At 7:15, Arga left the apartment.
He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black pants, and an old watch he'd wanted to replace several times but had always failed to do so.
Inside the elevator, an old man stood beside him, holding a plastic bag filled with vegetables.
Seventeenth floor.
Fifteenth.
Twelfth.
Arga watched the numbers slowly descend.
On the ninth floor, a woman stepped in with a young boy who was still wearing his school uniform.
The boy was sleepy.
His head rested against his mother's arm.
Arga shifted slightly to make room.
No one spoke.
When the elevator reached the ground floor, the doors opened, and everyone stepped out to attend to their own business.
Arga walked toward the main road.
Jakarta was already bustling that morning.
Motorcycles wove between cars. Vendors opened their stalls. People hurried along with phones in their hands. At a small shop near the bus stop, several office workers stood in line for coffee.
Arga stopped.
He looked at the food arranged behind the glass.
Nasi uduk.
Chicken porridge.
Vegetable rice cakes.
He remembered Maya's message.
Coffee isn't breakfast.
Arga finally bought nasi uduk.
Not because of Maya.
Of course not.
He just happened to be hungry.
His office was on the eighth floor of a building sandwiched between two much taller office buildings.
Arga worked as an editor.
His job sounded simple when explained in a single sentence: reading other people's writing and making it better.
In reality, the job was far more exhausting.
He read hundreds of pages every week. Unfinished novels, short stories, memoirs, scripts that were too long, scripts that were too short, and, every now and then, a piece that made him wonder how its author could have the nerve to do that to readers.
Arga liked his job.
He liked seeing how a story changed after unnecessary parts were cut.
He liked finding a sentence that was actually good but had gotten lost among a hundred bad ones.
And what he liked most was when a writer finally understood that the ending they'd been searching for had actually been there in the opening pages all along.
According to Arga, a good story always leaves traces.
Readers might not notice them the first time they read it.
But when everything was over, they should be able to look back and say:
Oh.
So it was there from the beginning.
That's what made a story feel whole.
Arga didn't know that years later, that principle would become something far more personal to him.
He didn't know it yet.
That morning, he simply sat in front of his computer and opened a three-hundred-page manuscript.
The day passed.
"Still alive?"
Arga looked up.
Maya stood in front of his desk.
"Unfortunately."
Maya set a cup of coffee beside his laptop.
"Here."
"I already have one."
"That's coffee from this morning."
"It's still coffee."
"Technically, rainwater is still water. That doesn't mean you want to drink it from a gutter."
Arga looked at the cup she had brought.
"You bought it?"
"Yeah."
"How much?"
"Free."
"Free from where?"
Maya pulled out a chair and sat down.
"From my money."
"Then it wasn't free."
"Don't complain so much."
Arga opened the lid of the cup.
The aroma of coffee slowly rose.
He took a small sip.
"It's good."
Maya smiled with satisfaction.
"I know."
"Why?"
"Because I picked it."
Arga turned his attention back to the screen.
Maya didn't leave right away.
She looked over the documents on Arga's desk, then asked, "Did you finish yesterday's?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"The character is boring."
"You've said that three times."
"Because it's still boring."
Maya laughed.
Then, for no clear reason, she said, "You've been spacing out a lot lately."
Arga stopped typing.
"A lot?"
"Yeah."
"According to who?"
"According to me."
Arga looked at her.
Maya held his gaze.
Several seconds passed.
"Why?" she asked.
Arga shook his head.
"It's nothing."
Maya seemed to want to ask again.
But she thought better of it.
"All right, then."
She stood.
Before leaving, she tapped Arga's desk twice.
"Lunch."
"I know."
"Don't forget."
"I know."
Maya walked away.
Arga turned his attention back to the screen.
The cursor blinked in the middle of a sentence.
He didn't resume his work for several seconds.
It wasn't because of Maya's question.
At least, not entirely.
He really had been spacing out a lot lately.
He'd noticed it himself.
Sometimes his thoughts seemed to stop in a particular place for no reason. A scent, an old song, a road he happened to pass, or even a name he happened to read.
Small things.
Nothing important.
Not important enough to be called memories.
Arga had always thought so.
Until one day, something small turned out to be capable of opening a door he'd closed long ago.