Alya chased Arga to the parking lot.
“Arga!”
Arga stopped.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Will you still be here tomorrow?”
Arga fell silent.
Alya immediately understood.
“You’re really leaving?”
“I got a job in Jakarta.”
“How long?”
“Maybe permanently.”
Alya tried to smile.
“Congratulations.”
“That’s all?”
Alya looked at him.
“What am I supposed to say?”
Arga stepped closer.
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d tell me not to go.”
Alya fell silent.
Those were the words she had wanted to hear all this time.
But now, when the opportunity finally came, she was the one who became afraid.
“If I tell you not to go, will you stay?”
Arga gazed at her for a long moment.
“If you’re the one asking me to.”
Alya felt tears begin to well up.
“Arga…”
“I’m serious.”
Alya wanted to tell him that she loved him.
She wanted to tell him that over the past few months, Arga had become the reason she looked forward to tomorrow.
But the words caught in her throat.
“I have no right to ask you to stay.”
Arga smiled bitterly.
“Then I really do have to go.”
The next morning, Arga left.
Alya did not go to the station.
She simply stood in her room, holding the black umbrella Arga had given her long ago.
Her phone vibrated.
A single message came in.
Arga: “I was actually hoping you’d come.”
Alya cried.
She typed a reply.
“I love you.”
Her finger stopped over the send button.
After a few seconds, she deleted it.
Instead, she only wrote:
“I hope you’re happy.”
The message was sent.
At the station, Arga read it.
He smiled sadly.
But a few minutes later, when the train began to move, Arga received another message from an unknown number.
“If you truly love Alya, don’t leave before finding out the real reason she didn’t come.”
Arga stared at the screen.
Who had sent the message?
And what was Alya really keeping hidden from him?
Continue the story in the next chapter Alya didn’t know that this brief meeting would become the beginning of the feelings she kept hidden for years.