---
*Along* was on the stairs when I came in.
Sitting on the third step from the bottom, phone in hand, the charger whose length wasn't quite long enough for her room caught on the stair railing. An uncomfortable position, but *Along* didn't seem to mind — she always said when you're truly tired, anywhere can become a bed.
She looked up when I closed the door.
I smiled. "Why are you sitting here?"
*Along* didn't answer immediately.
She looked at me — not in the way *Along* usually looked, not in the way an older sister looks when she's thinking about what to tease. A different way. A way I had no precise word for except — she was watching something on my face that she wasn't sure she should ask about or not.
"You okay?" she said finally.
"Fine." I stepped toward the stairs. "Just tired."
*Along* didn't say anything more.
But as I passed beside her, she turned her head to follow the direction I was going up — I could see it from the corner of my eye, see the way she did it without realising she was doing it — and she stayed like that until I reached the upper floor and went into my room.
The bedroom door closed.
I stood in the dark of my own room and realised my hands were still cold.
---
*Subuh* came with the usual *azan* and the usual light and the usual sound of *Mak* in the kitchen — and I came down with a face I hoped looked ordinary, with steps I hoped looked ordinary, with everything I had inside me that I had rearranged in the dark last night so that this morning would look like nothing had happened.
*Mak* didn't ask anything.
*Ayah* didn't ask anything.
My younger sister was still half asleep at the dining table.
Only *Along* — *Along* who sat across from me with hot black tea in her hand, who entered and exited the morning conversation as usual, who laughed at the right moments and ate at the right pace — only *Along* who occasionally looked at me in the way she had last night.
I didn't ask her what she saw.
She didn't ask me why.
We ate breakfast in a state that others at the table wouldn't have noticed held something unsaid — and perhaps that was the most frightening thing about a family that truly knew each other. They know when to be quiet.
---
Ara came after *Zohor*.
Not alone — *Mak Cik* Ira came with her, but stopped at the gate with a smile and an excuse that was the right size. "Just a moment, Ara says she wants to see her *kakak*." My *mak* invited her in but *Mak Cik* Ira shook her head in a way that couldn't be pushed.
Ara came in alone.
Went straight up the stairs to find me.
I was sitting on the floor of my room with a laptop in front of me, a resume that had had the same contents for several weeks, and email notifications that were none of them from where I wanted. Ara came in without knocking — the door wasn't fully closed — and sat beside me the way she sat, close, shoulder touching arm.
"What are you doing, *Kakak*?"
"Looking for work."
Ara looked at the laptop screen. "Is it hard?"
"A little hard."
"Why?"
I turned to look at Ara. A five-year-old's eyes asking with genuine curiosity, without any agenda behind it, in a way that made even the simplest question feel like it deserved an honest answer.
"Sometimes we do everything right," I said slowly, "but what we want still doesn't come."
Ara thought for a moment.
"Like Ara waiting for *Ayah*," she said.
I didn't know what to say.
Ara had already turned back to the laptop, pointing to a job ad I had scrolled past without reading. "Try this one."
"Can Ara read?"
"No. But it looks nice."
I laughed — it came out on its own, unplanned, the kind of laugh I hadn't expected to have in me that afternoon.
---
An hour later, *Mak Cik* Ira came into our house.
Not intrusively — *Mak* had invited her in after seeing her still standing outside, and *Mak Cik* Ira complied with a smile that was the right size. They sat in the living room downstairs. Ara and I were still in the room upstairs.
Then *Mak* came up. "*Aina*, come here a moment."
I went to the bedroom doorway.
"Keep Ara company for a bit, yes. *Mak* wants to sit with *Mak Cik* Ira for a while — she looks a bit tired today."
I nodded.
*Mak* went downstairs.
I turned to Ara who was already standing behind me, who had heard all of that with a face that didn't change — a small child's face already accustomed to the word *tired* when people said it about her mother.
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
Ara thought. Then — "Let's see Ara's new house."
---
The house next door was larger than it looked from outside.
Or perhaps it looked large because it was still half empty — unopened boxes piled in corners, furniture not yet in its right places, walls that still smelled of fresh paint mixed with something older underneath.
Ara held my hand going in.
She showed me her room first — small, already with a bed with a rabbit-patterned sheet, already with a small empty bookshelf. "Later Ara will put the *Sang Kancil* book here," she said seriously.
