The sun hung high, pouring golden light over a crystal-clear lake so still it perfectly mirrored the bright blue sky and the soft, fluffy clouds drifting lazily above. At the lake's center stood a simple yet elegant gazebo, built from white wood that gleamed softly in the sunlight. It sat perched on wooden stilts, just above the gently rippling water, connected to the shore by a narrow wooden bridge.
Inside the gazebo, a woman sat gracefully, sipping tea from a delicate porcelain cup. She wore flowing white robes that fluttered slightly in the warm breeze, and a broad-brimmed hat shaded her face just enough to add an air of mystery. Her black hair cascaded down her back in soft waves, contrasting sharply with the purity of her attire.
"It's a really good day," she murmured, her voice soft and calm as she closed her eyes, tilting her face toward the sun. The warm air was filled with the subtle sounds of water lapping gently at the wooden posts beneath her feet and the distant, soothing calls of birds.
With her tea cup still held lightly between her fingers, the woman began to hum—a low, melodic tune, almost like a prayer. Her body relaxed in the chair, but her senses were alert. She was waiting, waiting for someone.
Suddenly, the birds scattered. From the distant trees and bushes around the lake, flocks of birds began to sing. Their songs were vibrant, joyful, and full of life as they danced and swooped through the air, flying toward the opposite shore.
The woman's eyes fluttered open, calm now replaced by quiet excitement. "I guess he woke up," she said softly.
She stood, smoothing the folds of her robe and adjusting her hat with practiced elegance.
"Shall I meet him now?" she asked.
A small silvery-white bird, perched beside her, tilted its head in mild confusion.
"Would you like to go and pick him up?" The woman smiled warmly.
The bird chirped happily and nodded, then took off in a swift arc, heading toward the far shore where the garden awaited.
The woman watched the bird with shining eyes. This moment had been long anticipated—finally, the one she had chosen was awake.
**
The scent of tea lingered in the air, crisp and sweet, but not overwhelming. A cool breeze drifted across a lake so still it looked like a pane of polished crystal. Satria Kusuma Wijaya stood at the edge of the gazebo, disoriented and cautious.
"My name is Viviane, and I have a proposition for you, Satria Kusuma Wijaya."
The woman's voice was calm, serene even, yet the weight of her words made the air feel heavier. She stood beneath the gazebo's canopy, bathed in soft white light. Long black hair cascaded over her shoulders, her flowing white robe fluttering as if caught in a breeze that Satria couldn't feel.
He didn't respond. Not right away.
His eyes flicked from her to the surroundings. A table rested in the center of the gazebo—ornate, old, carved from a wood he couldn't name. Upon it, a ceramic tea set, steaming gently, gave off an aroma that was both calming and strange. Two chairs flanked the table. One occupied.
"You must be confused right now," Viviane said, her voice warm but not patronizing. "I understand." She turned toward the table, moving with a grace that didn't quite feel human. "Come, take a seat. Drink tea with me, and let's have a small talk."
Satria didn't move. He didn't even blink. His jaw was clenched, his heart hammering in a rhythm that didn't match the peace of the place. His arms tensed instinctively. He glanced down at them, confused.
He raised his gaze again and stared at the woman. "Who are you?"
Viviane smiled, unfazed. "Like I said. My name is Viviane, Satria Kusuma Wijaya."
Satria's feet remained rooted to the floorboards, his eyes narrowing. He took a step closer, cautious, scanning the gazebo again.
"What happened to me?" he asked, his voice flat, yet tight with tension. "Why am I here? How do you know my name?"
Viviane didn't answer immediately. She picked up the teapot with both hands and began to pour tea into the empty cup. The liquid was pale gold, and its fragrance spread through the air like mist—soothing, floral, and slightly sweet.
She set the pot down, motioned toward the vacant chair with a graceful hand, and smiled. "Come. Sit. Tea is best when it's hot."
Satria stood motionless. Then, slowly, he walked forward. His steps echoed faintly on the wooden floor, though he couldn't tell where the sound was bouncing from—there were no walls here, just open sky. He took the seat across from Viviane, though his back remained stiff, like a soldier before a commanding officer.
She raised her cup and sipped. Silence fell again, save for the gentle rustle of wind brushing past the gazebo. Her humming resumed, light and wordless, as her eyes drifted toward the horizon where the birds played in the sky.
Satria, however, couldn't relax. His fingers hovered over the cup in front of him but didn't touch it. The scent was tempting, oddly calming. Still, he kept his gaze on her.
"I didn't poison it," Viviane said casually, not looking at him. "You saw me drink from the same pot."
"Maybe the poison's in the cup," Satria replied, eyes narrowing.
Viviane chuckled. "You wound me. I'm an honest woman."
