---
The sound of plates in the sink.
Running water. Soap. The way hands move on autopilot when the mind is doing other work — and my mind this morning had been doing the same work it had been doing since last night, since the night before, since Zayriel had stood at the kitchen doorway with one shoulder leaning on the wall and a sentence that came out as though it wasn't an offer but something decided long before he finished saying it.
I didn't hear the front door open.
What I heard — Ayah's footsteps from the room, Ayah's voice giving a greeting, then another voice coming in from outside. A voice I recognised. I turned off the tap.
Stood still in the kitchen.
From here I couldn't see the front door — only hear. Mak's voice rising slightly with a smile that could be heard. Ayah's voice, short and controlled. And the third voice — low, unhurried, with the rhythm of someone who knew they didn't need to raise their voice to be heard.
A few minutes.
Then the sound of the door closing. Ayah's footsteps toward the car — engine started, car moved, the morning continued without him.
Mak's footsteps to the kitchen.
"Aina."
I turned.
Mak stood at the kitchen doorway with a container of cakes in her hand — layered kuih, neatly arranged in a container that wasn't Mak's — and with a face that was working out how to say something.
"Zayriel just now."
I said nothing.
"He asked — did he really offer you a job yesterday?" Mak set the container on the table. "He said he felt it wasn't proper to offer that way. Wanted to follow up with you but didn't have your number."
"Mak gave it?"
"Mak gave it." Mak looked at me in the way she looked when she had made a decision and didn't want to debate it. "He's a good person, Aina. Mak can see it in the way he speaks, the way he carries himself — not just anyone."
I looked at the cake container on the table.
Seven-layered kuih lapis, beautiful colours, made in the way of someone who had taken the time to do it properly.
"Check your phone," Mak said. "Maybe he's already messaged."
"Phone's in my room."
Mak nodded. Then — "Think carefully, Aina. Rezeki comes once. A banana won't split twice." She turned to leave the kitchen, then stopped at the doorway. "Better to take it than sit idle at home."
I didn't answer.
Mak left.
And I stood in the kitchen with water still pooled in the sink and something in my chest that was counting things I didn't know how to count.
---
The day passed the way days pass when the mind is elsewhere.
I folded laundry. I helped Mak cook lunch. I sat at the dining table with my phone face-down beside my plate — there was a notification from a number I didn't recognise, visible from the side, but I didn't open it.
Not yet.
In the afternoon I sat in my room. Opened my laptop. The same resume, the same emails, the same bank balance I checked every day with hope that grew thinner. I looked at job ads I had looked at two or three times already. I re-read rejection emails that sounded the same even when they came from different companies.
Phone beside the laptop.
The notification was still there.
I closed the laptop.
Lay on the bed with the same ceiling, with the fan turning with the same sound, with walls that held four years' worth of growing up and coming back and going nowhere.
Mak's words sat in my head with a weight that didn't ask permission.
Better to sit idle at home.
I closed my eyes.
---
That night, after dinner, after everyone began going to their respective rooms, after the sound of Mak's TV became a background that grew slower —
I took my phone.
Opened the notification.
A number with no name in my contacts — but I knew who it was. One short sentence, arrived that morning, exactly around the time Mak had said Zayriel came.
This is Zayriel. Your mother gave me this number. Let me know whenever you've decided.
I read it twice. Three times.
Then typed — I accept the offer. Thank you.
Sent.
Put the phone down.
Picked it up again.
One second. Two. Three —
Okay. Monday. Eight in the morning.
I looked at the screen.
Three seconds. Past ten at night, from someone who should have had other things to do, reply in three seconds — as though he hadn't put his phone down at all, as though he knew when I would reply, as though he had been ready all along.
Then another notification came in.
Don't argue with what your mother says.
I sat up straight.
Read it once. Twice.
The sentence didn't change.
I had never told Zayriel about the kitchen conversation. Never mentioned that Mak had pushed. Never hinted at it in the one sentence I had sent. My message had only been — I accept, thank you — clean, short, nothing more than that.
But he knew.
Not a guess. Not an ordinary assumption.
He knew in a way that left no room for coincidence.
I put the phone down. Faced the ceiling. Arranged the reasonable explanations — he assumed, all mothers say the same kinds of things, it's nothing, I'm overthinking. The explanations fit. They were logical. They were reasonable.
