Raka did not sleep that night.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the thin figure behind his bedroom door. Feet with their soles facing the wrong way. Hair covering its face. And Ardi's voice appearing from behind his shoulder, asking who had stolen the victory.
What disturbed him most was not the question.
It was the answer his father might already know.
Morning came without truly driving away the darkness. Raka sat on the edge of his bed as gray light slipped through the gap in the curtains. His right arm was still bandaged, his knee throbbed, and his head felt full of voices that refused to stop.
Under the table, the old shoebox was still sealed with tape.
Raka could not remember when the trophy had gone back inside it. He only remembered seeing the trophy standing on the table after hearing his father shout. After that, he had jumped out the window and spent nearly an hour at Naya's house.
When he returned, the house was silent.
His father and mother did not ask where he had gone. They did not explain what had happened, either. The broken plates had been cleaned up, the study door was open, and there was no sign that anything had ever entered Raka's room.
Yet, on the floor near the window, he found three wet footprints.
Bare footprints.
They stopped right beside the bed.
Raka stared at the box under the table.
He should have thrown the trophy away. Taken it to the trash, returned it to the organizers, or smashed it with a hammer. But some part of him refused to do any of that before finding out who Ardi really was.
That thing had destroyed the peace in his house in less than three days. If he got rid of it now, maybe everything would stop. But if he did not, he might be letting a dead man determine his life.
Raka picked up his phone and contacted Naya.
She read his message only after several minutes.
I'm going to campus first. Meet me at the old library.
Raka typed a reply.
Did you find something?
She did not answer right away.
He looked at the box one more time, then put it inside a large bag. The tape sealing the box looked intact, but a small sound came from behind the cardboard.
Knock.
Raka dropped his phone.
Knock.
He held his breath.
Knock.
“Quiet,” he said.
The tapping stopped.
Raka lifted the bag and left his room.
His father sat alone at the dining table. He was wearing a clean shirt, but his face was paler than it had been the night before. Beside his hand sat a cup of untouched coffee.
“Where’s Mom?” Raka asked.
“Asleep.”
“After last night?”
His father did not answer.
Raka set the bag on the floor. “You know Ardi?”
The cup in his father’s hand stopped just before it touched his lips.
It lasted only a moment, but Raka saw it.
“I heard the name on campus,” Raka continued. “Ardi Pratama. The student who died in the old building.”
“There are a lot of people named Ardi.”
“Not many whose names were erased from a trophy.”
His father looked at the large bag near Raka’s feet.
“Where are you taking that thing?”
“To campus.”
“Don’t.”
The answer came too quickly.
Raka felt something harden in his chest. “Why?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“His name is on the trophy they gave me.”
“Just throw the trophy away.”
“Last night you said it wasn’t you who stole Ardi’s victory.”
His father’s expression changed.
For several seconds, the man looked as though he wanted to get up and leave the table. But he only closed his eyes, as if a single name had opened a door he had forced shut for years.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “Whatever you see or hear, don’t dig any deeper.”
“Why?”
“Because some things don’t get better once you know about them.”
“Then you do know something.”
His father looked at him. There was no anger in his eyes, only a fear too old to be called fear anymore.
“Ardi wasn’t a good person,” he said.
“He killed himself because he lost the competition?”
“He couldn’t accept defeat.”
“That’s what the records say.”
“Records never tell the whole story.”
“Then tell me.”
His father shook his head.
From his parents’ room came the sound of a bed shifting. His mother might already be awake. His father immediately stood.
“Don’t take that trophy anywhere.”
“Are you afraid of an old object?”
“I’m afraid of what follows it.”
The man left the table.
Raka remained where he was, trying to understand what that meant. Before he could follow, his mother appeared from the hallway. Her eyes were swollen, but her face had gone flat again.
“Don’t force your father,” she said.
“He knows who Ardi is.”
“I don’t know, either.”
“Last night you said you found a letter.”
His mother’s face hardened.
“What letter?”
“A letter from Ardi?”
There was no answer.
Raka stared at her. “What really happened before I was born?”
His mother sat down slowly. Her hands twisted the hem of her sleep clothes.
“Not everything from the past needs to be passed down.”
“The problem is, that past is chasing me now.”
His mother looked at the bag on the floor.
A soft tapping came from inside it.
Knock.
The color drained from her face.
She stood so quickly that her chair scraped backward.
“You brought it here?”