He didn't answer. Viviane set down her cup, leaned forward, and took his. Then, without a hint of hesitation, she placed her lips where his would have gone and took a sip.
"See?" she said, setting it down again. "Perfectly fine."
Satria looked at the pink mark left by her lipstick. He sighed, picked up the cup—and drank.
The tea was smooth, with a subtle sweetness and a lingering floral warmth that slid down Satria's throat and spread through his chest. It was unlike anything he'd tasted before—delicate, yet rich. The tension in his shoulders, taut like piano wire, began to loosen against his will.
He didn't want to admit it, but the drink was calming. Infuriatingly so.
"I haven't had tea like this before," he muttered.
Viviane's eyes lit up. She smiled softly, lifting her cup with delicate fingers. "It's a personal blend. I picked the herbs myself. It is good for calming the nerves."
Satria said nothing, just set the empty cup back onto the table and straightened in his chair. "Now," he said, his tone firmer, "tell me what happened. Where is this place?"
Viviane, still cradling her cup, let her gaze linger on the lake. The birds in the distance continued their dance in the sky, the wind teasing their wings. She seemed in no rush, as if time moved differently here.
"Don't you remember?" she asked.
Satria frowned. "Remember what?"
Viviane turned her eyes to him now—clear, piercing, calm. "Satria Kusuma Wijaya," she said softly, "you died."
Satria stared at her, the words bouncing off his mind and they sank in.
"What did you say?" Satria's voice cracked with disbelief as he stared at Viviane. The words hung heavy in the air, almost impossible to grasp.
Viviane didn't answer. Instead, she took a slow, deliberate sip from her cup. Her silence was a statement—a rhetorical challenge.
"I'm still alive," Satria insisted, voice shaking but desperate for proof. "Look at me. I'm right here, perfectly fine."
She set her cup down and fixed him with a steady gaze. "Anggara Setyawan. Do you remember him?"
Satria frowned, wrinkling his brow as he searched his mind. "Who?"
"Don't play dumb. You know him, Satria. You know him very well."
He racked his memory, but no clear image surfaced. Scratching the back of his head, he tried again. Nothing. The name felt foreign, distant.
Viviane leaned forward, clasping her hands together calmly. "Anggara Setyawan lived a good yet pitiful life, and he never considered himself inferior. Many called him a douchebag—and they weren't wrong. He was a bad man."
Satria blinked, trying to make sense of her words.
"Don't you remember? You locked him up in jail."
The room seemed to tilt. The pieces didn't fit. This was madness. Satria thought she was making things up, twisting reality.
Suddenly, a violent, searing headache exploded inside his skull. Instinctively, he clutched his head with both hands, groaning through the unbearable pain.
"What… are… you… doing?" he gasped, eyes wide and panicked.
Viviane smiled faintly, calm amid his torment. "I told you—it's good for calming the nerves."
The pain deepened, relentless and unforgiving. He bit his lips to stop himself from screaming, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
"Don't fight it," Viviane whispered, voice soothing but firm. "Let it flow."
Satria trembled, caught between agony and revelation. The headache pulsed like thunder as the truth began to seep through the haze—he was no longer among the living.
Viviane took a slow sip from her cup, then smiled faintly.
*
The tea had gone cold.
Satria sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. The serene gazebo, the gentle lake, the warm wind—none of it registered anymore. What began as a dull pressure behind his eyes had become a storm, twisting, pulling, cracking through his mind like lightning fracturing a night sky.
Viviane watched quietly. "It's starting, isn't it?"
He didn't answer.
There were sounds now. Not from outside, but inside. Static, snippets of code, fragments of conversations, the clicking of a mechanical keyboard. Then, overlapping them all—a woman's laugh. Faint. Distant. His breath caught.
Satria groaned, pressing his palms harder against his temples.
"I can't—think."
"You're not supposed to," Viviane said. "Just feel."
The floodgates cracked.
One memory hit him like a train: a cluttered office filled with coffee cups, old monitors, and sticky notes plastered with code. His code. Lines of neural logic, reinforcement loops, sentiment models.
He saw himself again. Young, focused, idealistic. A man who believed intelligence wasn't just mechanical—it could be moral.
Then, a flash. A whisper.
"This is big, Satria. You could save lives."
That voice—it belonged to Aditya, the journalist. No, the friend. The one who handed him the drive. A black, nondescript flash stick containing hell: government surveillance logs, backdoor exploits, internal memos detailing an AI system weaponized for power.
A system he had once helped build.
Satria gasped as the pain spiked—sharp, electric, full of guilt. "I didn't know," he muttered. "I didn't know they'd use it like that…"
Viviane didn't interrupt.
His mind reeled forward. He saw late nights scrubbing data, cross-checking signatures, encrypting leaks. The weight of paranoia creeping in—but he buried it, hid it beneath logic and caffeine.
