I could hear the wind greeting my hair roughly. Faintly, I heard birds mocking and belittling me. I could hear a broken sound, and faintly, I could hear my blood rushing through my chest—so tight and... painful!
I watched his back slowly move away, doing nothing but watching. I had no desire to chase after him. Anyone who wanted to leave, I would let leave. Stop him? No. I would never do that again!
“This isn’t love! What we have can’t be called love. It’s just me staying by your side and loving you so much, while you only act as if you love me. You don’t really love me; you’re just being kind to me. Don’t you realize that love like this hurts me? It’s a wound you would never even think about. A faint wound, because even though we’re together, my love is still unrequited.”
Those were his words, his last words to me. What’s wrong with being kind? What’s wrong with trying to make someone who loves us happy? Hah! Forget it! I don’t understand people!
My name is Aora. I’m a girl who’s never had a relationship that lasted; my stories always end horribly. They say my heart is made of stone. They say my smile is stiff. I’m not sincere when I get into relationships with them—I’m just a creature full of acts. Ah, damn it! I only wanted to be kind.
I’ve tried several times to open my heart to someone new, but those people weren’t willing to be patient. Doesn’t it take a long time to fall in love with someone? A year or two is only a short time, isn’t it? Haha! That’s why people think I’m not human. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
This is the sixth time I’ve been left without a word. Whatever. I’m bored too. I’m not going to start a relationship with someone I don’t love from the beginning. I have to be the one who loves them first.
I’m still standing in front of my house. Thirty minutes have passed since Adit dumped me. I figured that if I stood here, I’d look like someone who was heartbroken. So I’m going to stand here for another thirty minutes.
I could see the orange light falling across my brown hair. As a native, my hair isn’t black but slightly brownish. I checked the watch on my wrist; I still had fifteen minutes to go. My legs were already getting stiff, and I wanted to sit down and massage them. But I had to endure it. As my final sacrifice, I had to look as sad as possible. I don’t like crying, so this was my way of showing my sadness.
“Ta-da!! Congratulations on our dumb friend Aora getting dumped! Everyone, congratulate her!”
I was startled to find Giva, Chaterine, and Sophia greeting me with party horns and toys from my room. They surrounded me as if I’d just received wonderful news. Rotten friends! Their friend had just been dumped, and instead of comforting me, they were celebrating it.
“Congratulations, my beautiful klutzy friend!” Chaterine said, holding out her hand.
“Congratulations, idiot!” Giva chimed in.
“Congratulations, my poor darling,” Sophia added.
I rolled my eyes lazily and shook each of their hands in turn. My friends had pretty decent love lives compared to mine. Chaterine had been dating Deril for three years, and they looked like they loved each other.
Giva was a popular guy. Lots of girls often asked him out. Even though he never made any of them his girlfriend, at least he always looked happy. I’d once thought Giva didn’t date because he liked one of us, but that turned out to be wrong. He just didn’t want to be tied down; he wanted women swarming around him at all times without a single one of them telling him what to do.
As for Sophia, she was getting close to the student council president at my school. They seemed to like each other; they probably just needed more time to get to know each other.
Hah! I let out a sigh, then searched for a comfortable place to sit. Normally, I would’ve thrown myself straight onto my bed. But thanks to my inhumane friends, my room and bed were a mess. There wasn’t a comfortable spot in sight.
When I saw that my bedroom window was still in decent shape, I walked over and sat on it. The view from the top of this window was truly my favorite view here. I closed my eyes, letting the increasingly chilly wind caress my face.
My chest felt empty again. Usually, when I still had a boyfriend, even though I didn’t love him, my heart didn’t feel this empty. I looked at my three friends. “How do I fall in love?” I asked.
My words made all three of them grin strangely at me.
“Life without love is like a garden without flowers~ Hey, that’s what the poets say~ Life without love is like a garden without flowers~ Hey, that’s what the poets say...”
Giva suddenly grabbed Sophia and Chaterine by the hands, and they spun around while singing Kata Pujangga, a song popularized by Abang Rhoma Irama.
Hah, I let out a harsh sigh. Were my friends really high school students like me? They looked so stupid to me. I shook my head at them. Luckily, I was the only sane one.
“So, what do I do, oh wise teacher? How can I fall in love?” I asked, dropping to my knees and prostrating myself before them. But before my head could touch the floor, Giva’s hand stopped me. He stared at me intensely.
“Enough, kid. You don’t have to go that far. We’ll help you do whatever it takes to find your love,” he said, touching me a little.
After that, they busied themselves with their own affairs, leaving me staring at them in confusion. Sophia took my laptop and turned it on without my permission. Giva seemed absorbed in searching for something on his phone, while Chaterine searched through her bag for something—who knew what.
Hah! I sighed. I turned my gaze outside once more. Rather than get a headache dealing with their strange behavior, I was better off watching a flock of ducks walk together, their bills sticking out.
I stared intensely at the flock of ducks. Should I just become a duck? Live freely without worrying about this and that. Humans were weak, and I was the weakest of all. I couldn’t feel even the slightest bit of happiness. I was so lonely because of it.
In truth, I lived surrounded by people who cared about me: funny friends and a kind mom. But even that wasn’t enough. My heart was still frozen. My parents’ failed marriage had made me afraid. Maybe that was where it all began. But this loneliness was killing me. The people close to me would eventually drift away because I couldn’t make them happy. I only showed them something fake. I only showed them the happiness I imagined I should feel.
