"I swear, I'm completely stuck today!"
A resigned sigh slipped from Lyra's lips. In front of her, the laptop screen glowed brightly, displaying a Canva worksheet filled with pastel color options, aesthetically arranged calendar boxes, and scattered digital sticky notes.
The afternoon sun had begun to drift westward, casting warm rays through her bedroom curtains. Lyra had been sitting dutifully at her desk since eleven that morning and had managed to finish several early draft pages. But as the afternoon wore on, her ideas only became more and more stuck. Now that the wall clock's hands pointed to half past two, her design progress felt stalled, showing no meaningful improvement. Today was supposed to be an incredibly productive day.
A week ago, Lyra had already marked her calendar to focus on finishing her newest line of digital planners. For a content creator and digital product seller who depended on precision, hours like these were crucial for chasing her sales targets. Orders piling up in her online shop were also waiting for confirmation.
Yet behind the monitor filled with beautiful designs, the owner of the room was sitting there with a blank stare.
Lyra leaned her back against the chair, letting her fingers hover stiffly over the keyboard. The clock's hands kept ticking without pause, but the cursor on her screen had been blinking helplessly in the same spot for the past thirty minutes. Lyra's thoughts had suddenly gone blank, drifting far away from business matters and profit calculations.
Without realizing it, Lyra's memories drifted back to her school days several years earlier. Back when she and Ales still spent a lot of time together, overwhelmed by endless piles of assignments and memorization. Funny enough, during those busiest times, Ales had always possessed a natural talent for showing up to bother her at exactly the wrong moment.
The guy would casually come over to Lyra between free periods, spin the chair in front of her around, and sit facing her without the slightest hint of guilt. He never brought anything important; Ales would just mess around with Lyra's pencil case, play with things on her desk, or casually ask her to share her snacks. His obnoxious personality and habit of unknowingly becoming a nuisance had not changed in the slightest to this day. Not even after the guy had grown older and taken on a new status.
Ding!
A sharp notification sound suddenly shattered Lyra's reverie. In the upper corner of her laptop screen, an automatic reminder she had set herself popped up in bold lettering:
*"Focus, Ra! Remember your sales targets and the planner's future!"
Lyra stared at the screen with a long sigh. She let out a resigned snort, then propped her face up with both hands. "The notification's right," she muttered to herself.
"I'd better focus on making money instead of spacing out like this."
She took a deep breath, puffed out her chest, and prepared to force her fingers back into typing.
However, just as her fingertip touched the spacebar, her bedroom door was gently pushed open from outside.
Anna—her younger sister, who was in her second year of vocational high school—peeked her head inside. The girl was still wearing her complete, slightly wrinkled white-and-gray student council uniform, showing that she had only just arrived home after Monday's ceremony and school hours ended. Her right hand held a glass of warm tea that was still giving off a faint wisp of steam, while her eyes gazed at Lyra with a suspiciously meaningful sparkle.
"Miss... you're really busy, huh?" Anna whispered in an overly sweet voice.
Lyra stopped her fingers, turned, and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Nope, I'm just stuck. What do you want? Why'd your voice suddenly go up two octaves? You just got home from school and you're already trying to butter me up?"
Anna let out a relieved breath, walked in, and casually plopped herself down on the edge of Lyra's bed after setting the glass of warm tea on the end of her sister's desk. "I made warm tea for the prettiest Miss Yaya in the whole district."
Anna then tilted her head. "So, Miss... I'm going out with my school friends this afternoon. Can I borrow your black cardigan, the one you washed yesterday? And, um... can I use just a little of your brick-red lip tint?"
Lyra chuckled softly and smacked her own forehead. The throbbing in her head had not eased at all; it only got worse as she watched her little sister suddenly turn pitiful to get what she wanted. No wonder she'd brought warm tea. There was obviously an ulterior motive.
Although their daily life at home was full of teasing each other, petty arguments, and obnoxious antics like this, Lyra knew it was simply how they showed they cared. In the middle of their home's cold, tense atmosphere, absurd jokes with Anna were one of the things that kept their relationship warm.
"So that's why you were suddenly so eager to make tea. You wanted something," Lyra sneered as she snatched up the warm tea and took a small sip. "Go get it from the closet. The cardigan's hanging on the right side of the coat rack. The lip tint's on the vanity. Don't put on too much, or people will think you just ate rawon chicken." Anna's eyes immediately lit up with delight. "Yay! Thanks, Miss Yaya!"
Anna quickly grabbed the cardigan and dabbed a little lip tint onto her lips in front of the mirror. However, instead of leaving the room right away, the girl in the student council uniform stood motionless beside Lyra's desk, twirling the hem of her shirt.
Lyra noticed that her sister had not moved and raised one eyebrow. "What now? Want to borrow a bag too?" Anna flashed a wide grin, displaying her neat row of teeth as she pressed both palms together in front of her chest.
"Miss... could you give me my snack money too? Just a hundred thousand for boba and parking. Mom's allowance was all gone yesterday because I bought a book," Anna pleaded with the most pitiful expression she could muster.