“Since last night, the trophy keeps coming back.”
“Don’t leave it in the house.”
“Why?”
“Raka, listen to me. Take it to campus. Don’t open it. Don’t scrape the nameplate. Don’t try to read the name underneath it.”
Raka froze.
He had never told his mother that the name on the trophy was almost legible.
“You know there’s a name on it?”
The woman covered her mouth.
“Who told you?”
“No one.”
“Then how do you know?”
The tapping inside the bag stopped.
For several seconds, the house felt too quiet. Then a voice came from his father’s study.
Not his father’s voice.
Someone was whispering from behind the door.
“Ardi Pratama.”
His mother grabbed Raka’s arm.
“Go. Now.”
Raka did not wait for an explanation. He lifted the bag, opened the front door, and walked outside. Before the door closed, he heard his mother shout at his father.
“You said he wouldn’t come back!”
Raka stopped on the porch.
From the study, his father answered in a trembling voice.
“I said he wouldn’t come back as a human.”
The door closed by itself.
Raka stood outside the house, breathing shallowly. He wanted to go back and force them to talk, but the cold spreading from inside the bag made that urge disappear.
He ordered a ride to campus.
Throughout the trip, the bag sat on the floor near his feet. Raka did not dare touch it. Every so often, something scraped inside, as if the trophy were shifting with every turn.
When he arrived on campus, Naya was waiting in front of the old library. She was carrying a thick brown folder and a small key.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I talked to my father.”
“What did he say?”
“He knows Ardi.”
Naya looked at the bag in his hand. “And your mother?”
“She knows, too.”
Naya exhaled. “I found something last night.”
They entered a reference room that was rarely used. Dust covered the windows and wooden shelves. At the table, Naya opened the brown folder.
Inside were several photocopies of old newspapers, a list of competition contestants, and the same black-and-white photograph that had been sent to Raka’s phone.
This time, the photo was clearer.
The student on the podium held the old trophy in both hands. He was wearing a university jacket, but his smile looked stiff. Three organizers stood beside him.
One of them was still young, but his face looked remarkably like Raka’s father.
Raka took the photo.
“This is my father.”
Naya nodded. “His name is listed as a member of the organizing committee.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Look at the bottom.”
Beneath the photo was nearly faded handwriting:
ARDI PRATAMA — THE REAL WINNER.
Raka felt the tips of his fingers go cold.
“Where did you get this?”
“From an old warehouse guard. He said this photo was supposed to have been destroyed.”
“Why wasn’t it destroyed?”
“Because someone hid it.”
Naya pulled out another sheet. It was the score sheet from the competition ten years ago. Ardi’s total score was the highest. Beneath it, red ink had been used to alter the numbers.
First place was ultimately given to another student.
The student’s name was written clearly: Seno Wibisana.
Raka stared at the name.
“Dr. Seno,” he said.
The judge who had handed him the trophy.
The old man in the gray suit who had smiled as though he knew exactly what he was giving Raka.
Naya nodded slowly. “He wasn’t just a judge this year.”
The door at the end of the room creaked.
They both turned.
The door was closed, but its handle was slowly moving.
Naya reached for the small key on the table. “We have to go.”
Raka did not move. His eyes were fixed on the bag on the floor.
Its zipper opened by itself.
The old trophy emerged little by little from inside the bag, as if a hand were pushing it up from beneath. It fell to the floor with a heavy metallic clang.
Its black nameplate faced upward.
Raka crouched and turned on his phone’s flashlight.
The paint on the nameplate had peeled away even farther. The name that had previously been only partly legible was now almost completely visible.
ARDI PRATAMA.
But beneath the name was another inscription that had only just become visible.
Not a date.
Not the name of a competition.
A short sentence, deeply engraved in the metal:
I DIDN’T LOSE.
The door at the end of the room opened.
There was no one behind it.
Only a dark hallway and the smell of wet earth that suddenly filled the library.
Then footsteps sounded from the hallway.
One step.
Two steps.
Three.
Naya grabbed Raka’s hand. “Don’t look.”
But Raka had already seen the reflection in the trophy’s glass ball.
Ardi’s figure stood directly behind them.
This time, his face was not pale.
It looked like the face of someone who had just found what belonged to him again.
His lips moved slowly.
“Finally,” he whispered.
Outside the library, all the campus lights went out.
And from the floor below came the sound of someone shouting that a student had fallen down the stairs.