Morning at Mbak Rara's food stall began with the clink of spoons against glasses and Ninda failing to turn on her phone for the third time.
The screen was cracked in one corner, but that wasn't the problem. The battery had dropped from thirty-eight percent to twelve in less than an hour. The call history was empty. The voice messages were gone. The recording she was sure she'd made inside the empty house contained nothing but a long hum, followed by her own voice saying a single word she didn't remember ever saying.
Breathe.
Ninda closed the file before playing it again.
“If you keep staring at your phone like that, it's going to think you have feelings for it,” Mbak Rara said.
Ninda looked up. “My phone was attacked.”
“Young people's phones are so sensitive these days.”
“It's not being sensitive. I got a call from my own number.”
“Then you have the most loyal admirer in the world.”
Ninda didn't smile. Mbak Rara noticed and let the joke drop. She poured kopi tubruk into Ninda's glass. The steam carried a bitter aroma that cleared Ninda's head a little.
Wira sat at the end of the stall, near one of the poles supporting the tarp. He hadn't touched the drink in front of him. His shirt sleeves were pulled down over the torn elbow. From a few yards away, he looked like a man who hadn't slept enough and didn't like crowds. Only Ninda knew that his eyes could glow from within.
She also knew Wira hid pain the same way he hid answers: by staying silent until people grew tired of asking.
Ninda took a folder from her bag.
“I want to propose a pact.”
Wira looked at her.
Mbak Rara snorted. “You barely survived the alley and you're already getting married.”
“A work agreement,” Ninda said.
“Worse.”
Wira didn't react. “You don't need to offer me anything.”
“I do. Because if I go back alone tonight, you'll show up again, save me, and then tell me to go home without giving me any information. That's not cooperation. That's surveillance.”
“You don't know what you're asking for.”
“That's right. Which is why I'm asking for access.”
Ninda opened the folder and took out copies of the list of names from the empty house. She arranged them on the table: the first seven names, several older sheets, and a photo of a page with a name cut off halfway through.
“I won't enter the alley alone after Maghrib,” she said. “In exchange, you help with my investigation. Not by answering every question. I know you won't do that. But you show me safe places, explain what you can, and tell me if I'm heading toward something that will kill me or erase my memory.”
“No.”
Wira's answer came too quickly.
Ninda leaned back in her chair. “Think about it first. A quick refusal usually means there's something you want to avoid.”
“The thing I want to avoid is you.”
“Too bad. I'm already sitting here.”
Mbak Rara held back a laugh with a short cough.
Wira looked at the pages on the table. His index finger stopped near the photo of the note without touching it. Ninda noticed the black stain beneath his fingernail. It was like the mark she'd seen on his arm last night, only thinner.
“You'll keep coming,” he said.
“If I have to.”
“You won't listen to anything that calls to you.”
“I can't promise that. I can promise not to follow the calls.”
“You already followed one.”
“And you showed up late.”
The air around the table seemed to grow colder. Mbak Rara stopped wiping the glasses. Ninda knew she'd touched something she shouldn't have, but she didn't take back her words. Seven missing people. Wira knew something. If he wanted Ninda to stop asking questions, he needed to give her a better reason than a tired look.
Wira looked toward the banyan tree.
“I can't always get there in time.”
His tone wasn't defensive. That was what made the sentence feel heavier.
Ninda waited, but Wira offered no further explanation.
“Fine,” she said. “My rule is this: I don't go in alone at night, and you help me. What's your rule?”
“You don't ask my name.”
The question was already on the tip of Ninda's tongue. She held it back.
“Your full name?”
“My name.”
“The name the locals use?”
“Don't ask.”
“What if I find that name in a document?”
“You can read it silently. Don't say it aloud.”
Ninda took notes. “Second rule?”
“Don't repeat anything you hear whispered in the alley.”
“Even if it's a clue?”
“Especially if it's a clue.”
“Why?”
Wira turned his gaze toward her. “The voices there don't give clues. They give you a way in.”
Ninda wrote that down, then stopped. “Third rule?”
“If I tell you to stop, you stop.”
“No. That's not a rule. That's a request.”
“In that alley, there's no difference.”
“There is to me.”
Mbak Rara set a glass on the table with a soft clink. “If you're going to make a contract, don't use words that can be misunderstood. You two are stubborn enough without grammar getting involved.”
Ninda folded her hands. “I want clear boundaries. You give me warnings, and I judge the risks for myself.”
Wira stared at her, his expression difficult to read. “You want the right to choose.”
“Yes.”
“Even if your choice makes you disappear?”
“Especially if it's my choice.”
Something changed in Wira's face. Not tenderness. More like recognizing a wound they both refused to name. Ninda had once stayed silent despite knowing something was dangerous, and someone else had paid the price. Since then, she couldn't stand words that demanded her trust without giving her room to decide.
Wira nodded once.
“I'll help you get access. I don't guarantee your safety.”
“I didn't ask for a guarantee.”
“You don't come alone after Maghrib.”
“I agree.”
“You don't ask my name.”
“I agree.”
“You don't repeat the whispers you hear.”
Ninda thought about last night's call, the voice that had called her in Bagas's voice, her mother's voice, and her own voice. “I agree, as long as I can describe their effects.”
Wira looked at Mbak Rara, as though asking her to witness the agreement.
Mbak Rara shrugged. “I don't want to be a notary. But if either of you breaks it, I'll spread the word to every woman in the alley. Social punishment is faster than a ghost.”
“Agreed,” Wira said.
Ninda reached for her pen. “Your last condition?”
Wira was silent for so long that the coffee in front of him lost its steam.
“If one day I tell you to leave and never come back, you leave.”
Ninda waited for him to continue.
“Without asking,” he said. “Without looking for a reason. Without assuming I'm testing your courage.”
A motorcycle passed on the main road. Its sound filled the pause, then disappeared in the direction of the market.
Ninda stared at Wira, trying to find a loophole in his words. She found something worse: fear hidden too neatly. Wira wasn't making rules to control Ninda. He was preparing a way to let her go before something else pulled her in with it.
“No,” Ninda said.
Wira's eyes narrowed.
“I agree to every rule except that one.”
“If you don't agree, there's no pact.”
“If you tell me to leave, I'll ask why.”
“No.”
“If you can't give me a reason, I'll judge by the circumstances.”
“You don't understand the circumstances.”
“Neither do you understand me.”
Wira stood. His chair shifted slightly across the cement floor. For a moment, Ninda thought he was going to leave, but he only took the folder from the table and put the pages back inside. He moved carefully, as though the papers were more easily hurt than people.
“Stubbornness isn't courage,” he said.
“Silence isn't protection.”
He looked at Ninda. This time, there was no mockery in his eyes.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “The empty house.”
Ninda nodded. “You'll come with me?”
“I already agreed to help you get access.”
“That isn't necessarily the same as coming with me.”
Wira set the folder in front of her. “I'll be there.”
He walked out of the stall before Ninda could ask whether that was an answer or a warning.
Mbak Rara went back to wiping the table.
“Well,” she said, “congratulations. You just made an uneasy pact.”
Ninda watched Wira's back disappear behind the banyan tree.
She had agreed not to ask his name. She had agreed not to come alone at night. She had agreed to hold the whispers from the alley behind her teeth.
The only condition she hadn't agreed to was the one she feared most.
If Wira told her to leave, Ninda knew she'd ask why.
And if that reason brought her even closer to Wira's secrets, she knew she wouldn't leave.