But there was a small part in my chest that wasn't satisfied, that kept holding that sentence, kept weighing it from every angle and couldn't find the right place to put it so it wouldn't feel heavy anymore.
I closed my eyes.
Monday. Eight in the morning.
---
Monday came with a six o'clock alarm I was already awake before it sounded.
Room half dark, curtains still closed. I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment — in the state people call prepared but that felt more like okay, let's go — then stood.
Clothes already chosen the night before. I lifted them from the hanger, went to the bathroom, and twenty minutes later stood in front of the mirror. Neat clothes, hair tied up. A face I hoped looked more confident than I felt.
I looked at the mirror for a moment.
Then went downstairs.
---
Mak was already in the kitchen — fried rice, a fried egg, warm water already on the table before I arrived. The way Mak prepared things when she knew the day was important but didn't want to make a big deal of it.
I ate with Mak sitting across from me, with the morning radio programme filling the space between us, with morning habits that felt ordinary even though this day wasn't ordinary.
Then I stood.
Mak looked up.
I walked toward Mak, bent slightly, kissed Mak's hand — the hand I knew every line and roughness of, the hand that had held mine since before I could remember — and Mak held my hand in return in the way that needed no words.
"Go safely."
I nodded. Stood.
Ayah was at the door — car keys already in hand, bag already on shoulder. He looked me over once — the way Ayah checked without looking like he was checking.
I kissed Ayah's hand.
Ayah held my hand — a moment longer than usual, in a way that wasn't in anyone's plans for this morning but that was in something Ayah felt needed doing — and then released it.
He didn't say anything.
But the way he held it said everything Ayah didn't say.
I went out to the car.
---
Morning radio. A red light at the third junction. My hands on the steering wheel in the way of someone who was driving but whose thoughts were somewhere else.
Twenty minutes from home to the building I was heading to — I had already Googled, had done a trial drive alone last weekend when the roads were quiet, so that today I wouldn't get lost, so that there would be one thing I could control in a day that had many things I couldn't.
Green light.
The car moved.
The building was larger than it looked in photos. Glass and steel with the kind of entrance that said everything about the company's idea of itself. I parked in the space that had been messaged to me the night before — a detail that told me he had thought about things I hadn't.
I walked in.
---
The office on the fourteenth floor was smaller than the building suggested.
Not small — but human. Warm-toned walls, natural light from large windows, the kind of space that had been designed to feel like a place people actually worked rather than a place people came to be seen working.
A woman at the front desk — slightly older than me, with a lanyard and the expression of someone who had introduced herself to many new people and had a system for it.
"Hana." She extended her hand. "Accounts. First survival tip — En. Zayriel likes punctuality. You've already passed the first test." She turned to the other desks. "Hey everyone, the new one's here!"
Faces looked up. Some smiled. Some gave the nod of people who were friendly but had work to get back to.
One — a man, glasses, a pen being spun between his fingers. "Syahmi. Creative." He leaned back in his chair. "You're En. Zayriel's new PA right? Congratulations and condolences at the same time."
"Syahmi." Hana shot him a look.
"What? Being En. Zayriel's PA means knowing everything, doing everything, remembering everything." Syahmi shook his head with a serious face that wasn't quite serious. "Farhana used to do three things at once while answering calls while drinking hot coffee. Can you do that?"
"Syahmi." Hana again. "Don't scare people."
"I'm being serious. But it's okay — Farhana learned from scratch too. You'll be fine." Syahmi nodded toward me. "If there's anything about the systems here, ask me. But don't tell En. Zayriel I taught you — he prefers you figure it out yourself."
Another — a woman, quiet, just raised her hand once from her desk. "Dina. Operations."
"Dina's fine once you know her," Hana whispered to me. "Doesn't say much but she does the neatest work in the office." Then she leaned in slightly. "And one more thing — if En. Zayriel's gone into his room and closed the door, don't knock unless it's a real emergency."
I looked at the desk indicated as mine.
Farhana's file was thick in the way of something that contained two years and three months of someone who had truly done their work seriously.
I sat at the desk that had someone else's name in its first tab — Nur Farhana binti Azman. Personal Assistant. Length of service: two years, three months — and read. Zayriel in his room, door half open, the sound of his keyboard present in the background throughout.
Syahmi passed my desk after ten, coffee in hand, placed one cup beside my laptop without asking if I wanted it. "Survival kit," he whispered. "Ask questions at lunch later — for now just look busy."
