Chapter 38 - A Two-Week Countdown

Two weeks out from her departure for Austria, time seemed to spin forward at an unsettling speed. The calendar on Michi's bedroom desk had days crossed off one by one in red marker, leaving less and less room for error. It felt, some mornings, like watching a fuse burn down toward something she couldn't yet name. On one side, she had to finish the final draft of the contemporary orchestral composition with Rimba—the capstone project that would determine her academic future—while on the other, Genta and Bimo were busy finalizing preparations for Midnight Frequency's farewell concert.

That afternoon, at Basement Studio Number Three, the atmosphere felt thick with the smell of fresh score paper and the exhaustion hanging heavy in the air. A half-finished bottle of water sat forgotten on the edge of the desk, its label peeling from the humidity, next to a small tower of instant coffee sachets neither of them had gotten around to brewing. Rimba sat leaning back in his mixing chair, rubbing his temples, which throbbed faintly. In front of him, sheets of arrangement notes were piled up in disarray, reflecting exactly how hard they'd been working these past few days.

"The crescendo section at bar eighty still isn't wild enough, Chi," Rimba said, pointing at the monitor screen with the tip of his pencil. His voice sounded hoarse, the kind that comes from days of insufficient sleep. "I want a more pounding rhythmic impact there, like the pulse of someone sprinting at full speed. Try imagining the energy of a street drummer hitting the snare in some underground rock song... yeah, that's roughly the kind of emotion I want to bring into our orchestral score."

Hearing those words, Michi, sitting beside him, swallowed involuntarily. Her heart pounded twice as fast. She stared at the computer screen, then glanced briefly down at her own wrist, deliberately covered by a slightly long jacket sleeve to hide the remaining thick calluses left behind by her drumsticks.

"You've been talking about street drummers a lot lately, Rim," Michi said, trying to keep her voice as normal as possible, though her lips felt slightly stiff, her pulse still hammering somewhere behind her ribs. "Don't tell me you actually want to start a rock band more than you want to be a classical composer?"

Rimba turned to look at her. The corner of his mouth lifted into a thin smile thick with mystery. He rolled his chair a little closer, then reached for Michi's hand on the desk. His warm fingers gently pushed aside the edge of Michi's jacket sleeve, revealing her wrist, which looked so delicate and yet carried an enormous secret hidden beneath its surface.

"It's not that I want to start a band," Rimba whispered low, his dark eyes staring sharply, intently into Michi's. "I just admire people who can be honest with themselves. Who don't hide behind a mask of hypocrisy, who play music not to chase academic praise, but because it's the only way they know how to breathe."

That gaze was so intense, as if Rimba were trying to pierce through the deepest layer of defense in Michi's soul. A warm shiver ran through the pianist's chest, mixed with fear. This man in front of her was so perceptive, so close to the truth, that Michi felt the distance between her disguise and its collapse had shrunk down to a matter of seconds. She could feel the calluses on her palm practically burning under his touch, as if her own skin were trying to confess something her mouth still refused to say out loud.

"I... need to head home early today, Rim," Michi squeaked, looking away, gently pulling her wrist out of Rimba's grip with a manufactured excuse. "I've got a morning consultation session with Professor Hans tomorrow."

Rimba didn't answer right away. He simply gave a slow nod, though the look in his eyes made it clear he knew his girlfriend was hiding something. "Alright then. Get enough rest, Michi. Don't push yourself too hard... save some of that energy for me, not just for those secret rehearsals of yours that nobody's supposed to know about." He said it lightly, almost like a throwaway joke, but his eyes lingered on her a beat too long, as if waiting to see whether she'd finally correct him.

That last line came out of Rimba half in jest, but it succeeded in sending a cold shiver straight down Michi's spine.

Stepping out of the studio, Michi let out a long breath into Yogyakarta's cool night air. She knew her time was slowly running out. Midnight Frequency's farewell concert was now only a matter of days away, and after that, the enormous secret she had guarded so tightly would be put to the test on the single most dangerous stage of her entire life. The image of that concert night flashed through her mind—where the roar of underground drums and the sound of classical piano keys would collide head-on, testing just how much longer she could hold out before this sweet lie shattered into pieces in front of the man she loved most. She lingered a moment longer by her scooter, key still in her pocket, watching the studio's dim light spill out from under the door behind her, and found she couldn't quite make herself walk away just yet.

She didn't sleep much that night, lying awake replaying the exact moment Rimba's fingers had brushed against her wrist, wondering how many more close calls she had left in her before the coincidence stopped being believable. It occurred to her, somewhere past midnight, that the fear she felt wasn't really about being caught anymore. It was about what would happen to the version of herself Rimba had fallen for in the first place—the one he'd built entirely out of half-truths, still not knowing the other half was the part he'd been falling for the hardest without ever realizing it. Two weeks. That was all the time she had left to decide how, or whether, she was finally going to let him see all of her at once.