The night felt much longer and colder to Alea.
After reading the mysterious message frozen on her phone screen, she couldn't even bring herself to lie down on her bed. Instead, she sat silently at her desk, staring at the faded photograph of a woman holding a baby. She left the bedroom light dim, allowing faint shadows to tremble across the walls.
> Tomorrow, find the name of the hospital where you were born.
The sentence kept echoing endlessly in Alea's mind.
The problem was, Alea had never known for certain which hospital she had been born in. Whenever she tried to bring up the subject of her birth, her parents always gave her vague, conflicting answers. Sometimes Marissa said she had been born at a private hospital on the outskirts of the city. Other times, her mother claimed that the delivery had been extremely complicated and an emergency, leaving no time for a single photograph to be taken.
There had never been any clarity. Everything had always been deliberately hidden behind a curtain of secrets.
Driven by a curiosity that was becoming increasingly torturous, Alea stood and opened her closet. She began digging through the piles of belongings left over from her childhood. In the deepest corner, she found several sets of baby clothes whose fabric had yellowed with age, a pair of tiny cloth shoes, and a plastic hospital ID bracelet whose color had faded over time.
Her fingers suddenly stopped when they touched a carved wooden box at the bottom of the closet. The box looked completely unfamiliar and hadn't been touched in years.
Alea slowly carried it to her desk. Carefully, she opened the wooden lid.
Inside were several old photographs: one of her taking her first steps, one from her fifth birthday celebration, and one of her with Celine when they were still toddlers.
But just as she had suspected, there wasn't a single photograph of Alea as a newborn baby.
Alea let out a heavy sigh of disappointment. "Why isn't there anything at all?" she murmured.
She turned through the photographs one by one, examining them carefully. Suddenly, a small photograph slipped from between the folds of paper at the very bottom of the box and slid onto the desk.
Alea's heart fluttered violently. With trembling hands, she picked up the tiny photograph.
It was a photograph of a baby girl. The baby lay in a hospital bassinet covered with a plain white blanket. Across the top of the photograph, a handwritten stamp read clearly:
> Baby Girl — July 12.
Alea stared, transfixed, at the tiny face. On the back of the photograph was the stamped name of an institution, most of the image obscured by a smear of black ink. Alea slowly rubbed the dirty mark with her fingertip.
> Harapan Bunda Hospital.
Alea jolted. The hospital's name was exactly the same as the one she had seen on Adrian's documents!
"So... I really was born there?" she whispered into the silence.
She examined the photograph's details again. But in the bottom corner, there was a stiff, black-ink scrawl:
> Baby A.
That was all. The name 'Alea' wasn't there. Neither was the mother's name or the father's.
The hairs on the back of Alea's neck suddenly rose. Cold raced through her veins. Without wasting a moment, she took out her phone and photographed the picture as a copy.
Click.
The sound of the door hinges being pushed open startled Alea. On reflex, she immediately curled her fingers into a fist, hiding the tiny photograph in her grasp.
Marissa stood in the doorway, looking at her daughter with a weary expression. "Alea? You aren't asleep yet, honey?"
Alea tried to compose her face as she looked at her mother. "Not yet, Mom."
Marissa's gaze shifted toward the old wooden box lying open on the desk. "What... are you digging through?"
"Just some things from my childhood," Alea replied flatly.
Marissa stepped closer. But when her eyes caught the corner of the photograph protruding from Alea's tightly clenched hand, her face changed drastically, turning deathly pale with unmistakable fear.
"Alea..." Marissa called, her voice trembling.
"Do you recognize this photograph?" Alea demanded.
Marissa fell completely silent, unable to utter a word.
Alea rose from her chair. "This is a picture of my birth, isn't it, Mom?"
Marissa turned her face away, avoiding direct eye contact.
"Answer me, Mom!" Alea pressed, her voice rising.
"Alea, please... put those things away and go to sleep," Marissa said weakly.
"Why?! Why do I have to put them away?!"
