"Atee Yaa! Yaa-yaaa!"
The shrill cry of a two-year-old shattered the nighttime silence in front of the gate of house number 12. His voice was interspersed with the soft rumble of a car engine that had just been turned off, followed by a slightly impatient knock on the front door. Lyra, who was lying facedown on the foam mat, froze. Her fingers went rigid over her phone screen, which had just filled with a barrage of messages from a contact named [big boss].
[big boss]: Where are you?
[big boss]: Text me back, damn it. You need money?
[big boss]: I'm seriously in a bind right now. Can you watch my little monster for a bit tonight? I'll pay you for snacks + gas.
[big boss]: I'm already in front of your house. But your dad said you ran away because of the fan. Should I go to Tina's now?
"Fuc—" Lyra swallowed.
Seriously. Ales—the single father and close friend she'd had since high school, who for some reason had become increasingly fond of acting like some big-shot boss—had really come after her this late at night, bringing Ion, his son.
"Ly! There's someone here! Can you get the door? I'm in the middle of making noodles!" Tina shouted from the kitchen.
Before Lyra could even get up, Ales's footsteps and deep voice were already drawing closer from the front door, trailing behind Ion's shrill calls as he kept saying her name. Lyra blinked several times, her exhausted brain struggling to process her friend's audacity.
Seriously... did this guy really stop by here at night with his kid?!
Seeing the fresh chaos that had suddenly appeared before her, Lyra could only draw a long breath. Thinking back on it, how had her absurd day ended in this mess?
The answer was simple: all of today's drama had started several hours earlier...
Several hours earlier...
TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP!
A rapid barrage of keystrokes clattering against the laptop keyboard shattered the silence of the bedroom. The relentless presses were punctuated by a string of mouse clicks—a frantic, nonstop work rhythm.
On the glaring fourteen-inch monitor, the cursor moved nimbly. It shifted the visual elements a few pixels to the left, changed the font color, and finally finished rendering.
"God... my fingers hurt so bad," Lyra muttered, letting out a long sigh as she stretched them.
She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment, escaping the glare of the screen that had begun to sting. But the moment she opened them again, reality cruelly greeted her.
Ugh, is this a bedroom or a landfill? she lamented inwardly.
The morning sunlight managed to slip through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the pile of clothes in the corner beside the bed that had begun to resemble a small mountain. The room—if she was being honest—looked more like a storage closet than the bedroom of a twenty-four-year-old woman. Charging cables lay tangled across the floor, several cups of yesterday's tea sat on the desk, and in the middle of all that chaos sat the room's owner.
Wearing loose pajamas with her hair thrown into a careless bun, she organized the remnants of her digital planner files on-screen. Her eyes stared blankly toward the window.
Working as a content creator—especially one focused on digital products—wasn't always visible to the neighbors, relatives, or even her own family, particularly when you lived in a village. But the reality? It looked like this. Working overtime all night while thinking about algorithms that changed every five minutes, struggling to arrange a visual aesthetic from inside a room that was the exact opposite of aesthetic.
Screeech...
Her skinny hand rose to roughly muss her lion's mane of hair. Then, without a hint of shame, her little finger began picking at her belly button, still full of traces of last night's laziness.
"Okay, let's see what other disaster today has in store," she murmured.
With a sluggish gait and a rumbling stomach, she finally dragged herself out of the bedroom.
The aroma of sautéed shallots and shrimp paste steaming from the kitchen greeted her as soon as the bedroom door opened. The house was actually very simple—a narrow living room just inside the main entrance, three barely adequate bedrooms, a kitchen combined with a wooden bench and a dining table, and a cramped bathroom tucked into the corner of the kitchen.
The home, with its four occupants, looked peaceful in the morning, filled with the sound of birds beginning to call back and forth in their cages out front, while a small garden of neatly arranged ornamental plants glistened with dew.
In the kitchen, Mom was busy flipping fried tempeh in a pan. But her activity was interrupted when she heard a soft throat-clearing from the dining table. Dad sat there daydreaming, staring straight at the wall with an empty cup in his hand—a passive figure who was physically present, while his soul seemed to have been left behind in the dream world. Mom merely sighed, turned off the stove for a moment, and poured hot water into Dad's cup to make his favorite black coffee.
In the middle of that peaceful morning, the girl appeared. She shuffled out of her room, dragging her feet. Her face was gloomy, her eyes puffy, and her careless bun had tilted forty-five degrees to the left. She looked like a soldier who had just lost a war on the battlefield.
"Morning, Mom... Dad..." she mumbled softly, almost inaudibly, before collapsing into the wooden chair beside Dad.
Dad didn't move. He only blinked once, then slowly sipped his still-steaming coffee. Mom turned around and stared at her only daughter, her brows furrowing in confusion.
"What happened now, sweetheart? Why does your face look like failed cake batter? It's still early. What time did you go to bed last night?" Mom asked as she turned the stove back on and resumed cooking.