Then she pulled me to another room. Then to the kitchen. Then to the dining area that still had no table.
I followed.
And in all of that — in all the house tour Ara conducted with great enthusiasm — I noticed one thing.
There was one door Ara never showed me.
The door at the end of the downstairs corridor — dark wood, a handle different from the other doors in the house, as though it was an old door that had remained when the others were changed. I saw it when we passed that corridor, saw how Ara walked a little faster in that section, saw how her eyes didn't rest on that door even for a moment.
As though she knew it was there.
And chose not to see it.
I didn't ask.
---
They were in the living room downstairs when we came down — *Mak Cik* Ira and Zayriel whom I hadn't noticed had come in, sitting on the sofa, talking with *Mak* in a low tone.
Zayriel looked up when I came down the stairs.
He smiled — the same smile, the one that never changed — and turned back to *Mak*.
I sat in the side chair, Ara on the floor in front of me with a book she had taken from her room earlier. The adults' conversation on the sofa flowed about things I wasn't part of — the neighbourhood, renovation plans, school for Ara next semester.
Normal.
Everything looked normal.
Then *Mak Cik* Ira noticed something.
"Ara." She looked around. "Where's Ara?"
I turned to the floor in front of me.
The book was there.
Ara was not.
---
*Mak Cik* Ira stood the way a person stands when something they feared happening has happened again.
Not panicked. Not surprised. But there was a tension in the way she stood that said this wasn't the first time, that said she already knew how this kind of thing happened and she knew it would happen again but every time it happened there was still a small part of her that hoped this time would be different.
"She's always like this." *Mak Cik* Ira's voice was low — enough for everyone to hear but not to be repeated. "After my late husband passed. She disappears. Then she's found again. Always fine."
"Always?" *Mak* looked at *Mak Cik* Ira.
*Mak Cik* Ira nodded. Her eyes — her eyes didn't meet Zayriel's at all. "Always."
Zayriel didn't move from his sofa.
I stood.
"Let me look for her."
---
The upper floor was empty.
Ara's room empty. The other rooms empty. The bathroom empty.
I came back down, passed through the downstairs corridor, and stopped.
The dark wooden door at the end of that corridor — the different handle, paint older than the walls surrounding it.
Closed.
But beneath that door — the thin gap between wood and floor — there was light.
Not lamp light. Its colour was different. More yellow. Deeper. Light that I didn't know how to describe except that it felt like it came from far away even though it was only on the other side of a door.
The bracelet at my wrist went cold.
I stepped forward.
My hand gripped the door handle — cold, colder than ordinary metal — and pushed.
The door opened.
A storage room. Old boxes. The smell of dust and something older than dust — the smell of damp earth that had no window to explain it, that had no reason to be in a room whose walls were dry, that made me realise it wasn't a smell that came from outside.
It was a smell that came from within.
From below.
From somewhere deeper than the concrete floor of this room.
And in the deepest corner of that room, in the part where the light from the door didn't fully reach —
Ara sat on the floor.
Knees folded to chest. Head bowed slightly. Not crying. Not afraid.
I stepped in.
One step. Two steps.
The temperature changed.
Not ordinary cold — not the cold of air conditioning or the cold of night. An uneven cold, present in one part of this room and absent in another, that made my skin aware there was a boundary here that eyes couldn't see but the body could feel.
A boundary between an ordinary place and one that was not.
I stopped at that boundary.
"Ara."
Ara raised her head.
Her eyes were ordinary — a normal five-year-old's eyes, with nothing in them that should have made me feel what I was feeling now.
"*Kakak* found Ara." She gave a small smile.
I stepped further in — into the uneven cold, into the smell of earth that had no reason to be there — and knelt in front of Ara.
"What is Ara doing in here?"
Ara looked at the dark corner beside her.
I followed her gaze.
That corner was dark in an ordinary way — old boxes, walls whose paint had peeled slightly at the base, a floor with the marks of years of dust. Nothing extraordinary. Nothing that should have made my skin rise.
But my skin rose.
Because in that corner — in the ordinary darkness, in a space that held nothing — the air moved.
Slow. Rhythmic.
Like something breathing.
"Waiting," Ara said.
"Waiting for what?"
Ara didn't answer immediately. She looked at that corner again — in a way that made me realise she wasn't looking at darkness. She was looking at something within that darkness. Something she had long been used to looking at. Something she had long been used to sitting beside.