"Because it's all just the past!"
"I'm the one who has the right to find out about my own past!" Alea shouted, overwhelmed by emotion.
Tears suddenly filled Marissa's eyes. She looked at Alea pleadingly. "Don't look any further, Alea. Please..."
"Why, Mom?"
"Because you'll never like the answer you find!"
Alea's chest felt unbearably tight, as though all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. "Then there really is a huge secret you've all been hiding from me..."
Marissa shook her head helplessly. "I just want to protect you, Alea..."
"Protect me from what, Mom?!" Alea cut in. She stepped forward and looked straight into her mother's eyes. "Who is Rendra Pratama?"
The name slipped out before she could stop it. At once, the expression in Marissa's eyes changed completely—a combination of shock, panic, and profound desperation.
That reaction only strengthened Alea's suspicions.
"You know him, don't you?"
"Alea, enough!"
"You know him!" Alea insisted, refusing to back down.
Marissa finally broke down sobbing. "Never... never say that name or look for it again as long as you live!"
"Why? Is he my real biological father?!"
Marissa remained silent for far too long. All she could do was stare at Alea as tears streamed uncontrollably down her face.
Alea held her breath, waiting for an admission that never came.
"Go to sleep, Alea..." Marissa finally whispered.
With trembling hands, the woman swept the wooden box and everything inside it off the desk, then hurried out of the room with the belongings in her arms.
Alea could only stand frozen, staring at her bedroom door as it closed tightly again. Her mother hadn't given her a direct verbal answer. But Marissa's silence and panic that night had offered a far clearer clue than words ever could.
The next day at school, Alea walked in with one firm resolve: she had to uncover the secret of Harapan Bunda Hospital.
When break time arrived, she hurried to the quiet computer lab in the library. Her fingers moved nimbly across the keyboard as she began searching through old digital archives related to the hospital.
The Harapan Bunda Hospital building was apparently still standing strong to this day. But an old news report made Alea furrow her brow deeply. Seventeen years ago, in the very year she was born, the hospital had undergone a sudden change in management. As a result of the sweeping overhaul, many old medical documents and archives had been moved, and most of them were mysteriously declared missing.
Alea kept scrolling, scanning a list of doctors assigned to the maternity ward that year. Her eyes suddenly stopped on one name:
> Dr. Surya Mahendra > Obstetrics and Gynecology Specialist
Alea immediately wrote the doctor's name in her notebook.
She didn't stop there. She resumed searching through digital newspaper articles from that era. A few moments later, she found an old local news link:
"Harapan Bunda Hospital Handles Twin Delivery on July 12."
Alea held her breath as she clicked the link. Unfortunately, much of the article had been cut off because of damage to the digital archive. But one line in the first paragraph was still perfectly legible:
"...Two healthy baby girls were born less than an hour apart..."
Alea's heart pounded like a war drum.
Two baby girls.
It matched the words 'Baby A' in the photograph from her childhood exactly! And the date was identical too: July 12!
Alea quickly pulled out her phone and photographed the computer screen.
But before she could turn off the monitor, a sharp vibration came from the phone in her hand. A new message had arrived from an unnamed number:
> Now you know that the two babies existed.
Alea's body instantly went rigid in her seat. A chill spread from the soles of her feet up to her chest.
Before she could respond, another message arrived:
> But you still don't know... who the other baby really is.
Alea's hands shook violently as she typed a reply, breathing hard:
> Who are you really?! What do you want?!
Silence followed for a moment. There was no immediate reply.
Then, several seconds later, the final words appeared on her screen, carrying a threat and a truth so sharp it cut deep:
> Find the second baby. > Because your life was switched with hers.
Alea stared blankly at her phone screen, her breath caught in her throat.
Her suspicion had been right. Two baby girls really had been born on the same day and in the same place. And one of them was her.
Now, the biggest question in her life was no longer simply who her biological father was. This secret had grown into something far more terrifying.
Who was the baby girl who had been switched with her? And where was that girl now?