Besides, someone who couldn’t feel pain would never understand another person’s suffering, and someone who couldn’t feel happiness couldn’t possibly make someone else happy. I truly was a wretched creature.
“There! This is how!” they said together, making me jump slightly and snapping me out of my reverie.
They placed three objects on my bed. I frowned in confusion. Were they telling me to choose one of the three? I rested my hand beneath my chin and tried to think as hard as I could.
“I’ll choose this one!” I said, pointing at Giva’s phone. “I don’t want the novel; it’s cheap. And I’ve had this laptop from the start, so Giva’s phone is the only thing that benefits me.”
I smiled at them, but they just slapped their foreheads. They acted as if I’d said something stupid, even though they were the stupid ones.
“You idiot! Who said I was giving you this phone?” Giva said, glaring at me in annoyance. “We’re only giving you ways to fall in love with someone. My suggestion is this: a romance comic that can melt anyone who reads it,” Giva said with an obnoxious look on his face.
He showed me the comic on his phone screen. The cover made me cringe. I didn’t like it.
“Hey! My method is more effective than staring at those unmoving pictures,” Chaterine said. “Ta-da! The best movie of all time: Dilan and Milea!” she added enthusiastically.
“Don’t listen to their stupid suggestions. Mine is better: a romance novel. You can learn exactly how it works from one of those,” Sophia said.
I suddenly got a headache from my three friends’ worthless suggestions. I liked reading novels, and I liked comics—especially movies. I liked everything they suggested; I just never watched or read romance. I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to. It only made me jealous and desperate to get a partner as soon as possible, which would ultimately end the same way as before.
“I don’t want any of that,” I said, then threw myself onto the messy bed. I closed my eyes and ignored them as they continued working on their solution. Maybe I’d find the answer in my dreams later.
“Oh my God! What happened to my house? Everybody, wake up! Wake up! What do you think you’re doing, all four of you sleeping on my child’s bed!”
Mom’s noisy voice woke me up. I opened my eyes and stared in disbelief when I saw that my three friends had fallen asleep with me on the bed. What were they thinking, doing something like this? They really were a bunch of idiots, I thought.
I glanced at Giva, who was still sleeping soundly beside me. How dare he take the opportunity to get close to me while I was asleep! I shoved him until he fell onto the floor, then did the same to Chaterine and Sophia.
“What the heck? Why are you pushing us? Who was making all that noise earlier? So annoying,” Sophia mumbled.
I glanced at Mom. She was rubbing her chest, and veins were slowly appearing on her face. I immediately ran to the door and shut it quickly.
Hah! I sighed in relief. My ears had almost started burning from listening to Mom’s rant. I quickly grabbed my earbuds and played something on my phone. I turned the volume all the way up until I couldn’t hear my friends or Mom’s angry voice. I glanced at Giva, Chaterine, and Sophia; they were doing the same thing.
I looked at my phone and realized I’d accidentally started a podcast from the Shy_Ko account. Shy_Ko? Didn’t that sound like Psycho? Curious, I tried listening to the podcast.
“Well, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I don’t have to be afraid of losing you, and I don’t have to be afraid that our relationship will end, because something terrible like that will never exist in my story. I’m the one writing the story. There are only sweet things in our story.”
“I’ll tell the story of the sweet moment when we first met. I’ll always remember your smile that day, and in my story, I’ll never get tired of portraying it.”
“Ah, people are sure to envy the sweet story about us that I’ve created. They’ll think this story is nothing more than fiction, something unreal. But that’s up to them. After all, I’m the novelist, and I’m free to write the story however I want.”
“If I followed reality, our story would be incredibly boring. I don’t want to write it—no! I really don’t want to write a story where our relationship has ended.”
“Hahaha... reality really is cruel, isn’t it? But don’t worry. In my story, there will never be a day when you sob because of me, never a day when I hurt you, and never a day when you leave my life. Never! ...There will never be a story like that.”
“I’ll tell only of happiness. I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world, and I’ll never let you go.”
“Besides, even in real life, I’m sure you didn’t really leave me. You only went away for a little while. I’m sure you’ll come back. But... it’s been a year since you left. Why haven’t you come back yet? Or maybe you’re lost somewhere you’ve never been before, so you can’t find your way back to me?”
“Oh, right. Maybe that’s what happened. If it’s true, you must be suffering, right? I’m sure you’re suffering terribly over there. I’m sorry I didn’t come looking for you right away. You must be scared, right? Wait a little longer. I’ll come find you. Can you wait for me?”
I held my breath. His voice made my heart melt, and his story tugged at my heart a little. I’d never felt this way before. Shy_Ko sounded like a psycho, but his story was kind of sweet, wasn’t it?
I looked at my friends with a wide, open-mouthed smile, making all three of them furrow their brows. I didn’t know what was wrong with them. All I knew was that my heart felt happy.
Was this feeling called love? Was this happy feeling what people called happiness? Without thinking twice, I immediately typed a comment on the post:
“I Love You Shy_Ko!”
Actually, it wasn’t really a comment. What I’d written was nothing more than an expression of love.
But I never imagined that a single comment would drastically change my life later on—leading me to the dark side in a corner of the world, a world I had never set foot in before.