Then came the fallout.
Protests. Headlines. Arrests.
And shadows.
He remembered now—his routine walk home. The alley with the busted streetlamp. The motorbike ride. The low hum of the engine.
Then, the scream of metal. A truck. No headlights. No horn.
Just impact.
He flinched violently in the gazebo, as if hit all over again. His arms throbbed with remembered agony. His vision spun. Asphalt. Screaming. Hospital lights. The sterile reek of iodine and fear.
And then—the man. The one in the room. His face was still shrouded in darkness.
"Why?" Satria gasped. "Why kill me?"
"You knew too much," Viviane said. "You were warned. But you believed the truth was worth it."
He looked up at her. His face was pale, wet with sweat and tears. "I just wanted to help people…"
"And you did," she said gently.
His voice cracked. "Then why does it feel like I lost everything?"
"Because you did. But loss isn't the end."
He shook his head, overwhelmed. "My fiancée… my work… my life—gone."
She nodded solemnly. "And now, what remains is you."
He stared at his trembling hands. His mind was still burning, fragmented—but something inside him, some small center, had survived.
Viviane poured fresh tea into his cup, the steam curling upward like a quiet invitation.
Satria gave a tired, cynical smile and muttered, "You really think I want to drink that again?"
Without missing a beat, Viviane teased, "Oh, come on. It's not like you have much of a choice."
She topped off the cup with a playful glance, her calmness somehow grounding him even as the memories churned.
Satria stared at the tea for a moment before lifting it slowly to his lips—hesitant, reluctant—but he drank.
Satria sat quietly, the warmth of the tea slowly seeping through his fingers, grounding him in the present. Yet his mind was far away, still trapped in the storm of memories that churned relentlessly beneath the surface.
He finally lifted his gaze, eyes distant but sharp with remembered pain. "I didn't want to believe it," he said softly, voice raw. "That it would come to this. That exposing corruption would cost me everything."
Viviane remained silent, watching him with a steady calm that made his turmoil seem even more fragile.
He closed his eyes and pictured the faces that had haunted him since that night—the friends, the colleagues, the activists and journalists who had trusted him. He had been so sure that shining a light on injustice would bring change. Instead, it had brought threats, shadows trailing his every move, fear that crept into his days and nights.
And then, the crash. The brutal collision that shattered his body and his life.
His arms—he clenched his fists tightly—had been mangled beyond repair. The sharp, searing pain that followed in the hospital was nothing compared to the ache of loss that settled deep in his chest. The loss of his future. The loss of the life he had fought to build.
He swallowed hard, struggling to keep the tears at bay. "My fiancée… we had plans. She believed in me, believed in what I was doing. I was going to marry her, build a family. I promised her that much."
A bitter laugh escaped him. "All gone in an instant."
Viviane reached out, placing a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Grief is not something you can rush. It's a path you walk one painful step at a time."
Satria nodded, but the weight of everything pressed down on him. "I should have seen it coming. The warnings, the threats... I ignored them. I thought my work was bigger than the danger."
He looked down at the tea, now cold again. "But it wasn't."
His voice broke. "I lost so much more than just my body that night."
For the first time, he let himself fully feel the emptiness—loss of trust, of safety, of hope. The pain was raw, but it was real. And somewhere beneath it all, a flicker of something stubborn remained. A question. A faint spark.
Satria sat back, the bitter taste of Viviane's tea untouched on his tongue. His mind was still swirling, fragments of memories clashing and weaving like a violent storm. Then, as if a veil had lifted, a face—grimed, angry, familiar—flashed before his eyes.
Anggara Setyawan.
The name surged through his thoughts like wildfire. Anggara, the corrupt criminal he once helped imprison. A man notorious for exploiting the vulnerable, corrupting officials, and tearing families apart with his ruthless business. A man who had left a trail of shattered lives in his wake.
Satria's fists clenched tightly on the armrests. He remembered now—the countless nights poring over files, building the case against Anggara. The court battles that drained his every ounce of resolve. The victory that should have felt like triumph but instead, brewed a quiet storm of retaliation.
Anggara never forgave. And he never forgot.
The pieces snapped together—the hit-and-run that nearly killed him, the perfect timing, the absence of any reckless accident. It was no random tragedy. It was a calculated strike, meticulously planned and mercilessly executed.
Satria swallowed hard. His voice was barely a whisper, hoarse with a mixture of anger and disbelief. "He was the truck driver… all along. Anggara Setyawan."
Viviane nodded slowly, eyes steady and knowing. "He wanted to make sure you never walked again. Or spoke again. But fate had other plans."
A shiver ran through Satria's body, the cold shadow of betrayal creeping into his bones. His death wasn't an accident. It was murder, born of vengeance.
He closed his eyes, the weight of the truth pressing down on him. "I was his target… from the start."