At the end of the file, one entry that was different from the others.
Reason for resignation: personal.
Exit interview: not conducted.
---
Syahmi leaned against the partition beside my desk at half past eleven.
"Lunch later?"
"Okay."
"There's a place downstairs. Not fancy but the food's real." He paused. "Farhana used to eat there every day."
I looked at him.
Syahmi raised his shoulders — the way of someone saying something he knew was true and knew was right but didn't want to look like he knew. "She was okay. The second week her face was like —" he made a dramatically tired face "— but by the third week she was fine."
"Did you know Farhana long?"
"Over two years." Syahmi turned his chair slightly toward me. "She's fine as a person. Neat, efficient, knew how to work with En. Zayriel."
"Why did she leave?"
Syahmi was quiet for a moment — not the quiet of someone who didn't know the answer. The quiet of someone deciding how much of the answer to give.
"She said she wanted to rest." Short. Then he turned back to his screen. "But Farhana isn't the resting type."
Farhana isn't the resting type.
I looked at the file again.
And couldn't put that sentence in a place where it would stop feeling heavy.
---
Lunch in a small restaurant on the lower ground floor.
Rice and three dishes. The kind of place that didn't need a menu because everything was already in front of you — you chose with your eyes, paid by the weight of what you took.
Syahmi talked. Hana added things in. Haziq from IT — who had introduced himself at my desk in the afternoon — listened more than he spoke.
And then Zayriel came in.
He chose without looking at the menu. Sat two seats from me without making it seem intentional. Ate with the unhurriedness of someone who had only one pace regardless of what was happening around him.
Halfway through lunch — "How was it?"
Direct. Without setup.
I put down my spoon. "Still learning."
"What specifically?"
And then we were in a conversation I hadn't prepared for — not a how are you conversation, not a welcome to the company conversation. A conversation that went directly to what I had read, what I understood, what I thought about the systems I had spent the morning absorbing.
He asked. I answered. He didn't respond to my answers the way people respond when they're simply waiting for their turn to speak. He listened with the quality of attention that made what I said feel like it actually mattered.
Then — "Farhana used to make three decisions in the time it took most people to make one."
I looked at my plate.
"You ask more questions first."
"Is that bad?"
"No." He looked at me. "It means you think before you move. Farhana moved first. Then thought. Both have their uses depending on what's in front of you."
Silence filled the space between us.
"You set high standards," I said.
"I set the standards that should exist." His eyes met mine in a way that wasn't on the list of things I had prepared for today. "The question isn't whether you can reach them or not. The question is whether you want to."
I looked at my plate.
And inside my head — without permission — the image of a woman named Farhana whom I had never met settled heavily in my thoughts.
She wanted to. Until a point where she didn't want to anymore.
What did she see.
---
Afternoon. Zayriel had a briefing with the operations department — Dina was in that room, two others whose names I knew from the file.
I was outside taking meeting minutes.
Zayriel's voice came through the gap of the half-open door — controlled, professional, for all the ears in that room.
"We always assume we fully understand the things that have been with us the longest." A short pause. "But familiarity makes us blind. The things closest to us are the things we most rarely truly see."
Someone in that room responded with something I couldn't hear clearly.
"That's why we audit again every six months. Not because we don't trust the system. But because a system that has never been questioned is the system most likely to fail."
I stopped writing.
In the context of an operations briefing — the sentence made sense. Precise. For all the ears in that room, it was a sentence about work, about audits, about SOPs.
But inside my head, in the part that had been tired since morning and perhaps that was why its guard was down —
the sentence didn't sit in the context of the briefing.
It sat somewhere else. In the place where there was a bracelet and a folded photograph and a forest dream and a name I had only just met but that felt like something heard from a place I couldn't remember.
The things closest to us are the things we most rarely truly see.
I wrote the sentence in my notes.
Deleted it.
Wrote it again.
---
Mak was in the living room when I came home — with Mak Cik Ira on the sofa beside her, two cups of tea on the table, in the ease of two people already comfortable with each other's presence. Ara on the floor with a colouring book, tongue sticking out slightly.
"Kakak!" Ara looked up.
I sat in the side chair. Bag at my feet. The kind of tiredness that went into the bones.
Mak and Mak Cik Ira's conversation flowed — about recipes, about Ara, about weekend plans. Mak laughed in a way I rarely saw Mak laugh with someone she had known only a month. Mak said Mak Cik Ira's name in sentences that didn't need the name to be said — too often for it to be just habit.
