Chapter 56 - A Wall Standing Again

Ten days passed since that meeting, and the campaign video that had briefly caused an uproar was finally taken down quietly, as though it had never existed at all. For everyone else, the problem felt resolved. For Rimba, that was exactly where his unease truly began.

He knew his father wasn't going to stop that easily. And the only solution he could think of to make sure Michi wasn't targeted again was to distance himself—to make the two of them look no longer close enough to be turned into material for any story.

He started canceling plans one by one, quietly, without ever framing it as what it actually was. The excuse of "a lot of studio work" became the sentence that left his mouth most often. Replies to messages that used to come quickly now arrived hours later, short, half-hearted. Even in the basement studio, the very place that had once witnessed the beginning of all their secrets, Rimba started showing up alone at odd hours more often, leaving behind messy sheets of score paper that never got finished.

Michi tried to be patient, trusting that Rimba would talk when he was ready. But that evening, after the fifth time that week Rimba had canceled plans without explanation, something inside her cracked. She went to the studio unannounced, finding Rimba sitting alone in front of the keyboard, his fingers still over the keys.

"Rim." Michi's voice broke the silence. Rimba flinched slightly, hurrying to straighten his back.

"Michi. What are you doing here?"

"That's what I should be asking you." Michi stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind her. "You've canceled our plans five times this week, Rim. And every time I ask why, you always answer 'it's nothing.' I'm not a child who can keep being placated with an empty answer like that."

Rimba avoided her gaze. "I've got a lot on my mind, Chi. Not just about you."

"Not just about me." Michi repeated it quietly, almost a whisper, the hurt clear beneath the tone of her voice. "Okay. Can I know about what? Because from what I've seen, you've been shutting yourself off for two weeks now—exactly like before, before we learned not to run from each other's problems."

"This is different." Rimba's voice began to shake, a mixture of restrained anger and mounting guilt. "This isn't about me being afraid to be honest. I'm trying to find the safest way to protect you and your family, without dragging you into the fallout."

"Fallout from what, Rim?" Michi stepped closer, her eyes full of questions and, at the same time, fear of whatever answer she might receive. "If there's something threatening us, I have a right to know. I'm your partner, not a stranger you have to protect from a distance."

Rimba closed his eyes, holding back every word he wanted to say—about his meeting with his father, about the offer to exploit Michi's name, about his fear that his own presence would only drag the Suryokusumo family into a dirty game that was never theirs to begin with.

"I can't tell you the details right now," he finally said, his voice barely audible. "Just trust me, Chi. I'm trying to resolve this in the safest way for all of us."

"Trust?" Michi let out a small, bitter laugh, her eyes starting to well up despite her best effort to hold them steady. "I've always trusted you, Rim. But trust is supposed to run both ways. You can't keep asking me to trust you while you yourself won't give me a reason to."

Rimba didn't answer, only sat still staring at the floor, letting the silence hang longer than it should have.

"If you're not ready to talk, I won't force you," Michi finally said, her voice trembling as she held back tears she refused to let fall in front of Rimba. "But don't blame me if I start having doubts. Because this... this is exactly like before. You shut the door, and I'm left standing outside, not knowing what to do."

She turned around, walking out of the studio without waiting for an answer.

Rimba stared at the door as it closed slowly behind her, his hands clenched tightly against his thighs. Every cell in his body wanted to run after her, to explain everything. But the image of his father's face, that cold, calculating sentence, kept holding him in place.

For the first time since they'd been together, Rimba let that door close completely—not because Michi had shut it, but because he himself was too afraid to open it any wider.

He sat there for a long time after she'd gone, the studio's silence pressing down on him in a way it never had before, not even during the worst of their earlier estrangement in Vienna's aftermath. Back then, at least, the wall between them had been built from something he could name and eventually tear down—a lie, a wound, a misunderstanding waiting to be untangled. This one felt different, sturdier somehow, mortared together out of a fear he couldn't bring himself to explain without also explaining exactly how dangerous his own father could be to the people closest to him. He thought of Bayu's question in the backyard, of the answer he still hadn't found, and realized with a sick, sinking clarity that he had just handed Michi the exact same silence his own father had once handed his mother—dressed up, this time, as protection instead of neglect, but a silence all the same.

Outside, he could hear the fading sound of Michi's scooter pulling away from the curb, and he made no move to follow it. Whatever this cost him, he told himself, it would cost her less than standing anywhere near the blast radius of a man who had never once, in Rimba's whole life, cared who got hurt as long as the story came out looking clean. He stayed in that chair long after the sound had faded entirely into the ordinary noise of the street outside.