Aisyah’s living room suddenly felt much smaller than usual. White light from the ceiling’s fluorescent lamp shone straight down, illuminating the neatly arranged, simple wooden furnishings: a small coffee table covered with a crocheted tablecloth, two thinly cushioned sofa chairs worn down by age, and a small bookshelf in the corner crammed with Aisyah’s lecture handouts.
Jonathan stepped inside politely, removing his black dress shoes on the front porch before setting foot on the ceramic tiles of the living room. The man stood straight-backed, dressed in a neat shirt beneath a suit jacket that was slightly damp at the shoulders from the drizzle. Dr. Jonathan’s physical presence—with all the intellectual aura, authority, and charisma of an academic from a prestigious university—created such a stark contrast with the modest atmosphere of the house.
Fatimah slowly closed the wooden front door, then turned to face the unexpected guest. The middle-aged woman drew a long breath and straightened the folds of her gray hijab before pointing toward the wooden sofa.
“Please sit down, Jonathan,” Fatimah said, her voice sounding calm but concealing tightly restrained tension. “I’m sorry our home is so modest. It isn’t as spacious or comfortable as the campus facilities where you usually teach.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Jonathan replied politely as he sat down in one of the sofa chairs. He set his leather briefcase beside his thigh, keeping his posture straight but not stiff. “This home feels very warm and orderly. A perfectly decent place to rest after a long day of activity.”
Aisyah stood between them, feeling as though she were perched on the edge of a blade. She looked at her mother, then shifted her gaze to Jonathan. Something about the air tonight was deeply strange. The academic respect Aisyah had always held for her thesis adviser suddenly transformed into a terrifying sense of estrangement when the two of them occupied the same room as the woman who had given birth to her.
Fatimah did not sit down on the sofa across from him right away. She walked toward the small kitchen behind a beaded curtain, then returned a few moments later carrying a tray with two cups of hot tea sending up thin wisps of steam. She placed the cups on the table directly in front of Jonathan.
“Have some, Jonathan. It’s only warm, bitter tea to chase away the chill in the night air after the rain,” Fatimah said as she sat in the chair across from him, facing Jonathan directly. Her sharp yet measured gaze fixed on the young man’s face, studying every movement and feature of the lecturer with such precision that it made the hairs on Aisyah’s neck stand on end.
Jonathan nodded respectfully and reached for the cup with both hands. “Thank you very much, ma’am. You really shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”
“It was no trouble,” Fatimah replied quickly, her voice flat but heavy with meaning. “As Aisyah’s thesis adviser, it is naturally part of your moral responsibility to ensure the safety of the student under your supervision. But... escorting her all the way inside the house at this hour, to me, is a gesture that is... quite extraordinary for a formal university relationship.”
The words slipped out like a slender dagger hidden behind a mother’s warm smile.
Aisyah immediately flushed, her heartbeat surging again. She hurried toward her mother, trying to defuse the awkward situation that had formed. “Mom, Professor Jonathan really was only trying to help. The rain on campus was incredibly heavy, and not a single form of public transportation was operating because the streets were flooded...”
“I’m not blaming anyone, Aisyah,” Fatimah interrupted gently but firmly, without taking her eyes off Jonathan’s face for even a moment. The middle-aged woman continued staring intently at the young lecturer, as though reading something invisible behind the man’s thin spectacles. “I just feel that... the Wijaya family name behind your name, Jonathan, is one with a long and painful history in this city’s past.”
At the mention of that family name, the air in the living room seemed to freeze instantly.
Jonathan, who had just been about to sip his tea, stopped mid-motion. The cup in his hands hung in the air for a fraction of a second before he slowly set it back on the table, calmly. Behind the lenses of his thin-framed glasses, Jonathan’s expression changed drastically. He no longer looked like a friendly young lecturer, but like a grown man realizing that the shield protecting his family’s secrets had just been touched by the right hand.
Aisyah was stunned. She stared at her mother with a deeply furrowed brow, then turned to Jonathan, who now sat frozen. An invisible line that had long been hidden behind the pages of her undergraduate thesis proposal, the literature library, and the university advising room was beginning to tear apart in this modest living room tonight. That sacred academic respect had now completely melted into a questioning estrangement, demanding answers about the blood-bound fate that had been neglected all this time.