CHAPTER 1 — The Wooden Box
"When you're finished, put the archive box in the office cabinet. Don't wait for me to come home."
Nayara lifted her face from the floor. Arven stood a few steps away, adjusting his shirt cuff, while the archive box containing his old personal records remained open beside the cabinet. It was eight minutes past seven. Morning in their home moved as usual: orderly, quiet, and far too good at making people forget that the husband and wife slept in separate bedrooms.
"I'll finish it this morning, Mas," Nayara replied.
Arven nodded. There was no smile, no question about whether Nayara's back ached after crouching there for so long. She had long since stopped openly waiting for small gestures like that. Three years of marriage had taught her to keep her hopes somewhere out of sight. They had never kissed, never had sex as husband and wife, and Nayara still kept searching for a good enough reason not to call it rejection.
Arven always took care of the household expenses. He never let the bills go unpaid. In front of their families, he also knew how to stand beside Nayara without making anyone suspect there was a distance as long as a hallway between them. That was why Nayara kept convincing herself that the man was simply stiff and closed-off, perhaps in need of more time than most people. She had even once thought that Arven paying the household expenses without being asked was a form of affection he simply wasn't good at expressing. That thought made many nights easier to get through, even if it never truly diminished the distance between them.
At fifteen past seven, Arven had already left the house.
Nayara returned to the archive box she'd been holding. Arven had asked her to move those old records into the office cabinet after bringing them from his family home to theirs. She lifted several bundles of papers and rearranged the overstuffed stack, then found something hard at the bottom.
A small wooden box.
Her hand paused for a moment.
The box wasn't locked. Nayara recognized Arven's handwriting on the envelope visible beneath the lid as soon as she lifted it—upright, neat, and far too familiar to mistake.
Almira Hadinata.
The name meant nothing to her, but the way it was written made it difficult for Nayara to close the box again without understanding what she was holding. She didn't go through everything. She took the easiest letter to see, just enough to find the date and confirm the relationship between that name and Arven.
The date was four and a half years ago, before their marriage.
Nayara read the opening, then the next few lines. There was no explanation about family, no long story that could help her understand who Almira was. Instead, there was something simpler and more painful: Arven had written with a care Nayara had never known.
In the letter, the man who spoke only when necessary in everyday life was apparently capable of admitting that he missed someone, capable of sincerely asking how someone was doing, capable of arranging sentences that showed the woman's presence mattered to him. It wasn't excessive, nothing like cheap poetry. Precisely because it felt so human, Nayara found it even harder to deny.
So he could be like this.
Nayara read one more section, then stopped. It was enough.
All this time, she had never been jealous of a woman she didn't even know. What hurt her was the new knowledge that Arven's coldness wasn't the only version of him. That man had once possessed a language for expressing affection. He had once had the courage to reveal his emotional needs. With Nayara, meanwhile, three years of marriage had given her only separate bedrooms, conversations limited to what was necessary, and endless opportunities to become more patient.
The box was still in her hands when Nayara realized how often she had turned Arven's shortcomings into her own homework. If her husband was silent, she had to be more understanding. If Arven pulled away, she had to give him space. If months passed without a single form of intimacy, she had to wait.
Maybe it wasn't Arven who needed time. Maybe Nayara had been putting off the question for too long.
She slid the letter back into its envelope, put it where it had been, and closed the box. There was no reason to take it anywhere else. She simply moved the archive box as she'd been instructed, until the small wooden box was back among Arven's records and the archive box was stored at the bottom of the office cabinet.
At twelve past eight, Nayara stood in front of the neatly arranged cabinet.
By that time, Arven should have already arrived at his office. Nayara didn't know who Almira Hadinata was beyond the woman who had once received a side of Arven she'd never seen. She also still didn't know what had happened before they married, much less why her husband had spent three years of marriage keeping this kind of distance.
But one thing had changed: she could no longer pretend that Arven was incapable of warmth.
If the letter was from before their marriage, Nayara had to make sure she understood the context before accusing him of anything. But after that, she also had to find the answer to the question she'd always shut away herself.
Why had the man who was once capable of loving openly chosen to become so distant from his wife?.