That afternoon's literature class felt longer than usual. Not because the material was boring—this Oral Literature professor was one of my favorites—but because my head was still half-floating, stuck on what had happened in the fire stairs that morning.
As soon as class let out, I dragged Ratri to the campus cafeteria, each of us carrying a tray of iced tea.
"Why have you been so quiet all day?" Ratri sat across from me, her eyebrows raised suspiciously. "You're usually the most enthusiastic after Ms. Endah's class."
"Ratri, something really weird happened to me today."
"Weird how? You got hit by a minibus?"
"Not a minibus. A person."
Ratri set down her glass and immediately turned serious. "What? Were you in an accident?"
"Not a real accident, just—" I sighed, then told her everything: the broken elevator, running down from the eighteenth floor, colliding with someone on the stairs, and Ms. Sri's testimony that afternoon about the "most polite first-floor resident in the world."
"And then?" Ratri leaned even farther forward, her eyes sparkling—she loved drama, especially when it involved a mysterious guy. "Was he handsome?"
"Ratri, that's not the point."
"As if that's not important. That's the main point." Ratri giggled, then took a sip of her iced tea. "But seriously, this isn't the first time I've heard about him. My mom talks about him too. Apparently, there's a male resident over there who's incredibly kind to the older people in the building."
"Do you know his name?"
"Nope. Mom just calls him 'the guy on the first floor' or something." Ratri shrugged. "Why? Curious?"
"No—I mean, yes, but not curious like that." I hurried to correct myself, even though, honestly, I wasn't sure which kind of curious I meant. "He's just weirdly different from how people describe him."
I pulled my journal out of my bag and opened it to today's page, which had still been blank since morning. Ratri glanced at the large words FINISH CHAPTER 3!!, still underlined three times from yesterday.
"You still haven't finished chapter three?"
"Nope. The stair drama this morning interrupted me." I quickly wrote in today's to-do column: Finish Chapter 3 (AGAIN), Follow up on next week's shift schedule, Do laundry (don't forget this time). "You know, if I don't write things down like this, my day feels incomplete."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. You've been like that since freshman year." Ratri smiled, amused. "But it is pretty impressive. Your life looks so organized from the outside."
Only from the outside, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud.
That night, after coming home from my shift and eating whatever I could find, I sat on my bed with my journal open in my lap. I deliberately kept the room dim, with only the small desk lamp turned on—a habit that, for some reason, made it easier to be honest with myself.
I rewrote today's list, this time more completely than the one I'd made on campus. At the bottom was a little section I always made every night, with a one-word title: Feelings.
Today: all over the place. Tired, curious, and a little annoyed with myself for thinking about a stranger all day.
After closing my journal, I grabbed my phone and opened an app with a simple icon—a small lamp glowing with soft yellow light. Room Light.
I found this app by accident a year ago, when I was suffering from terrible insomnia and mindlessly scrolling around online. The system was simple: anonymous chats with one permanent conversation partner who connected automatically every time I opened the chat—somehow, it was always the same person, even though I never knew who they really were. There were no names, no profile pictures, just two plain gray boxes representing "me" and "them."
This was the only place I could be honest without having to keep up my image as "the girl who has everything under control" in front of anyone—not Ratri, and definitely not my family.
I typed slowly.
Today was exhausting. Something weird happened first thing this morning, and then the afternoon only made things more confusing. It got me thinking—people really are different depending on who they're with, huh? Someone I thought was cold turned out to be incredibly warm in someone else's eyes.
Ding.
A small notification appeared on the screen. The reply came faster than usual.
People have a lot of sides. Sometimes someone who seems cold in front of one person is actually the warmest toward someone else they trust.
I stared at the sentence for a long time.
How do you sound like you know that so well? I replied, half joking.
Just guessing. Or maybe that's how I am too :)
I smiled a little, alone in my dim room. I didn't know why, but talking to someone whose name I didn't even know always managed to make my chaotic days feel a little lighter.
Thanks for listening, I typed, before finally setting my phone on the nightstand and lying down.
I stared at the bedroom ceiling for a moment, thinking about this strange day—the collision on the stairs, Ms. Sri's testimony, Ratri's conversation on campus, and now the warm reply from a stranger who, for some reason, seemed to understand me better than the people I actually knew.
Tomorrow definitely won't be this weird again, I thought, before my eyes finally closed.
I was completely wrong.