhwan looked up.
Looked at me with eyes that held something I couldn't read precisely — not fear, not anger, something older than both, something that felt like it had been there before Ridhwan was aware it was there.
"Because he chose you long before you knew him."
Silence.
The sound of rain outside grew louder.
"What do you mean?" *Haziq* asked.
Ridhwan looked at my wrist.
The bracelet.
He looked at my bracelet in a way that *Haziq* had once done — but different. *Haziq* had looked with curiosity, with something not yet knowing but wanting to know. Ridhwan looked in the way of someone who already knew and had long been carrying that knowledge alone.
"Have you worn that since you were small?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Have you ever tried to take it off?"
I opened my mouth —
and realised I had no answer.
Not because I had never thought about it. But because in all the weeks the bracelet had started to feel different, in all the nights the dream came and the bracelet went cold and the symbols I hadn't fully read yet — I had never tried to take it off.
Not once.
And I didn't know why.
Ridhwan read the answer in my face before I said anything.
He nodded slowly — not the nod of someone receiving confirmation of something they had hoped was wrong. The nod of someone receiving confirmation of something they had already known but hoped they were mistaken about.
"You can't take it off anymore." Short. Ordinary. In the way the most frightening sentences always came — as though it wasn't big news, as though it were simply a fact that had long existed and just hadn't been spoken aloud. "Not because it's stuck. Because you won't want to."
I looked at him.
"He did that?" my voice came out more slowly than I had planned. "*En.* Zayriel?"
Ridhwan looked at the table again.
"*En.* Zayriel has known about that bracelet since before he knew you." He lifted his coffee cup. Drank. Set it back down. "He knows about everything connected to that bracelet. More than you know. More than your *mak* knows." He paused. "Perhaps more than your *Tok Wan* knew."
The sound of rain.
The sound of other people talking at other tables.
The sound of the coffee machine from the counter.
"Why does he want the bracelet?" *Haziq* asked.
Ridhwan looked at *Haziq* with something that was almost like pity in it.
"It's not the bracelet he wants." He stood. Took his wallet from his pocket, placed money on the table — more than the cost of the coffee, in the way of someone who wanted to leave quickly and didn't want to wait for change. "He wants the person the bracelet chose."
He looked at me one more time.
"Leave that job." Slowly. As though it was the only sentence he had come to say. "Before you can no longer leave."
Then he turned.
Walked to the door.
I stood — "*Ridhwan* — "
He didn't turn back.
The coffee shop door opened.
And in the moment that door opened — in the moment Ridhwan stepped out into the rain that should have had its sound, that should have had its force, that should have come in through the gap of the open door —
silence.
One second where the sound of rain was absent.
Like the world outside that door pressed a button that shouldn't have existed.
Then Ridhwan walked into the rain and in two or three steps — a distance that shouldn't have been far enough to disappear from view — he was gone.
Not turning left or right.
Simply — not there.
And the sound of rain came back — as though it had never left, as though that silence had never happened, as though only I had been aware that something had briefly stopped in the way the world moved.
*Haziq* and I stood in the coffee shop that still had the same background sounds, that still had other people talking about other things, that still had the smell of coffee and rain and old wood.
With Ridhwan's coffee cup that still had a thin wisp of steam rising from it — still warm, in the way of coffee just abandoned, not coffee that had long gone cold.
*Haziq* looked at the door.
Then looked at me.
"He disappeared," I said. Not a question.
"Yes." *Haziq* looked at the door again. Then the table. Then me. "We need to talk."
I sat back down.
My hand on the table — and the bracelet at my wrist, in the warm old light of the coffee shop, in the moment when everything else was present but nothing felt right —
not cold.
Not vibrating.
Still.
In the way of something that had long known what Ridhwan had just said and didn't need to react because it wasn't new information.
Not for the bracelet.
Only for me.
And in my mind — in the part that couldn't be quiet even though my body had sat back down, even though my hands were on the table, even though everything else felt ordinary —
one sentence that came out without permission, without sound, in the way the most honest sentences always came.
*Maybe I didn't find Ridhwan today.*
*Maybe he found me.*
— END OF CHAPTER 9 —