Chapter Six - Domesticated

Back in Jakarta, I transformed into a woman who happily melted into every piece of advice Nikau gave — including his non-negotiable decree that I sleep in Arga's bedroom on the ground floor rather than my own room upstairs.

"You had surgery three days ago, sayang," he said firmly when I tried to protest. "Those stairs are the worst enemy your stitches have right now."

"I can take them slowly, Nik."

"You could. But you shouldn't have to. Let me take care of this."

I was too exhausted to argue — and truthfully, part of me loved it. So I let him arrange a stack of pillows in Arga's room, still frozen in my son's teenage years: anime posters, shelves crammed with novels he hadn't touched since Leeds.

"You should head home and rest," I said once everything was set. "I'll be fine tonight. Wiwin can come tomorrow morning to—"

"Sei."

"You've flown eight hours twice in three days, Nik. You must be completely spent."

He stared at me for a moment. For the first time I caught the shadow of fatigue he'd been hiding behind a steady smile all day.

"There's a guest room in this house, right?"

"Yes. But—"

"I'm staying there tonight. If you need anything, I'm next door." He picked up his overnight bag without waiting for approval. "It makes more sense than a half-conscious cab ride through Jakarta traffic, don't you think?"

His logic was too solid for my condition to fight, and his presence too comforting to push away. He helped me lie down with exaggerated care, then left my door slightly ajar.

"So I can hear you the second you need me," he whispered, and disappeared into the guest room.

Around three in the morning, I woke to a pressing, terrifyingly familiar sensation.

Post-surgery meds, a stomach not yet recovered — an absolute emergency. Panicking, I sat up too fast, and was punished instantly by a sharp stab through my stitches.

It took far longer than I anticipated just to steady myself and slide out of bed. And my body wasn't fast enough.

Before I could reach the toilet, my defenses crumbled.

I stood frozen in the middle of the bathroom that connected to the guest room where he slept. And my entire world ground to a halt.

Fifty-one years old. CEO of a company I built with my own sweat. A mother. The friend everyone thought was the strong one. And at this exact second, I was standing in my son's bathroom at three in the morning in wet pajama pants, completely clueless about what to do.

I sat down on the closed toilet lid, buried my face in my palms, and cried.

Not from the pain in my stomach. From helplessness. This was something that should never happen to me — least of all with a man I'd known three weeks asleep in the next room. And every change of clothes I owned was upstairs, at the peak of a mountain I could not climb.

Through my muffled sobs: gentle footsteps. Oh, no.

"Sei?" A soft knock. "Are you okay in there?"

"I'm..." My voice cracked. I cursed myself. "I'm fine, Nik. Go back to sleep."

"You're crying, Sei."

"No, I'm not."

"Sei. Talk to me, sayang. Are you in pain?"

I squeezed my eyes shut. The shame in my chest had reached its maximum containment.

"Can I come in?" No rush in it. No panic. Only a deep, sincere gentleness that made my tears run faster.

I didn't answer. I also couldn't say no.

The door slid open slowly.

He read the entire situation in a second — the floor, my curled figure, the wet satin. And he didn't react in any of the ways I feared. No flash of shock. No disgust. No exaggerated pity.

He just looked calm. Safe.

"Okay," he murmured, more to soothe than to speak. "Give me a sec, yeah? I've got you."

He turned and went out. Footsteps up the stairs — quick, not rushed. In under a minute he was back with clean pajama pants and a small towel from my room.

"I didn't know where things are, so I grabbed the top drawer," he said, setting them gently on the vanity. "You usually wear these to sleep, right?"

I refused to lower my hands. "Nik, please... I'm so embarrassed. Just get out."

"Sei. Look at me."

He crouched directly in front of me, bringing himself level with where I sat. "Hey. Look at me."

"I can't..."

"This is nothing, Sekar. You just had surgery. A recovering body doesn't always cooperate. There is nothing to be ashamed of."

"This is embarrassing," I whimpered behind my palms.

"Embarrassing to whom?"

"To me!"

"Why should you be ashamed in front of me?"

I had no logical counter. So I stayed silent.

He was quiet a few seconds. Then, with an extremely slow, tender motion, his hands found my wrists and pulled them down from my face. I didn't resist.

Tear-soaked face, puffy eyes, ruined hair — the rawest version of myself I had ever displayed to anyone. And he looked at it with an expression so warm my chest tightened.

"You are so beautiful," he whispered, a tiny adoring smile at the corner of his mouth. "I don't know why. Maybe because you're incredibly cute when you sniffle."

"Nik..." I whined through the last of my sobs, a smile threatening anyway.

His thumb wiped the tear track on my left cheek. Then the right.

"Now," he said, standing, "do you want help changing, or can you manage?"