"Don't know." Her voice was ordinary. Casual. As though she were answering a question about hunger or sleepiness. "But it's always here."
I didn't breathe.
"Who is here, Ara?"
Ara turned to look at me. Then turned back to that dark corner — and in the moment she turned, in a moment less than a second, I saw something.
The air in that corner moved again.
Rhythmic. Deep. Like something that knew it was being watched but didn't care.
"Can't see the face." Ara thought for a moment, searching for words the way small children search for words — slowly, honestly, without knowing how heavy what she was searching for was. "But Ara feels it's okay. It never bothers Ara."
I extended my hand.
My fingers were cold as I reached out — not cold from outside. From within. From the direction of that corner.
"Let's go out."
Ara took my hand.
We walked out.
Behind me — in the corner I didn't turn to see — the air moved one more time.
Slow.
Like something releasing a breath.
---
*Mak Cik* Ira hugged Ara in the corridor — a mother's hug that was tired, relieved, with something in it heavier than simply being glad to find a missing child.
Zayriel stood at the end of the corridor.
He looked at me — not with a smile this time. A different expression, one I didn't get to read fully before he knelt in front of Ara.
"You okay?"
Ara nodded. "*Kakak* found Ara."
Zayriel looked up at me.
In that one moment I saw something in his eyes that I couldn't name. Not gratitude. Not relief. Something deeper — something that looked like *I knew you could.*
Then the smile returned. He stood.
"Thank you."
I nodded.
And noticed — Zayriel hadn't asked Ara what she was doing in the storage room. Hadn't asked how she got in. Hadn't asked what she was waiting for.
He only asked — are you okay.
As though he already knew the answers to all the other questions.
---
*Mak* was clearing the drinks table when Zayriel came into the kitchen.
I was there, getting water, and suddenly the two of us were in the same space without the buffer of other people.
"*Aina*."
I stopped.
"You're looking for work, aren't you."
Not a question.
I held my glass of water more tightly than necessary. "Yes."
"My company has a position that's open." He didn't move from his position — one shoulder leaning on the wall, hands in pockets, like someone who knew he didn't need to push because time was on his side. "Not a big one. But I think it fits your background."
He didn't say what my background was.
He didn't ask what my degree was in.
He only said *I think it fits* — the way a person speaks when they already know the answer to the question they're not asking.
"Can I think about it first?"
Zayriel smiled. "Of course. No rush."
He left.
And I stood with a glass of water in my hand, with the smell of damp earth still in my nose from the storage room just now, with one sentence turning in my mind that wouldn't stop —
*I think it fits your background.*
How did he know.
---
That night, before sleeping, I sat on the edge of my bed with the bracelet in my hand — holding it, not wearing it, the first time in years I had held it this way, with a distance between the beads and my skin that wasn't usually there.
I looked at it.
Small wooden beads. A red string.
Exactly the same as the one in the folded photograph in *Mak Cik* Ira's car.
I wanted to ask *Mak* about that photograph. I wanted to take the second box from *Mak*'s wardrobe and ask why it still hadn't been opened. I wanted to go back to the storage room next door with a torchlight and properly see what was in that dark corner.
I wanted to do many things.
But what I did — I put the bracelet back on, lay down, and closed my eyes.
And when the dream came that night, the forest wasn't like usual.
This time there was a sound.
Not a sound I recognised — not the ordinary sounds of a forest, not the sound of animals or wind or leaves. A sound that was low, that came from within the ground, from a place deeper than the roots of those old trees.
Like something breathing below.
The creature was there — closer than last night, close enough for me to clearly see the fur on its body moving in a wind that wasn't there. Its head wasn't tilted this time. It was upright. Looking at me in a way that was different from the nights before.
Not patient anymore.
Excited.
And in the excitement that existed in the eyes of something that had no name — I felt something new.
Not fear.
Being watched.
As though it wasn't me looking at it.
As though something else was behind it, looking at me through its eyes.
I woke with breath that wasn't right and a hand already on the bracelet and an awareness — an awareness in a way that couldn't simply be forgotten — that Zayriel's job offer and tonight's dream were two things that had happened on the same day.
Not a coincidence.
Never a coincidence.
*Just a feeling* didn't come out of my mouth that night.
Because there are things that are too much to rationalise with two words.
— END OF CHAPTER 3 —