After Mak Cik Ira and Ara left, I helped Mak carry the cups to the kitchen.
"Mak likes Mak Cik Ira."
Mak looked at me for a moment. "She's kind, Aina. A good person." Then continued washing the cups — topic closed in the way Mak closed topics when she didn't want them continued.
I stood in the kitchen and realised —
from just now until this moment, Mak hadn't asked a single question about my first day of work.
---
That night, after dinner, Mak came into my room.
With a small metal box in her hand — a box I recognised, one I had seen in Mak's wardrobe, that had been there so long I had forgotten to ask about it.
Mak sat on the edge of my bed.
"Mak thinks it's time for Aina to see this."
I sat up straight.
Mak opened the box slowly — in the way of opening something that is heavy not in physical terms but in terms of what it holds. Old photographs. Black and white. A group of women — five of them, old baju kurung, standing in front of a house I didn't recognise.
Mak pointed to a woman at the far right.
"Your Tok Wan."
I looked at the face in the photograph — old, smiling, with eyes that Mak had a little of.
"And this." Mak's finger moved to that woman's wrist.
A bracelet. Small wooden beads. A red string.
Exactly the same as what was at my wrist right now.
"The bracelet has been passed down," Mak said in a tone that was ordinary — as though it was a story about something ordinary, as though it wasn't something I had been dreaming about for weeks without knowing why. "Tok Wan gave it to Mak. Mak gave it to you when you were still small. You don't remember because you didn't understand yet."
I said nothing. Waited.
"Does Mak know what the bracelet does?"
Mak was quiet for a moment — a quiet that had weight, that filled the space in the way quiet shouldn't fill a space.
"Mak knows it protects."
Short. Closed. With a way that held more than that but that wasn't coming out tonight.
I looked at the photograph again.
Five women. Tok Wan with the bracelet on her hand. And four other women whose faces I didn't recognise — but one, the one standing furthest away at the far left, whose face was half turned away from the camera —
there was something about the way she stood that made something in my chest shift to the wrong place.
I wanted to ask.
But Mak had already closed the box. Already stood. Already at the bedroom door.
"Sleep early. Work again tomorrow."
The door closed.
And I sat with the photograph in my mind — five women, one with a bracelet, one with her face half turned away — and my hand was already on the bracelet without my realising I had put it there.
---
The dream came quickly that night.
The same forest. The same light. But the air that night was different — lighter, calmer, like something that knew I was too tired to be afraid and chose not to frighten.
The creature was in the distance — farther than the nights before, at a distance that felt deliberate. Simply there. Not threatening. Not approaching.
I stood and felt no urge to run.
Not from bravery.
But because there was a point in true exhaustion where the mind simply stopped wanting to run from something that wasn't even chasing — where the body just stood and breathed and let what was there, be there.
We remained at the same distance for a time I didn't know how long.
Then the creature did something it had never done before.
It bowed.
Its head came down slowly — not the bow of something bowing to something else, but the bow of something giving its full attention to one thing only. Then back up.
It looked at my hand.
I followed its gaze.
The bracelet at my wrist — in the sourceless light of the dream, in a state where everything else had been arranged with intention, something that was too small to see in ordinary light but in this dream, in this light without a source —
had a symbol on it.
I woke.
Hand to the bracelet immediately — reflex, as always. But this time not to feel whether it was cold or warm.
I raised my hand toward the light of my phone.
Close — closer than I had ever looked at this bracelet before, in a way I had never done even though it had been at my wrist for years.
And in the white light of the phone screen just coming on — on the first bead, in an engraving too fine to see without looking, that would never have been visible without a dream to show where to look —
there was a symbol.
Small. Old. In the way of something that had always been there but had never been seen because there had never been a reason to look.
Dawn came through the gap in the curtains.
And the sentence that had been sitting in my mind since yesterday afternoon — the sentence I had written and deleted and written again in my notes — came out without permission, without sound, in the deepest part of my mind that didn't know how to stay quiet.
The things closest to us are the things we most rarely truly see.
I lay in the dawn light with the bracelet in my hand and a symbol I had only just seen after all these years and one admission — the most frightening I had ever made in silence, in my own room, in a house that should have been the safest place —
Zayriel knew about this symbol.
Not a question.
An admission.
He had known from the beginning. 🖤
— END OF CHAPTER 4 —