I stared at my phone screen, still displaying Letta's message. My thumb trembled above the keyboard.
What if I just told her the truth?
The thought briefly crossed my mind. Letta was a good person. She would definitely help me without thinking twice. But then I pictured her father, a respectable man whose photo I'd once seen in a local business magazine. If I accepted Letta's money now, I would no longer be her equal in her eyes. I'd just be a parasite taking advantage of his daughter's wealth.
I deleted my honest reply and replaced it with a lie I had no choice but to tell.
Me: "It's all good, Let. Just a little misunderstanding with some guys from Gastan's crowd. It's taken care of now. Get some rest, okay?"
After sending the message, I tossed my phone onto the bed. I roughly rubbed my face. Lying was easy. Dealing with the consequences was the hard part. I had less than seventy-two hours to find twenty-five million rupiah.
I got up from the bed and walked toward the dusty wooden desk in the corner of my room. Beneath it was a bottom drawer I hadn't opened in years. The lock was jammed, so I had to yank it hard, producing a loud, grating squeal.
The smell of old paper and dust immediately stung my nose. Inside the drawer lay my dreams, dead before their time. Several thick sketchbooks, a Wacom drawing tablet with its cable covering already peeling in places, and a bulky, high-spec laptop I'd bought with money from odd jobs back in college.
I used to dream of becoming a 3D architectural visualizer—the kind of person who translated an architect's blueprints into living, three-dimensional images. I had a talent for it. But when Dad began suffering from poor health two years ago and Ghea was at risk of dropping out of college, I had to be realistic.
I locked this laptop away, buried my dream, and took the first stable job that would hire me: a logistics staff position with a guaranteed monthly salary.
I pulled out the bulky black laptop. It felt heavy, as heavy as the memories it carried. I pressed the power button. It took a while for the screen to come on, displaying an old wallpaper of a high-rise building sketch.
Should I sell this laptop? If I sold it quickly, I'd probably get only four or five million rupiah for it now. That was still nowhere near twenty-five million.
Suddenly, my phone on the bed rang loudly. It wasn't Letta. The screen displayed Elang's name, my best friend since college, who now worked as a freelance architect at a renowned visual studio in Jakarta.
"Hey, Lang?" I greeted him.
"Ghan! You still have that 3D rendering software you used to use? Can you still work with V-Ray or Corona?" Elang's voice sounded panicked and breathless over the phone, as if he were being chased by a deadline.
"It's still installed on my old laptop. Why?"
"Ghan, I need your help. It's seriously urgent—my life depends on it!" Elang sounded frustrated.
"The lead visual designer at my office was just rushed to the hospital with a severe case of typhoid. And the day after tomorrow at nine in the morning, we have to present a bid for a major commercial development to the lead investor. We already have a rough draft, but it hasn't been rendered at all. My boss is freaking out. He promised to pay anyone who could finish rendering the site plan and exteriors within thirty-six hours."
My heart pounded. "How much are they paying, Lang?"
"Twelve hundred dollars, Ghan. Around eighteen million rupiah at today's exchange rate. It'll be transferred immediately once the final files are in by eight the morning after tomorrow. Are you taking it? I know your old laptop can handle this."
Eighteen million?
That was nearly three-quarters of Gastan's debt. I could cover the remaining shortfall with what was left of my savings. This was an emergency lifeline sent by God straight to my stuffy bedroom.
"I'm taking it, Lang. Send the rough files to my email now," I said without hesitation, even ignoring the fact that I still had to report to work at the logistics warehouse tomorrow morning. To hell with sleep. I was going to stay up all night.
"Okay, okay! I'll send them now, along with the PDF brief."
The call ended. Five minutes later, an email notification appeared on my laptop. I downloaded the file, which was several gigabytes in size, then opened the project guide PDF Elang had sent to study the concept.
I quickly scrolled through the PDF page by page. Then my finger suddenly froze on the third page.
In the upper-right corner of the proposal document was the logo of a company I knew all too well: Aksara Land. Beneath it was the name of the project owner and lead investor who would be presiding over the morning presentation.
Handoko Airlangga.
Letta's dad?
I leaned back in my desk chair, staring blankly at the laptop screen illuminating my dark room. The world suddenly felt so small, and now my family's future and my self-respect depended on a project owned by the man I would be meeting at the dinner table the following Sunday.