Chapter 21 - After the Roar

The main dressing room suddenly turned into a deafening whirlwind the moment the door swung wide open. Theater crew members, fellow students from across the arts faculty, and even a handful of supervising professors crowded in to offer their congratulations. Laughter, a steady stream of compliments, and the clink of mineral water bottles collided in the air, creating exactly the kind of loud, celebratory atmosphere Michi usually went out of her way to avoid. Someone kept trying to press a paper cup of orange juice into her hand; she took it without really registering who'd handed it to her.

Normally, in a situation like this, the girl would have slipped away quietly, retreating to the safety of a stack of books or the silence of her own room. But tonight, every time she tried to step away, some invisible gravity kept pulling her gaze straight back across the room.

There, Rimba stood in the middle of the crowd, his leather jacket sleeves rolled back up, surrounded by his bandmates who whooped and clapped him enthusiastically on the back. He looked like he was genuinely enjoying the noise, but in the gaps between the laughter and the chatter, his dark eyes suddenly cut straight through the crowd. Their gazes locked again—sharp, weighted with meaning, as if whispering a secret only the two of them knew.

Damn it, Michi thought, tightening her grip on the crumpled paper cup in her hand, the orange juice inside long since gone flat and warm. Her defenses were completely leveled by now, and she didn't even have the energy left to pretend she was cold anymore.

As midnight approached, once the low roar of the celebration finally began to fade and most people started drifting toward the parking lot, Michi slipped out through the side door toward the quiet courtyard behind the auditorium. The gentle night wind carried away the last of her exhaustion, cooling her cheeks, which still felt warm. She let a long breath escape past her lips, releasing the weight of academic expectation that had pressed down on her chest every single time she'd set foot on this campus.

She leaned against the concrete boundary fence, letting the night's silence sweep away the last of the restless flutter still lingering in her chest. In that quiet corner, the rustle of leaves sounded strange next to the fading echo of music still humming faintly in her head.

"Your habit of running off the second things get too loud for you," a hoarse voice came from behind her, followed by the unhurried footsteps she knew all too well.

Michi didn't turn around, though the corner of her mouth couldn't quite resist a small smile, one she immediately hid in the dark shadows around her. "I'm not running off. I'm just looking for some air. It felt way too crowded in there," she added, a beat too quickly.

Rimba stopped right beside her, leaning his back against the same concrete fence, keeping only a few centimeters of distance between them. Their shoulders nearly brushed, sending a static charge through the air that felt hotter, somehow, than the stage lights had been earlier. The smell of mint, faint kretek smoke, and the night air all melted together, making his presence feel dominant, filling every inch of her awareness.

"Crowded from all the professors' praise, or because you couldn't stand looking at me for one more second in there?" Rimba asked, his tone thick with mischief, one eyebrow arching teasingly in the dim glow of the garden lamp.

Michi finally turned, giving him a sharp look, half-hearted protest flashing in her eyes. "You are getting more and more insufferable, you know that?"

Rimba didn't answer with words. Instead of arguing back, he simply moved closer, taking the crumpled paper cup out of Michi's hand and setting it down on the concrete ledge. His steady fingers reached out, tucking a few strands of Michi's hair, tousled by the night wind, gently behind her ear. The touch was light, almost weightless, and yet it succeeded in catching her breath entirely, creating a silence far louder than the crowd's noise back inside.

"I know," Rimba whispered low, his dark eyes staring straight into hers without a shred of hesitation, bringing down the last fortress she'd fought so hard, for so long, to keep standing. "But you like it, don't you?"

The night wind slowed to a gentle breeze, carrying with it the last remnants of a melody still humming somewhere in her head. And that night, under the dim glow of the quiet campus streetlights, Michi finally let her cold mask fall away, choosing at last to stop denying every feeling that now, completely, held her whole.

For a long while neither of them said anything more. Michi simply stood there, letting the silence stretch, listening to her own heartbeat settle into something steadier than it had been all evening, and found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she didn't feel the slightest urge to fill the quiet with a sharp retort the way she once would have. Somewhere out past the fence, the campus lay dark and half-empty, the last stragglers from the concert drifting off toward their cars, their voices growing fainter by the minute, until it felt like the two of them were the only people left awake in the whole city.

She thought, briefly, of everything still waiting for her beyond this one quiet night—Anindya's unanswered message, the questions she still hadn't found the courage to face, the two halves of her life that had spent so long refusing to touch. But for now, standing shoulder to shoulder with Rimba under a streetlight at the edge of an empty courtyard, none of it felt as urgent as it had that morning. For the first time in longer than she could remember, Michi let herself simply exist in the present moment, without calculating what it might cost her later. Tomorrow could ask its questions. Tonight, she decided, belonged only to this.