Aruna pushed through the cold night wind, hurrying toward the pile of ashes in front of what remained of her collapsed house. A police officer dressed entirely in black rushed forward, spreading his arms to stop Aruna by the shoulders.
“Don’t go any closer yet. The forensic team is still checking for fuel residue inside,” the officer said, his firm voice carrying a hint of sympathy.
Aruna didn’t answer. Her swollen eyes remained fixed on the blackened corner of the porch. There, on the cement wall blistered by the intense heat of the fire, a small handprint had formed from the remains of black soot. The print had been made by a palm smeared with kerosene, deliberately slapped beside the frame of the window that had now been charred.
Beneath the handprint, wedged among the piles of shattered cement rubble, a small object gleamed under the beam of a police flashlight. A gold-plated metal pen, its plastic cap melted at the tip—a limited-edition pen handed out exclusively at Valerie’s book launch two days earlier. Rangga stepped toward Aruna and stood close beside her. He gently touched her cold elbow, trying to block her view of the rubble that had once been her room, still releasing thin wisps of smoke and a sharp burnt smell.
“All the initial manuscripts, the draft of my second novel, my research notes from five years.” Aruna’s voice was barely audible, nearly drowned out by the hiss of the remaining flames being doused by the fire hose. “It was all inside that wooden cabinet, Mr. Rangga.”
Rangga didn’t answer right away. He lowered his gaze and looked into Aruna’s tear-filled eyes. He raised his hand and slowly pointed toward Aruna’s temple with the tips of his warm fingers.
“Your writing was never inside that wooden cabinet, Aruna,” Rangga whispered in a deep, soothing voice. “All of it lives here, inside your head. They can burn those pages to ash, but they’ll never be able to burn your memories and your soul.”
A broad-shouldered man in a black leather jacket stepped out from behind the police line. In his right hand, covered by a rubber glove, he held a clear plastic bag containing the gold pen, warped by the heat of the fire. “Mr. Rangga Dewantara?” the man in the leather jacket asked, stopping in his tracks. “I’m Inspector Pratama with the City Police Precinct. We found this right near the entrance, beside the gas cylinder whose valve had been deliberately opened. The perpetrator knew the layout of this house very well. He got in without forcing the front-door lock.”
Aruna stared at the clear plastic bag without blinking. Her throat felt clogged by a suffocating lump of cold air. “Only two people had a spare key to this house,” Aruna said in a trembling voice. “Valerie and me.” Inspector Pratama wrote down every word Aruna spoke in his small pocket notebook. “We just sent a team to Ms. Valerie’s apartment downtown, but her residence has been empty for two hours. All of her social-media accounts uploaded an official statement video just ten minutes ago.”
The officer pulled a smartphone from inside his leather jacket. He swiped across the glass screen several times, then held it out in front of Rangga and Aruna. On the brightly lit screen, a short video showed Valerie sitting and sobbing in a room with white walls in the background. Her face, usually coated in expensive makeup, now looked pale and bare, without a trace of makeup, deliberately left flushed to provoke sympathy. In the one-minute recording, Valerie claimed she was the victim of extortion by a former administrative staffer named Aruna Paramita. In a broken voice, Valerie alleged that Aruna had threatened to burn all their business files and destroy her reputation unless she was paid one billion rupiah in hush money.
The viewer count beneath the video continued climbing rapidly. Hundreds of thousands of comments from her followers flooded the thread, spilling out anger, insults, and openly directed threats of violence against the name Aruna Paramita. “She twisted every fact before we had a chance to take legal action,” Rangga hissed. His jaw tightened, casting his features into an intensely cold, sharp line.
The phone in Inspector Pratama’s jacket pocket suddenly rang loudly, vibrating hard. He pulled it out, pressed the green button, and listened to the report on the other end for several seconds. The officer’s expression gradually grew more rigid as his eyes shifted toward Aruna.
“Aruna,” Inspector Pratama said, his voice softening. “Valerie’s legal team just went to police headquarters. They handed over a business agreement bearing your thumbprint and signature over a legal stamp. The document states that all copyrights to written works under the pen name C.F. were sold outright to Valerie three years ago in exchange for cash.”
Aruna shook her head quickly. Her face turned even paler. “I never signed any copyright-transfer agreement! I only signed a ghostwriter confidentiality agreement for one manuscript!”
“The document they submitted is legally valid, ma’am,” the police officer replied flatly. “And because of the fire at this house, they have officially reported you for burning evidence, extortion, and defamation.”
The world around Aruna seemed to spin faster and faster. The footsteps of police officers moving back and forth as they photographed the wreckage, the flashes from the forensic cameras, and the wail of sirens on the highway melted into one deafening roar. Her body went limp. She leaned her shoulder against Rangga’s arm, feeling the only support she had left in the midst of this total ruin. Rangga wrapped an arm around Aruna’s shoulders, pulled her behind his body, and stared at Inspector Pratama with an openly defiant gaze.
“The document they have is forged,” Rangga said firmly, without hesitation. “And I’ll stand as the key witness before the court.”
Inspector Pratama let out a long breath and slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Mr. Rangga, you understand your position right now. Your father, Mr. Baskara Dewantara, just released an official press statement a few minutes ago announcing that you’ve been removed as CEO of Dewantara Group, effective tonight. Your testimony won’t carry enough legal weight without physical evidence in the form of the original manuscript from its first source.”
The night wind blew hard again, sending the ashes from the fire swirling into the air and flattening the last traces of smoke across the ground. Aruna stared at the earth beneath her, feeling it crumble further, offering no footing at all. She no longer had a home, didn’t possess a single sheet of her manuscript, and now her name had been branded that of a criminal in the eyes of millions of people out there. Yet amid the darkness closing in around them, Rangga’s fingers tightened around Aruna’s cold ones. He bent down and brought his lips close to the side of her ear.
“There’s still one place neither my father nor Valerie has ever known about,” Rangga whispered, his voice low, utterly calm, and filled with certainty. “The place where you returned the book Perburuan ten years ago.”
Aruna looked up and met Rangga’s deep-black eyes, which shone with unwavering resolve. In a hidden corner of the old, crumbling city library, the iron storage box belonging to Rangga’s grandfather remained tightly locked—the place where Aruna had once hidden a copy of her first secret manuscript, before Valerie’s name entered her life and ruined its course.