Chatterbox though he was, he was tight-lipped about his family. He’d never shared a thing about them. All I knew was that his parents were businesspeople.
I returned Ladie’s kind smile with a nod, waiting as she spoke again. “But Andi didn’t tell you?” she asked with a hesitant tone.
I cleared my throat and shook my head, watching her closely. “My brother hasn’t lived here for almost a year now.” Her words fell, careful and slow. “He moved back in with our parents.”
Wow, that was fourth.
Each revelation made me feel dumber by the second, especially when she shared their address.
My eyes widened.
Of course. That was five.
Andi’s new family house was right next to Danudara’s—my old house.
« -- * -- »
In the end, I decided to go home. Alone.
After leaving Andi’s apartment, I walked in circles inside my own thoughts. I wanted to call him to demand an explanation, but something about it gnawed at me. My lack of knowledge about the people around me struck like a physical blow.
They always seemed to keep their doors barred, never letting me trulyseethem.
Andi knew everything about me. He probably even knew the names of my great-grandparents. That was the kindof friend he was. Yet he couldn’t even bother to tell me he’d moved house.
Ladie’s words pulled me back to reality. Everyone had a secret vault, and somehow, I was always the last to be trusted with the code.
I had lived under the illusion that the people around me and I were special, that we were close and shared everything. But it turned out, we… didn’t.
Someone they couldn’t trust, couldn’t rely on, not even to listen. No wonder they never opened up.
Maybe because I was weaker than the people around me.
I stared ahead until my eyes hurt, my fingers tightening around the fabric of my pants. After exiting the taxi, I stood outside my gate for a long time. My head spun, and my heart raced. During the ride, I called Mbak Mayang, and what she told me made the unease worse: Tsabinu had been sitting at the dining table since dawn, waiting for me.
“I’m sorry, Mas…” I whispered under my breath. “I just don’t know how to explain all of this…”
Tsabinu was gentle. Rarely raised his voice, even seldom spoke at all. His patience ran deeper than the ocean, but not when he couldn’t take it anymore. Not when he was under pressure, cornered, ordeceived.
Ever since our mother died, and our father fell ill, there’d been a quiet frost in him. A lump of bitterness he’d been carrying for years, swelling until it could burst at any time. He could hide it from the world, fool everyone else, but not me. I knew it was there, waiting for the right moment to explode. That was why I’d always been careful, never daring to push him too far.
But it seemed my sense had abandoned me lately, or ever since Zioh came back into my life.
It felt so heavy for keeping it a secret about how Zioh and I had grown close again, that sometimes I went to his penthouse and Zioh and I spent time together, when for years,Tsabinu and I had only had each other, been each other’s foundation. But everything twisted in my head.
My brother’s silence made me doubt. I didn’t even know why, all these years, he’d been pulling me away from our second family… From the people we once called home.
How could I be sure of anything when all of them kept shutting my eyes to the truth?
I exhaled one last time before pushing open the gate. My hesitant gaze lingered on the front door as I strolled towards it.
I tried not to creep, but every step down the hallway towards the dining room felt like trespassing. I planned to sneak up the stairs, unseen, but the moment my foot touched the second step, a voice froze me.
“Tshabina.”
I turned my head, and there he was: Tsabinu staring at me from behind his glasses, his gaze cold, powerful enough to lock my body in place and make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Where have you been, Dek?” His voice cut through the air. “What have you been doing?”
