The word BREATHE filled the last page of Ninda’s notebook like an order someone had left for themselves.
She read it in her boarding room after showering and changing clothes. The smell of earth had faded from her palms, but the chill at the nape of her neck remained. The fan turned slowly overhead, stirring the hot air and carrying in the smell of detergent from the neighbors’ laundry.
Ninda turned on her laptop.
On the screen, the seven names waited.
She typed the first name into a local news search engine. Nothing matched. The second name returned thirty-two different people, but not one of them was nineteen years old or connected to Wringin Anom Alley. The third name was too common. The fourth appeared as an inactive social media account.
There were no missing-person reports.
Ninda changed the keywords. The name plus a date. The name plus Semarang. The name plus missing person. She opened the newsroom’s digital archives, then contacted two former reporters who might have handled criminal cases in the old market district.
One reporter replied with a laughing emoji.
There are lots of people who go missing every day, Nin. Don’t go looking for ghosts before breakfast.
The other reporter didn’t reply at all.
At nine, Bagas called.
“You’ve been there,” he said without saying hello.
Ninda pressed the speaker button and kept staring at the screen. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Don’t use that tone. I’m in a meeting. You’ve been there?”
“Where?”
“Ninda.”
That one word was enough to make her stop typing. Bagas only called her by her full name when he was angry or when something couldn’t be solved with a revision.
“I saw the location,” Ninda replied.
“That’s not an answer.”
“There’s an alley. A banyan tree. A coffee stall. The locals don’t want to talk.”
“And?”
Ninda looked at the word BREATHE in her notebook.
“And none of the seven names are in the online archives.”
Bagas let out a long breath. In the background, she heard a chair scrape and someone call his name.
“Don’t turn this into a story until you have one source willing to go on the record. I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You always think warnings are challenges sent by the universe.”
Ninda smiled without humor. “The universe has never sent me a paycheck.”
“Find the data first. Don’t go back tonight.”
The call ended before Ninda could answer.
She opened the police department’s missing-person report folder, which had once been shared with the newsroom on a limited basis. Her access wasn’t complete, but she knew how to find a way in: not through the victim’s name, but through the location, date, and report status.
Two hours later, she found one entry.
Name: Laras Wulandari.
Age: 22.
Report date: November 4.
Status: withdrawn by the reporting party.
Ninda sat up straighter.
The report had been filed the day after the last date Laras had been seen. Last known location: near the old market. The officer’s notes were only two lines long. The reporting party had come with the victim’s mother. The reporting party had requested that the report be stopped without explanation.
In the additional notes field was an unusual code: PW-17.
Ninda photographed the screen, wrote down the entry number, then searched for the reporting party’s address.
The address was in an old apartment complex on the eastern side of the city.
She left before lunch.
The woman who opened the apartment door was named Bu Sari. Ninda recognized her from the old report’s profile photo: her hair had been darker, and her face far less anxious than it was now.
Bu Sari looked at Ninda’s press card, then at the folder in her hand.
“I don’t want to be interviewed,” she said.
“I haven’t asked you anything.”
“Reporters come to ask questions. If they don’t, they usually come looking for the address of someone who does.”
Ninda put away her press card. “I just want to make sure Laras is all right.”
The woman pulled the door halfway shut.
“Laras is gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Bu Sari stared through the gap in the door. Inside, the apartment smelled of eucalyptus oil and freshly cooked rice. A television was on without any sound.
“I already told you I don’t know.”
“You withdrew your missing-person report the day after you filed it. Why?”
Bu Sari’s fingers tightened around the edge of the door.
“Because Laras wasn’t missing.”
“If she wasn’t missing, where was she?”
The question changed Bu Sari’s face. Not to anger. To blankness.
She opened the door a little wider, just enough to reveal the living-room wall. A large photograph of a young woman in a white frame hung there. Laras. Her hair was tied back, and she wore a yellow T-shirt, smiling at the camera.
The photograph looked new.
Far too new for someone who had last been seen almost a year ago.
“She came home,” Bu Sari said.
Ninda held her breath. “When?”
“Three days after the report was filed.”
“Then why didn’t you tell the police?”
Bu Sari stared at the photograph behind her, but she wasn’t really seeing it.
“Because she didn’t want her name spoken anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
The woman began closing the door.
“Go home, miss.”
The words sounded ordinary coming from Bu Sari, but they made Ninda’s skin prickle. Exactly like the voice beneath the banyan tree.
Ninda held the door with her palm without trying to force her way inside.
“Bu, does Laras still live here?”
“No.”
“Is she still alive?”
Bu Sari didn’t answer.
From inside the apartment, an old man’s voice called, “Sari, who is it?”
Bu Sari shut the door quickly. Before the gap disappeared, Ninda saw something on the living-room floor: a pair of women’s shoes covered in black earth.
The door locked.
Ninda stood in the hot apartment hallway, listening to the exhaust fan creak overhead. She wrote down the address in her notebook, then photographed the door and unit number.
As she walked downstairs, her phone vibrated.
A message came in from an unnamed number.
Don’t look for someone who has already come home.
Ninda stopped on the second step.
She stared at the screen until the message turned into two blue checks, even though she didn’t know who had sent it.
Beyond the hallway window, the Semarang sun reflected too brightly. For a moment, Ninda saw the shadow of someone standing in the courtyard below—tall, motionless, and facing directly toward the apartment building.
She blinked.
The shadow was gone.
Inside Bu Sari’s apartment, Laras’s photograph continued to smile as though nothing had ever happened.