Silence settled between them, heavy and profound.
Viviane's voice cut through softly, "Now you know. And now you must decide what to do with that knowledge."
Satria opened his eyes, determination flickering through the pain. The road ahead was dark—but it was his to walk.
Anger flared up, sharp and hot. "I gave him justice once… I thought I was doing the right thing. But he came back, destroyed everything."
"Justice isn't always neat or fair," Viviane said quietly, leaning forward. "Sometimes it demands more. More strength, more courage."
Satria's fists clenched around the cup, knuckles whitening. The memories pressed on him like an iron weight — the long nights poring over files, fighting for the victims crushed by Anggara Setyawan's corruption. The bribes, the lies, the threats. The man had ruined lives with his unscrupulous loan company, driving people to despair and ruin.
And now, he was the one who had ruined Satria's life.
"How could he escape?" Satria muttered. "He shouldn't have been free. Not yet. Not like this."
Viviane's eyes darkened. "He had help. Powerful allies. Corruption cuts deep, and some wounds are hidden beneath layers of deceit."
The truth stung. Satria had believed the system was just—that justice, though slow, would eventually prevail. But the system had failed him. And now, so many were still suffering.
He shook his head, breathing unevenly. "He didn't just want to kill me. He wanted to erase the consequences of his actions. To silence the truth."
"You're not silenced," Viviane reminded him softly. "Your memories, your conscience—they live on. And that means something."
Satria looked down at his trembling hands. He felt raw, vulnerable, but beneath the pain was a growing fire — a refusal to surrender to despair.
He clenched his fists, more from instinct than intention. "I want to face him again," he muttered. "I want him to know he didn't win."
Viviane tilted her head, watching him with an unreadable expression. "Vengeance feels righteous in the moment," she said gently. "But what you truly seek isn't vengeance. It's meaning."
Satria's jaw tightened. "What I seek is accountability. What I want is to know it wasn't all for nothing."
There was a pause. Wind stirred the leaves above, and a single petal drifted onto the table between them.
"Sometimes," Viviane said, her voice almost wistful, "our stories aren't finished the way we expect. The justice we crave might not be for us to deliver… not in the same place, not in the same way."
He looked up sharply. "What does that mean?"
But Viviane only smiled, her gaze distant, as if seeing beyond what his eyes could reach.
"Meaning isn't found in the echo of old battles," she said, pouring herself another cup of tea. "It's in what you become after the fire."
Satria sat back slowly, her words sinking in like cold water over flames. He hated how right she sounded. He hated even more how it didn't give him the closure he wanted.
But it gave him something else.
Direction.
"Then what now?" he asked. "What becomes of me?"
Viviane looked at him, and for a moment, her expression was impossibly sad.
"That," she said, "depends on whether you're willing to become something more."
She raised her cup to her lips again, sipping the now-cooled tea.
Satria stared at her, the weight of a hundred questions pressing against his chest.
But he said nothing.
The wind shifted again, and somewhere in the distance, something stirred—soft, faint, like the first step of a journey yet to begin.
Satria looked down at his trembling hands. He felt raw, vulnerable, but beneath the pain was a growing fire — a refusal to surrender to despair.
He let out a breath, steady and long, as if releasing something that had been pressing against his chest since the moment he woke up in this strange place. The pain was still there—of death, of betrayal, of everything ripped away—but it no longer ruled him.
His voice was quieter when he spoke. "It's strange. A few hours ago, I was dying. Then angry. Then I was terrified. But now… I don't know. It's not peace, but—"
"Clarity?" Viviane offered gently, tilting her head.
He nodded faintly. "Something like that."
She didn't smile, not exactly, but something warm flickered in her expression. Approval, perhaps. Or understanding.
"I kept thinking I needed to fix something," Satria muttered, rubbing a thumb along the edge of the cup. "That maybe if I held onto the anger, it would make it easier to carry. But all it did was burn."
"Grief disguises itself well," Viviane said. "Anger is easier than pain. But they're cut from the same cloth."
He gave a dry chuckle, eyes still lowered. "You talk like someone who's seen a lot of it."
"I have."
The wind stirred again, faint but present. The lake rippled once more. Somewhere in the trees, a single bird called out—low and distant, but clear. The silence that followed was no longer oppressive. It felt natural.
Satria raised his eyes. There was still exhaustion in them, but the fog had lifted.
"You said something earlier," he said slowly. "That you brought me here. That you wanted to talk."
Viviane met his gaze without flinching.
"I'm listening now," he said. "So… what exactly was it you wanted to propose?"
Viviane reached for the teapot again. Her movements were calm, unhurried, as though the weight of the moment didn't surprise her at all.
She poured the last of the tea into his cup, and only then did she speak.
"Something worth waking up for."