Chapter 41 - A Quiet Trail Back to the Old House

Two weeks after the day that neon mask split apart and Michi flew off with her suitcase and the remains of her regret to Vienna, the basement studio of the Swasemesta Conservatory had suddenly turned into a suffocating, empty space. For Rimba, the silence no longer felt calming; it had transformed into a savage monster, beating relentlessly against his mind from the inside.

In his cramped room back at his boarding house, or in the corner of the studio now filled with untouched sheets of score paper, Rimba found himself trapped in a whirlpool of emotions tearing at each other. He was angry. He felt betrayed down to his bones by the woman he had, all this time, allowed to break through the tightest defenses he had ever built. Every time he remembered Michi's sweet smile at the café, or the way those slender fingers touched the piano keys, that image collided instantly with the ferocious drummer he'd seen on the Tirtodipuran stage. The lie was real. And Rimba hated lies more than anything else in the world.

But beneath the fury burning in his chest, there was another side of himself that refused to die: a longing that crushed him down to the bone.

Rimba hated to admit it, but every corner of his room, the scent of sweet cedar soap still lingering on the studio's sofa cushions, even Michi's small habit of doodling silly little sketches in the margins of her score sheets—all of it seemed to scream her name. He was tormented by the contradiction of his own feelings. He wanted to hate the girl completely, but his heart kept searching for traces of her with every passing hour.

That afternoon, for the first time after weeks of choosing to shut himself away in the studio, Rimba decided to go home to his parents' house in the Kaliurang area. He needed fresh air, or at least somewhere that wouldn't remind him of the sound of snare hits still ringing endlessly in his head.

His heavy footsteps carried him into the quiet family living room. On the back veranda facing a small garden, his mother—Maharani—sat watering an orchid with slow, calm movements. The middle-aged woman didn't greet him right away as her son stepped closer, but her sharp eyes, seasoned with years of life experience, never once failed to catch every shift in Rimba's demeanor.

Maharani set down her hose, then turned to look at Rimba, who stood rigid, arms crossed, in the doorway, staring blankly out toward the garden.

"You look like a man who just lost a war, Rimba," Maharani's voice came out calm but landed with precise sharpness. She walked closer, setting down a cup of warm tea on the small wooden table beside her rocking chair. "It's been over a month since you last came home properly. And even when you do stop by, your face looks as crumpled as an old score sheet about to be thrown away."

Rimba let out a soft huff, dropping his body roughly into a rattan chair. He stared at the steaming teacup without any interest. "Just a lot of campus assignments, Ma."

"Campus assignments, or something else that's got Mama's favorite son so lost?" Maharani chuckled softly, sitting down across from her son. The mother studied Rimba's hardened jaw, the flicker in his eyes hiding extraordinary exhaustion, and the man's large fingers tapping restlessly against the surface of the table in a nervous rhythm he couldn't hide. "Mama knows your character too well, Rim. You'd rather die than look weak in front of anyone else. But if you're running home with your shoulders slumped that low... that means there's some enormous storm you're facing out there."

Rimba fell silent. His gaze drifted far away, passing through the garden fence. His memory flashed back to the past—to the grim shadow of his own family years ago, when this house had never once truly felt like home.

For Rimba, his extreme hatred of lies wasn't without reason. He had grown up under a roof that was anything but honest. Back when he was still a child, his father had been a figure society regarded as an honorable man and a model educator. But behind that neat suit and charismatic smile, his father had kept a double life—betrayal after betrayal, sealed tightly behind a perfect mask of hypocrisy.

A young Rimba had been the very first person to catch that lie. He'd seen with his own eyes how his mother cried silently every night, burying the wound left by the false promises his father made on the stage of their shared life. From that day on, Rimba's world collapsed. He swore to himself he would never again let anyone deceive him with that same sweet smile. To Rimba, a lie of any size, no matter how small, was the beginning of ruin; a rotten poison that slowly destroyed the entire foundation of trust.

And that was exactly what had shattered him so completely upon discovering that Michi—the only woman he had ever allowed into the most private room of his heart—had, it turned out, been wearing the exact same mask of deception as his own father.

"She lied to me, Ma," Rimba's voice finally broke, quiet but full of a bitter tremor caught in his throat. "The person I trusted the most... turned out to be the person best at keeping a secret right behind my back."

Maharani looked at her son with deep tenderness and understanding. She reached out, squeezing Rimba's broad shoulder warmly.

"It's normal to feel disappointed, Rim. But hating someone because they have another side of themselves they were too scared to show you... that's a different matter entirely," Maharani said gently. "Are you angry at her lie, or are you actually angry because you realize... you can't stop caring about her, even after finding out she was wrong?"

The question struck Rimba dead center, without mercy. He didn't answer. He simply squeezed his eyes shut tight, letting the evening breeze carry away the last of his defenses in front of his mother, while thousands of miles away in Vienna, the gray clouds of autumn began to settle over the steps of a girl who was still struggling to piece her own broken heart back together.

Maharani didn't press him for more. She simply sat there, letting the silence between them stretch out into something gentler than the one Rimba had carried in from outside, occasionally reaching over to refill his cooling cup of tea without a word, content to let her son find his own way back to whatever answer he was still too proud to say out loud.