Lyra rolled her eyes, but her hand still reached for the wallet beside her laptop. She pulled out one fifty-thousand-rupiah bill and one twenty-thousand-rupiah bill, then lightly smacked them against Anna's forehead.
"Here, just seventy thousand. There aren't any hundreds. What do you think, that your sister's a money tree? Don't buy anything weird, and get home before sunset," Lyra scolded, pretending to be stern.
"Yes, Your Excellency! Seventy thousand is already a huge blessing!" Anna cheered, kissing the bills before grinning in satisfaction. "Thanks, Miss Yaya! I'm going back to my room to take off my uniform!" Clack.
The bedroom door closed tightly again. The room fell silent once more, but this time, the emptiness had been replaced by warmth and peace. In a home that was often cold because of their parents' arguments, these little moments of getting extorted by her own sister were exactly the kind of simple entertainment Lyra enjoyed. Lyra let out a long, relieved breath. She tilted her head and looked back at her laptop screen, which was filled with planner designs. The block that had tormented her all this time had now completely evaporated.
However, just as her fingers were about to click a menu on the screen, the phone beside her mouse pad began vibrating loudly. Its screen lit up, showing 2:45 p.m. and an incoming WhatsApp video call from a contact named "Big Boss."
Lyra raised one eyebrow. It was rare for Ales to call her by video during work hours, unless something important had happened or one of his bizarre antics was acting up again. Without thinking twice, Lyra swiped the green icon on the screen. The image on her screen changed instantly. The front-facing camera on Ales's phone was filled by the tiny face of a toddler pressed far too close to the lens. His slightly flat nose was squished against the screen, making him look ridiculously cute and hilarious.
"Auntie Yayaa!" cried that extremely familiar lisping voice in a high-pitched squeal.
Lyra's small smile immediately spread wide. Her creative block, exhaustion, and work-related headache vanished in a single second.
"Hey, squirt! Why's your face taking up the whole screen? Auntie Yaya can't even see those chubby cheeks. You've still got pillow face, too. You must've just woken up from your nap and haven't taken a bath yet, huh?"
"See? Even Auntie Lyra knows you just woke up and haven't taken your afternoon bath," Ales remarked from behind his son. "I've been telling him since he woke up: take your afternoon bath first, brush your teeth, then call Auntie Lyra. Instead, he's been throwing a fit this whole time." Ion pouted. The two-year-old hugged his father's phone even tighter with both tiny hands.
"No bath! Want ice cream with Auntie Yaya!" Lyra chuckled softly at the boy's antics.
"Who eats ice cream this late in the afternoon, sweetheart? It'll make your throat itchy, and then your cough will come back like last week. If you start coughing, you won't be allowed to play at Auntie Yaya's house, you know."
Ion's round eyes immediately sparkled with innocent hope. "Really? If I take an afternoon bath... can I play at Auntie Yaya's house?"
"Of course," Lyra answered gently, her voice automatically shifting into a child-friendly tone. "But you have to take a nice, clean afternoon bath with scented soap, and then finish all your dinner. Auntie Yaya will come play at Ion's house this afternoon and bring the wooden bird toy she bought yesterday. How's that?"
"Yaaay! Birdie playtime!" Ion cheered, hopping up and down on the sofa until the shaking screen made it difficult for Ales to hold his phone.
Ales finally took over the phone, aiming the camera entirely at his own face. He looked at Lyra through the screen with an expression of immense relief—the signature look of a single dad who had just been rescued from his child's post-nap emotional crisis.
"Thanks, Ra," Ales said in a soft, sincere voice. "Seriously, he was unbelievably fussy when he woke up from his nap. He wouldn't let me wipe him down, he cried when I tried to get him into the bath, and he kept asking for you. My face looks like a chamois cloth from trying to keep my patience."
Lyra laughed as she looked at her exhausted friend. "Well, that's because you probably tried to reason with him by yelling. When a little kid just wakes up, you have to talk to him nicely, not scold him."
"Who was yelling? I was being incredibly patient," Ales insisted, unwilling to lose. "Anyway, I'm going to drag this kid to the bathroom before he changes his mind. You get back to work."
"Okay. Don't forget to dry his hair, or the little guy will catch a cold," Lyra reminded him.
"Yes, Your Excellency. Got it," Ales chuckled faintly before flashing her a brief smile and ending the call. Lyra's phone screen went dark again, reflecting her own still-smiling face. The room that had been quiet before now felt much warmer and more alive.
Lyra let out a long, relieved breath. She tilted her head and looked back at her laptop screen, which was filled with planner designs. Strangely, the block that had tormented her all this time had now completely evaporated. Her mind felt much clearer, and her soul much calmer.
Lyra took a deep breath, then straightened her posture. Her fingers once again hovered over the keyboard, her focus fully restored.
"Okay, let's finish this planner now," she murmured to herself with determination.
She had to finish all the files and confirm her customers' orders before five in the afternoon, so that after Asr she would have time to visit Ales's house—and give Ion the blue wooden bird toy she had bought yesterday.
**** To be continued!