"It's because of that promotional video for my new planner template, Mom..." The twenty-four-year-old girl laid her head on the table, mourning her fate. "I stayed up all night editing a reel to sell my digital planner. I made the transitions smooth, aesthetic, and the caption was deep... Then, when I uploaded it at dawn, only four people watched it!"
Mom stopped stirring and looked at her daughter with deep concern. "Oh, you poor thing. Usually people do look at your products. Who were those four people, sweetheart?"
The girl lifted her head sluggishly, making an even more miserable face. "How should I know who those four people were, Mom...? Their account names aren't visible! You can only see the number."
Mom clicked her tongue sympathetically as she drained the tempeh. "Really? Let me see what your sales video looks like. I'm curious."
"Here, see for yourself," Lyra replied listlessly, handing over her phone, which was still displaying her profile page.
Mom leaned closer, stared at the phone screen for quite a while, then pointed to the crossed-out speaker icon in the bottom corner of the video.
"Sweetheart... did you mute your phone on purpose, or is there really no music?" Mom asked innocently, pressing the phone's speaker against her ear. "I've been watching the video run this whole time, but it's as quiet as a graveyard."
Lyra frowned in confusion. "Huh? Oh, I did mute my phone at dawn because my head was killing me after working all night, Mom. When I checked the views and saw there were only four, I closed it again right away..."
Lyra snatched back her phone and turned the volume all the way up. But instead of aesthetic music, there was still complete silence. That was when Lyra finally noticed the small red writing she'd overlooked in the bottom corner of the screen:
[ Audio unavailable. This sound has been removed due to copyright restrictions. ]
Lyra froze. Her brain, operating at only twenty percent after working all night, tried to process the situation.
Aesthetic fail! Her video had been completely muted since dawn because of a copyright claim! No wonder people had scrolled right past it and only four had watched!
"Sweetheart? Why are you just staring into space? Where's the pretty music?" Mom asked again, completely innocent.
The young content creator could only squeeze her eyes shut and smack her own forehead with a reasonably loud smack, lamenting her stupidity for forgetting to check the song's license because her soul hadn't fully returned to her body at dawn.
In the middle of the panic, Dad, who had spent the entire time demanding to be waited on, suddenly set his coffee cup down with a hard clink.
"You've been making noise this whole time," Dad snapped coldly as he stood. "Instead of getting a real job at an office, you sit around staring at your phone and selling pointless pieces of paper. As if anyone's going to buy them."
Without a hint of remorse, Dad turned away and walked outside to smoke, leaving an uncomfortable atmosphere at the dining table.
The girl lowered her head miserably, feeling like she wanted to cry. But only two seconds after Dad stepped outside...
Ding!
The girl's phone vibrated loudly on the table. A transaction notification had arrived from her sales website. She looked down at the screen, and her eyes immediately went wide. The notification read: 1 Successful Purchase - Budgeting Planner Template.
"W-what?! Someone bought one?!" the girl cried in utter shock. "Who bought my template this early?!" Mom came over too, wiping her hands on her apron. The girl clicked on the buyer details, and her expression instantly changed from shocked to utterly stunned.
The buyer's name: Siti Rahmawati—the full name of her own mother.
"Mom... you bought my planner template?!" the girl shrieked in disbelief. "But you don't know how to use a digital planner on a tablet or iPad?!"
Mom smiled sweetly and gently stroked her daughter's head. "When you came out of your room earlier, I felt bad seeing how worn-out you looked. So I asked your Miss Tina to check out one for me with the change from her shopping money when she went to the store at dawn. I really don't know how to use it, sweetheart. But I do know my daughter worked hard all night. Besides..." Mom cast a pointed glance toward the front door, where Dad was smoking.
"...I need a new planner to write down and list all your father's sins, so not a single one slips through the cracks."
The girl content creator froze, unsure whether to feel touched or burst out laughing at her mother's ridiculous explanation.
It was little gestures of support like this from Mom that always managed to keep Lyra from giving in to despair. For months since graduating with a bachelor's degree in Information Technology, the dozens of applications she'd sent to various companies had seemed to vanish into thin air. With job interviews so difficult to come by, selling digital planner templates she'd made herself was the only realistic escape she had, so her degree and knowledge wouldn't simply rot away in her bedroom. Mom understood that perfectly. That's why, even though she didn't know how to use a digital planner, she was always her daughter's number-one supporter.
"Yeah, Mom... thank you," Lyra replied sincerely, her eyes suddenly growing a little misty.
It was nine in the morning when Mom finally said goodbye and left to tend the shop. That left Lyra and Dad alone in the house—a situation that immediately felt awkward and intimidating.
The climax came half an hour later. Just because Lyra had forgotten to turn off the fan in the bathroom after washing her face, Dad launched into a long lecture that spiraled from the electricity bill to the future of the nation. Combined with her exhaustion from working all night, Lyra felt like her head was about to split open.
Rather than drain herself further at home, Lyra chose to give in. She grabbed her phone and walked out of the house.
The distance of three houses was trivial, but to Lyra that morning, walking through the neighborhood alley felt like crossing an entire province. Her feet dragged lazily, her T-shirt was a little rumpled, and her flip-flops aimlessly kicked at the gravel in the road.
