The Trophy That Wasn't His
Raka woke to the sound of tapping.
Knock.
He opened his eyes but didn't move right away. The room was still dark. The desk lamp he'd turned on the night before had gone out, either because he'd forgotten to switch it off or because the power had briefly cut out. Morning light slipped in through the curtains as a thin gray line.
Knock.
The tapping came again.
Raka held his breath.
The sound was coming from his desk.
Right from the direction of the old trophy he'd left there.
He waited several seconds. There was nothing except the slow whir of the fan and the sound of vehicles on the road in front of the house. Raka rubbed his face, then sat on the edge of the bed.
The trophy stood in the shadows.
The glass ball at the top reflected the window, the wall, and a fragment of Raka's pale, just-woken face. He watched it for a long time, trying to find a reasonable explanation for the sound he'd heard.
Maybe something outside had fallen onto the roof.
Maybe it was a water pipe.
Maybe the sound had come from his parents' room.
But the tapping had come from inside the trophy.
Raka remembered the sound clearly. Like a fingernail tapping on metal from the other side, slow and patient, as if someone inside the object were waiting for the door to be opened.
He got up and approached the desk.
The trophy was still in the same place. Its loose rubber base made it stand at an angle. Beneath the glass ball, the empty recess looked black. Raka tilted his head, trying to see inside.
There was nothing.
“Don't start,” he muttered.
He reached for the trophy.
Its surface was cold.
Not cold like metal that had been sitting in a room overnight. Cold like something that had just been pulled from water. Raka instinctively let go, but his fingertips felt stuck to it for a moment before finally coming free.
A thin black stain remained on his palm.
Raka rubbed his palm against his pajama pants. The stain didn't disappear completely. He walked to the bathroom, washed his hands with soap, then splashed water on his face.
His mother's voice came from the dining room.
“Raka, are you up?”
“Yeah.”
“Don't be late for class.”
Raka stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were red. Dark circles hung beneath them, as if he hadn't slept at all.
He was about to answer when he heard another voice behind him.
“Not yours.”
Raka froze.
The voice was very soft. So close that he could feel its cold breath behind his ear.
He turned around.
The bathroom was empty. The door stood open to the bedroom. There was no one there.
“Raka?” his mother called again.
Raka hurried out.
The trophy was still standing on the desk.
But now it was facing a different direction.
The night before, the black nameplate had faced the wall. Now it faced the bedroom door, as if someone had deliberately turned it so the erased lettering could be seen.
Raka didn't touch it.
He grabbed his bag and left.
At the dining table, his mother was pouring coffee into a cup. She looked exhausted. Her hair was tied back carelessly, and her hospital uniform was still folded over a chair.
“Your father's not home yet,” she said.
Raka stopped reaching for the bread.
“He hasn't come home since last night?”
His mother shook her head. “He's sleeping in the study.”
“Why?”
“It's nothing.”
The answer came too quickly.
Raka looked at the two cups of coffee on the table. One had just been made, while the other was already cold, leaving a brownish ring on the inside. He remembered the sound of something breaking in his parents' room the night before.
“Did something break last night?”
His mother lowered her head. “A plate.”
“Were you fighting?”
“Don't get involved in your parents' business.”
Her tone was sharper than necessary. Raka fell silent.
His mother softened immediately. “Sorry. I didn't get enough sleep.”
Raka nodded, took the bread, and put it in his bag.
“Did you bring the trophy?”
Raka glanced toward his bedroom.
“No.”
“Don't let it get lost. That's your award.”
Raka wanted to say that the trophy wasn't an award. It felt like something left in his care by someone he didn't know. But he didn't want to sound strange.
“I left it in my room.”
“Good. Once it has a new nameplate, maybe we can put it on display in the living room.”
Raka looked at his mother. “Don't.”
She frowned.
“I don't want it on display.”
“Why?”
Raka didn't answer. He didn't know himself.
His phone vibrated. A message from Naya came in.
Are you awake, or are you still being haunted by your graveyard trophy?
Raka read the message twice. He almost replied about the tapping and the whisper in the bathroom, but deleted the sentence he'd already typed.
Already on my way.
He slipped his phone into his pocket and left the house.
Throughout the trip to campus, Raka tried to think about something else. He checked emails from the organizers, reread the judges' comments on his entry, and even calculated the prize money he would receive. None of it helped. Between the sounds of traffic, he kept hearing the same tapping.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
When he arrived at the faculty, Naya was already waiting for him in front of the cafeteria. She was holding two cups of coffee and wearing an oversized university jacket.
“You look like someone who lost,” she said.
“I came in second.”
“That isn't an answer.”
Raka took one of the coffees. “The trophy tapped last night.”
Naya fell silent.
Raka took a sip. It was too sweet.
“From inside,” he continued.
Naya stared at him for a moment, then said, “Do you want the reasonable answer or the answer that'll make you feel better?”
“The reasonable one.”
“You're disappointed, sleep-deprived, and paying too much attention to that old thing. Your brain is filling in little sounds with something that matches what you're afraid of.”
