Arga read the message over and over.
“Now you’re starting to remember, right?”
The sentence hadn’t changed, but each time he read it, it seemed to mean something different. The first time, Arga took it as a provocation. The second time, as a threat. By the third, he was beginning to wonder whether the person behind the number really knew something he had never known all this time.
And by the fourth, he was no longer sure the problem lay with the person who had sent the message.
Maybe the problem was with him.
Arga zoomed in on the photo still open on the screen.
Four people stood beside a car.
Himself.
Nara.
Someone he didn’t know.
And one more person whose face was hidden in shadow.
No, Arga thought.
Not someone he didn’t know.
He knew that person.
Or at least, he had once known them.
His memory of the jacket was too clear to be a coincidence. A black jacket with gray stripes across the shoulders. An otherwise ordinary design, but that night Arga remembered it because the person wearing it had been standing somewhere they shouldn’t have been.
In the middle of the road.
Under the rain.
Arga zoomed in on the figure’s face.
The image broke apart into pixels.
Nothing was recognizable.
He tried to remember whether he had ever owned that photo.
No.
He was sure he hadn’t.
Arga closed the image, then opened it again.
He wanted to make sure he hadn’t been seeing it wrong.
It was still the same.
Four people.
The same date.
Stasiun Bandung.
July 17, 2015.
And Nara.
Arga rubbed his face with both hands.
It had been eleven years.
For eleven years, he had believed that night had ended the way he remembered it.
Or maybe not the way he remembered it.
Maybe the way he thought he remembered it.
The difference was small when spoken aloud, but it felt enormous when someone began doubting their own memory.
He picked up the train ticket from the table.
It was still lying beside the laptop.
Arga placed it beside the photo.
The date was the same.
July 17, 2015.
He looked back and forth between them.
The photo and the ticket.
One proved that he had been in Bandung.
The other showed that the trip had really happened.
But neither answered the simplest question.
Why didn’t he remember it?
Arga shut down the computer.
The office was completely empty by now.
He put the photo in the envelope and the ticket in his wallet, then put both into his bag.
He kept the black box with him.
He didn’t want to leave it at the office.
For some reason, after seeing the photo, he no longer felt comfortable leaving those things far away from him.
When he stepped out of the room, the corridor lights came on automatically, one after another.
The sound of his footsteps was too clear.
Arga walked toward the elevator.
He stopped in front of the doors.
A strange feeling suddenly came over him.
The feeling that someone was watching him.
He turned around.
The corridor was empty.
There was no one there.
Arga gave himself a small smile.
“Getting paranoid already.”
He pressed the elevator button.
The doors opened.
Arga stepped inside.
Before the doors closed, he caught sight of his reflection in the elevator’s metal wall.
His face looked older than he’d imagined.
Thirty-three years old.
It shouldn’t have been an age that made someone feel old.
But that night Arga felt eleven years older than the version of himself in the photo.
The elevator doors closed.
Inside the car, Arga didn’t start the engine right away.
He sat still.
His phone lay in the storage compartment between the seats.
There were no new messages.
Arga opened his conversation with Raka.
The message he’d sent an hour ago still hadn’t been read.
“Rak, do you still remember July 17, 2015?”
Arga stared at it.
He almost deleted the message.
Then the screen lit up.
Raka was typing…
Arga waited.
The three dots appeared for several seconds.
Then disappeared.
They appeared again.
Then a message came in.
“Why are you asking about that date?”
Arga felt something tighten in his chest.
He typed:
“Do you remember?”
The reply came.
“I remember.”
Arga waited.
There was no follow-up message.
Finally, he wrote:
“I found something.”
A few seconds passed.
“What?”
Arga looked at the photo still saved in his gallery.
He almost sent it.
But he stopped.
Something made him not want to send the photo in a message.
“Let’s meet.”
The three dots appeared.
For a long time.
Then:
“Now?”
Arga looked at the time.
9:46 p.m.
He typed:
“Tomorrow.”
Raka’s reply came faster this time.
“Don’t.”
Arga frowned.
“Why?”
There was no answer.
Arga waited for almost a minute.
Then a message came in.
“There are some things you’re better off not remembering.”
Arga stared at the sentence.
His heart began beating faster again.
He typed:
“You know what happened that night?”
There was no reply.
“Rak?”
Still nothing.
Arga turned off the screen.
He didn’t know which disturbed him more: the message from the unknown number or Raka’s response.
Because for the first time, the two of them seemed to be talking about the same thing.
Something that had happened on July 17, 2015.
Something he hadn’t remembered all this time.