A small, spontaneous laugh escaped me — leftover shame, overwhelming relief, and a warm flutter I didn't dare name.

"Are you seriously offering to help me change?"

"Do you need it? I don't mind seeing you naked now." He pinched the tip of my nose. "Kidding, Sei! I'll wait right outside. Call me when you're done."

For the first time that night, I laughed without any burden. "Get ouuuut!"

He raised both hands in surrender. "I'm a very patient man, Sei. I can wait."

When I opened the bathroom door — clean, changed, my dignity taped loosely back together — he was leaning against the hallway wall exactly where he said he'd be.

"Better?" he asked.

"Better."

He studied my face for a long moment. Then his voice dropped, sweet but deliberate.

"I'm going to kiss you now. If you're uncomfortable, turn your face away. I won't be offended."

I didn't turn away.

He approached slowly — deliberately leaving me time and space in case my logic changed its mind. And when his lips finally landed on mine, it was the softest, most careful kiss I had received in fifty-one years of living.

It demanded nothing. There was no rushed desire in it. Only absolute tenderness — proof from a man who chose to kiss me at the least glamorous hour of my life and made it the most precious.

When he pulled back, his forehead stayed against mine.

"Go back to bed, Sei," he murmured, husky. "I've got the rest."

Behind us, I heard him quietly cleaning the bathroom as I drifted off. He never mentioned it again. Not once.

The next day, Sary stormed in straight from the studio, half her on-screen makeup still on. Andin, Karin, and Grace had arrived earlier in the afternoon; Rosa had been here the day before, straight from the clinic, and left only after extracting three separate promises that I would rest.

I was lying on the long sofa, head in Andin's lap while she read, when the doorbell rang and Sary's loud, impatient voice came through the gate.

"Hey, Ry," I called at the echo of her footsteps.

"WOMAN, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO—"

Sary froze at the threshold of the living room. Dead in her tracks.

Nikau stood in my open kitchen in a home t-shirt and pajama pants, wearing a linen apron borrowed from my kitchen drawer, stirring a pot that wafted rich chicken soup through the house.

Without taking his eyes off the stove: "Hey, Sary. Welcome. What would you like to drink? Tea? Coffee?"

Sary stared at Nikau. Then at me. Then back at Nikau.

"Okay," she muttered to the empty air. "So this is what's been happening while I was busy working?"

I chuckled; my abdomen protested. "Ry, come on..."

"He's cooking." She walked in with stiff steps and sat beside me, eyes never leaving the kitchen. "He's wearing your apron. And he knows which drawer it lives in."

"He's been keeping me company since we landed from Tokyo," I said, as casually as I could manage.

"Kak Ros told us about the surgery. She did not mention your premium agency man had become this..." Sary gestured at the apron, the soup pot, the effortless way he moved around my kitchen. "...domesticated."

Andin shrugged without looking up from her book. "We discussed it frantically in the group chat yesterday. You were playing busy and didn't read it."

"I WAS WORKING, ANDIN!"

"And now you're here gaping by yourself because you missed days of valuable intelligence."

Karin, cross-legged on the carpet peeling an orange, smiled sweetly. "He opened the front gate when the three of us arrived. We genuinely thought we had the wrong address."

"And then?"

"And then he offered coffee, sliced fruit, and told us Sekar was still sleeping so we shouldn't be noisy." A teasing glint at me. "Like a proper, loving host."

Nikau, hearing his name tossed around, turned off the stove and smiled politely at Sary. "Sekar mentioned you always drink chamomile after your broadcast. Should I make you a cup?"

Sary stared at him, unreadable, for several seconds.

"He knows I like chamomile," she whispered to me. "And I've never met him."

"I told him a lot of things about all of you," I said, suppressing a smile that was nearly spilling over.

"Clearly." She finally sank back into the sofa, accepting the cup he brought her minutes later, face still half-stunned but melting.

She sipped slowly, watching him arrange soup bowls on the dining table, then looked me dead in the eye.

"Okay," she said, low enough for only me. "Now I understand why your energy feels different, Sekar."

"Different how?"

Sary smiled — the genuine one, the one that never makes it to television.

"Lighter," she whispered, squeezing my shoulder. "You look lighter and happier."

That night, after the house emptied and the soup was portioned into containers labeled in his neat handwriting, I lay in Arga's bed listening to the faint sounds of Nikau locking up my house like he'd lived here for years.

And the CEO in me, the one who reads every contract twice, finally asked the question I'd been avoiding for days.

Which parts of this are on the retainer?

The chamomile. The soup. The three a.m. bathroom he never mentioned again. The kiss.

I turned the bracelet slowly around my wrist in the dark. Somewhere in that itemized, professionally curated arrangement, something had gone off-script. I just didn't know yet if it was him.

Or only me.