Two days had passed since that harrowing night. Arka’s father’s condition had improved significantly, and the medical team had finally allowed him to be moved from the ICU to a much quieter regular room. The room was medium-sized, with large windows looking directly toward the northern hills of Bandung. The cool mountain air drifted gently through the parted curtains, carrying the scent of pine and the freshness of morning, erasing the last traces of exhaustion from their faces.
After making sure his father had fallen soundly asleep after taking his morning medication, Arka invited Nara to walk with him to the rooftop garden on the hospital’s fifth floor. The place was relatively quiet in the hours before noon. There were only a few wooden garden chairs shaded by the lush frangipani trees and a stretch of neatly tended green grass. From the garden balcony, the panorama of Bandung spread wide beneath a clear blue sky free of gray clouds.
They sat side by side on one of the wooden benches. The hill wind blew softly, playing with the strands of Nara’s loose hair. Nara studied Arka’s profile. The shadows of exhaustion and the dark circles beneath his eyes were slowly disappearing, replaced by a peaceful glow she hadn’t seen in a long time. The tension that had gripped the broad shoulders of the man since yesterday’s bad news had now completely dissolved.
“Thank you for staying here with me these past three days, Ra,” Arka said quietly. He turned slightly, looking at Nara with genuine warmth. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d had to get through Dad’s critical period alone, without you by my side.”
Nara gave him a faint smile and leaned back against the wooden bench. “I’m glad I could be here, Ka. I used to think our memories from the past were nothing more than riddles you’d deliberately left behind without answers. But being in this city, hearing your dad’s stories, and seeing how hard you fight for your family... it made me realize the answer was always there. You just needed time to bring it home to me.”
Arka smiled tenderly. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small lined notebook that looked like he’d bought it at the hospital convenience store that morning, along with a mechanical pencil. Without saying much, Arka began moving his fingers across the clean white paper. The faint scratch of pencil on paper blended harmoniously with the rustle of the morning breeze.
“What are you drawing?” Nara asked curiously, trying to peek from the side.
“A woman who saved my life,” Arka answered casually without stopping his hand.
Nara let out a soft laugh and shook her head. “You’re getting better at sweet-talking people, Arka. Who taught you?”
“A famous novelist who happens to be sitting beside me,” Arka shot back, giving her an adorably mischievous sidelong glance.
Nara balanced the laptop she’d been carrying in her bag on her lap. Beneath Bandung’s bright sky, she opened the latest chapter of her novel. For the first time in all her years as a writer, Nara felt no pressure from targets or fear of her readers’ judgment. She wrote with a heart that was free and whole. The male protagonist in her story was no longer a vague shadow from the past, haunted by regret, but a real man brave enough to face the storm to protect the love he kept hidden in the deepest part of his heart.
They worked in harmonious silence—Arka with his pencil lines, and Nara with the soft ding of her fingers on the keyboard. There was no heavy conversation, no lingering guilt weighing them down anymore. There was only each other’s presence, perfectly complementing the other. When Nara finished her final paragraph, Arka set down his pencil and closed his notebook.
Arka reached out with his left hand, turned Nara’s limp palm upward where it rested on her thigh, and clasped it firmly. Warm, steady, and full of certainty.
“Ra,” Arka called softly.
“Yes, Ka?” Nara turned to him, meeting the deep brown eyes before her.
“The day after tomorrow, once Dad’s condition is truly stable and my younger sibling arrives in Bandung to take over the watch, I’ll take you back to Jakarta,” Arka said resolutely.
“But this time, I won’t let there be any distance between us again. We’ll finish restoring the building we started together—both the old building in that old town and this relationship we once neglected.”
Nara returned Arka’s grip, feeling her heart pounding fast with happiness. “Promise?”
Arka leaned a little closer, looking at Nara with a tenderness capable of stopping time all around them. He lifted the hand he held and pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to its back beneath the glow of the morning sunlight.
“Promise, Nara. Ever since the first day I drew your face on my first sketchbook page, my heart has never gone anywhere else.”
High above the quiet rooftop garden in the heart of Bandung, their dark past was officially closed. A clean new page now stretched out before them, ready to be filled with the most beautiful colors created by fate and the courage to love again.