“And the whisper?”
“Could've been your mom's voice.”
“In the bathroom?”
“Is your house that big?”
Raka stared at her.
Naya sighed. “Fine. I don't know.”
At least she didn't laugh at him.
They walked toward the faculty building. Along the corridor, several students greeted Raka and congratulated him. One junior even asked to take a picture with him. Raka smiled, held up two fingers, and put on what he thought was a convincing expression.
But every time someone mentioned second place, his stomach clenched.
In front of the classroom, Bima stood with two members of his team. He hadn't brought his gold trophy. He was showing them something on his phone and laughing.
When he saw Raka, he raised a hand.
“Congratulations, second place.”
Raka walked past him.
“Don't be arrogant,” Bima said. “We're both going home with trophies.”
Raka stopped.
“Yours is going home?”
“Tomorrow. The organizers want to put it on display for documentation first.”
“So only the second-place trophy is allowed to go home?”
Bima shrugged. “Maybe they trust you not to sell it.”
Bima's two friends laughed.
Raka wanted to fire back, but Naya tugged on his arm. They went into the classroom without saying anything.
The professor hadn't arrived yet. Raka sat in the corner, opened his laptop, and tried to finish an assignment. Five minutes later, his phone screen lit up.
An unknown number sent him a photo.
The photo was blurry and appeared to have been taken somewhere dark. In it, Raka's old trophy stood on his desk.
Raka stopped breathing.
He recognized the desk. Recognized the small scratch along the wood. Recognized the window's reflection in the glass ball.
The photo had been taken in his room.
A second message came in.
Don't bring it home.
Raka looked around the classroom. The students sitting in the back were busy playing games. A girl was reading a book. Naya was writing something in her notebook.
No one was paying attention to him.
Raka enlarged the photo. On the right side of the image, near the bedroom door, stood someone's shadow. A thin figure with hair covering its face.
A third photo came in.
This time, it wasn't the trophy.
It was an old photo from a campus competition. The colors had faded, and the corners had yellowed. A thin student stood on the podium holding the same trophy. He was wearing an old university jacket, but his face was obscured by reflected light.
Beneath the photo, the sender wrote:
He took it home too.
Raka called the number. The call wouldn't connect. He tried again. The number was inactive.
“Raka?” Naya called.
He immediately turned off the screen.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Naya looked at his face. “You're pale.”
“An unknown number sent me photos of the trophy.”
Naya took his phone. Raka showed her the photos. Her expression changed when she saw the last one.
“You recognize him?” Raka asked.
“No.”
“You're lying.”
Naya enlarged the bottom of the photo. There, behind the podium's legs, was handwriting that had nearly faded away.
ARDI.
That was all they could read.
Naya handed the phone back.
“After class, we'll find out,” she said.
“Find out what?”
“Who Ardi is.”
The bell rang. The professor entered, cutting off their conversation.
Throughout the lecture, Raka didn't hear a word of the explanation. He kept seeing the photo in his mind. The thin student on the podium. The old trophy in his hands. The face that couldn't be seen clearly.
Toward evening, Raka and Naya went to the campus library. They searched the competition news archives on an old computer in the reference room. Most of the documentation was available only for the past five years. The competition had apparently changed names several times.
Adikara University Young Ideas Festival.
Student Innovation Competition.
Campus Creativity Week.
Raka opened the archives from previous years one by one. There was no mention of Ardi.
“It's like someone deliberately erased him,” Naya said.
“From the internet?”
“Not just the internet. Look at this.”
She opened a scanned page from an old campus magazine. In the list of winners from ten years earlier, the first-place column was empty. The second-place column was empty too. There was only a small note beneath it:
The event was temporarily suspended due to unexplained circumstances.
The back of Raka's neck prickled.
“This isn't a normal news story,” he said.
Naya scrolled farther down. “There's a name in another article.”
Raka leaned closer.
The article consisted of only three paragraphs. Its title read: Student Found Dead in Campus Old Building.
Victim's name: Ardi Pratama.
Age: twenty-two.
Status: senior student.
Raka read the final sentence over and over.
The victim was suspected of taking his own life after experiencing pressure from academic failure and personal problems.
Personal problems.
Academic failure.
Two terms far too neat to explain someone's death.
Suddenly, the computer in front of them shut off.
The screen went black.
A crackle came from the small speaker beneath the desk, followed by the sound of tapping.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Naya looked at Raka.
The tapping wasn't coming from the computer.
The sound was coming from the aisle between the bookshelves behind them.
Raka stood. “We're leaving.”
A shadow moved between the shelves.
Too thin to be an ordinary shadow.
Naya grabbed Raka's hand. They ran toward the library door. When Raka looked back once, he saw the old trophy standing at the end of the aisle, on the dark floor.
Even though the trophy was still in his room.
A long-haired figure stood behind it.
This time, its face was visible.
Pale skin. Sunken eyes. Lips moving without a sound.
But Raka could hear its whisper clearly.
“Not yours.”
All the library lights went out.
In the darkness, something ran toward them.