The rain tonight fell without a shred of decorum. Brutal. It pounded the asphalt until it was riddled with potholes.
Floodwater drowned the cracked sidewalks along the main road, vomiting up the city's innards in the form of worn-out plastic, cigarette butts, and black sludge deposits that stank of filthy sulfur. Arka dragged his feet. His cheap dress shoes had already lost their shape. The soles gaped like the mouths of leeches, relentlessly sucking at his wrinkled, paling feet.
Wet. Cold.
But beneath his ribs, something was boiling. A tiny furnace burning among the ruins of his sanity.
Twenty-eight years.
The number spun in his eye sockets, overpowering the sting of the rain. For twenty-eight years, he had lived as a defective chameleon, constantly changing colors just to avoid being killed by his surroundings. He had torn away his own soul, piece by piece, to feed the hungry mouths around him.
Rian needed validation, so Arka offered his back to be stepped on. Naya needed social status, so Arka mortgaged his youth for a bottle of perfume and tuition. Aunt Mira needed prey to affirm her family's dominance, so Arka prostrated himself and offered her his neck. He let himself be stripped naked, skinned, and drained of his marrow. Hoping that, with enough obedience, they would gently pat him on the head.
Hoping they would say... you're a good boy.
Good boy.
The words now felt like tarantula venom pooled at the base of his tongue. Disgusting. Stale. Pleasing other people had never made him fully human. It was merely a form of mental prostitution he had disguised as morality. He wasn't an angel. He was just the doormat outside a public restroom, secretly grateful whenever people wiped their muddy soles across his face.
Arka stopped walking.
He stood beneath the edge of a pecel lele stall's canopy, its tarp torn to shreds. The night wind carried the acrid smell of used frying oil, mingling with the fishy stench of an overflowing drain. A streetlamp flickered in its death throes, casting the hunched shadow of his body across a moss-covered brick wall.
Something moved at the edge of the tarp.
A frail figure wrapped in a black garbage bag crouched there, hugging a sack of scrap. An old scavenger. His face was caked with grime. His eyes were cloudy as he stared at Arka, who stood frozen, blocking the last of the streetlamp's light. Reflexively, the old, wrinkled hand lifted toward him. Trembling.
"Sir... I haven't eaten, sir." His voice was rasping, like sandpaper scraping across wet wood. "A thousand... to buy some bread..."
A few hours ago, the old Arka would definitely have reached into his soaked pants pocket. He would have searched for whatever metal coins remained, or even offered his last bill worth tens of thousands, despite knowing he had nowhere to sleep tonight. The old Arka would have nodded with fake empathy.
But this Arka only stared blankly.
"This tarp is leaking," Arka muttered. His voice was flat. Strange to his own ears.
The scavenger blinked slowly. His outstretched hand lowered a little. "If you've got any spare change, sir... I'm hungry..."
"You think the world has to pity you just because you're old and poor?"
The words slipped out without a filter. Cold. Piercing the drizzle.
The scavenger pulled his hand back completely. A flash of fear gleamed behind his yellowing eyes. His lips moved, spilling prayers or curses that couldn't be made out.
Arka turned his face away and looked at a puddle on the asphalt, reflecting the red glow of the traffic light. "This world is carnivorous, sir. You ask it for food... and you'll be the one it chews down to the bone."
He spat toward the puddle. His spit mixed with the leftover blood from his gums, which he had accidentally bitten too hard.
No one cared. The sky didn't care. The great entity whose name he had recited in all those pathetic prayers... clearly wasn't watching over him tonight. Arka started walking again, breaking through the curtain of rain as it grew heavier.
His steps no longer dragged. There was a new rhythm to them. Firm. Rigid.
The remnants of paranoia, doubt, and fear of rejection that had bound his throat all these years... rotted away. Peeled off like dead skin. Tonight, he realized one truth. If he kept trying to be a gas cylinder for people who loved striking matches, he would be the one who exploded into ash.
Tears rolled slowly down his cheeks, but not from sadness. They were the last remnants of his humanity evaporating.
Arka lifted his head. He stared at Jakarta's starless, pitch-black sky. Black. Threatening.
He laughed.
At first, it was only a soft snort through his nose. Then a chuckle. The laughter crawled upward, tearing through his throat before exploding into something savage, hoarse, and discordant. The echo of his laughter was swallowed by thunder striking a utility pole at the end of the street, leaving blue sparks showering down onto the wet asphalt.
He was laughing at foolish Arka. Arka, who had desperately sought validation.
Just die, good boy, he whispered to his own reflection in the puddle. Die, and never wake up again.