Mom had left at nine that morning to watch a relative's shop, and her younger sister, who was already in high school, had left before Lyra even woke up. That meant the house was entirely occupied by two people: Lyra and Dad. A dangerous combination that, if left together under one roof, could create more drama than the soap opera Uttaran.
"I'd rather walk laps around the neighborhood than stay home alone with Dad. He could give me high blood pressure out of nowhere," Lyra muttered, glancing around.
When she reached the gate of house number 12, Lyra immediately barged in without knocking. She impatiently tossed her flip-flops onto the porch.
Tina's house wasn't fancy, just a simple thirty-six-square-meter home with warm cream-colored walls. But to Lyra, it was the perfect safe house in the entire neighborhood. There were no morally preachy TV shows here, no lectures about bills, and most importantly: no Dad.
In the living room, Tina—her twenty-six-year-old cousin—was sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a pillow-face and her hair pulled into a careless bun. In front of her, an eight-month-old baby boy named Dio was busy gnawing on the ear of a stuffed dinosaur while crawling back and forth without any particular direction.
"Dio! Auntie is here to collect some peace and quiet!" Lyra greeted him loudly.
The little boy immediately turned around, showing off his two newly grown bottom teeth, then slapped the carpet excitedly as if he'd just seen his favorite toy.
"Miss Tina!" Lyra called as she threw herself onto the sofa. "I'm crashing here until this afternoon. Or until Dad forgets that we had a cold war this morning."
Tina didn't even turn around, her bleary eyes still fixed on her phone screen. "What happened between you and Uncle Danu this time? Your face looks like a cracker soaked in soup. You look dead."
"Same old thing. A tiny issue turned into an alleged threat to national security," Lyra replied, stretching out. "Mom already left for the shop at nine. There was no mediator! All because I forgot to turn off the fan while I was showering, his lecture somehow connected to the future, retirement savings, and even the fate of human civilization?"
Tina finally chuckled, then picked up Dio, who was crawling toward a charging cable to chew on it.
"Oh, come on. Uncle Danu's always been like that. That's why your mom leaves early—she already knows the routine. It's not like you've only been his daughter since yesterday afternoon."
"But this morning, his level of annoying was next-level, Miss!" Lyra sat up straight, folding her arms across her chest. "I only went to the bathroom for a minute. When I came out, Dad was already standing in front of the door with his hands on his hips. He asked, 'Who turned on the fan?'"
Tina immediately held back a laugh. "And then?"
"I said, 'I did, Dad.'"
"And then?"
"That was it. After that, the lecture spun off in every direction. It started with electricity, climbed to the monthly bills, connected to the value of the rupiah, continued on to retirement savings, and somehow ended up at the future of the nation."
"Hahaha..."
"Seriously! Sometimes I want to know if Dad uses Google Maps inside his head. How does he find a route from a fan to the Indonesian economy?"
Tina slapped her thighs, laughing. "Uncle Danu really is one of a kind."
Lyra gave a faint grin too. But it lasted only a few seconds before disappearing again.
"But, yeah..." she murmured, playing with the hem of her T-shirt. "I'm tired too, Miss."
Tina turned toward her. "Tired of what?"
Lyra gave a small shrug, then smiled again, as though what she was about to say was only a joke.
"Just tired... It feels like every time I wake up, I'm waiting to find out what I'll get yelled at for today."
Tina's laughter gradually faded. She had known her cousin for far too long. Lyra could always turn a complaint into a joke. But that was precisely why Tina knew not every joke was actually funny.
Silence settled for a few seconds. Fortunately, Dio had no idea what adult silence meant. The eight-month-old crawled quickly toward Lyra, then, without warning, yanked his aunt's hair as hard as he could.
"Dio! Ow!"
Before Lyra could finish wincing, Dio spit directly onto her T-shirt.
"Oh my God! I'm wet again!"
Instead of getting angry, Lyra immediately lifted the tiny boy high into the air, making Dio giggle.
"Good thing you're cute, Dio. If you weren't, Auntie would have returned you to the hospital."
Dio laughed even harder, patting Lyra's cheeks.
Tina giggled too at her cousin's resigned expression. "There, the normal Lyra's finally back."
"What can I say..." Lyra wiped at her drool-covered shirt. "If I stay annoyed, Dio will get stressed too."
Lyra had initially planned to stay only until noon. But plans were just plans. Her intention evaporated as time passed, until she suddenly realized the wall clock in Tina's house was pointing to seven that evening.
Lyra hadn't left at all the entire day. Even when Mas Bayu—Tina's husband—came home from work around five that afternoon, he wasn't surprised in the slightest to find his cousin-in-law still peacefully camped out in the living room.
Lyra had even taken a shower there, wearing one of Tina's oversized T-shirts and a pair of whatever culottes she could find. On the foam mat, she lay facedown with her tongue sticking out, making Dio laugh shrilly as he busily crawled across her back.
Until finally... a WhatsApp message from Ales came in, followed by the rumble of a car outside the gate.