Chapter 4 — Needing Each Other

I am an only child.

Since I was young, my life has followed a neat pattern. School in the morning, coming home in the afternoon, nights spent studying or sitting quietly in my room. It never truly fell apart, but it rarely felt full either. After school, there was often an emptiness that appeared without warning—an emptiness that was hard to explain. Logically, my life was fine. There was nothing lacking.

I had close friends. Steven and Kevin were always there at school. We practiced basketball together, joked around, laughed, and looked like a solid group. But we only met at school. Outside of that, our lives moved in separate directions.

At home, there were my parents. My relationship with them was quite close. We were not a distant family. Every week, we made time to go out together. Sometimes we ate outside, sometimes we just drove around the city without a clear destination. During those moments, I could talk freely—about school, about basketball, about small things that might not have mattered much, but that I wanted to share.

Since I was little, my mother had always been the one to take me to school and pick me up afterward. We left early in the mornings, she driving, me sitting in the passenger seat. Inside the car, our conversations flowed slowly. Nothing heavy. Nothing that felt like advice being forced on me. Sometimes we talked about Bandung’s unpredictable weather, sometimes about traffic, sometimes about what we might eat later that day. My mother rarely lectured. She preferred telling stories, and I listened.

Our relationship was close. Warm. Safe.

And precisely because of that, I knew this emptiness wasn’t caused by a lack of parental love.

Still, the loneliness remained.

Maybe because I had no siblings.

Maybe because I didn’t have a peer—someone my age—who truly understood me without seeing me as “Aldi the basketball player” or “Aldi the popular one.”

At school, everything was always loud. The basketball court echoed with squeaking shoes and bouncing balls. People called my name. Some cheered. Some just wanted to be seen near me. But in the middle of all that noise, I often felt like I was standing alone.

Lonely in a crowd.

That afternoon, I had just sat down in my room after coming home from school. I was still wearing my uniform. My bag lay on the floor. I hadn’t even thought about taking a shower yet. I simply sat on the edge of my bed, holding my phone without any real purpose.

Then my phone vibrated.

A notification.

From Mira.

The underclassman we had met at the mall the day before.

Good afternoon, Kak Aldi.

I stared at the screen for a moment.

Messages like that weren’t unusual for me. Many girls texted me. Some got close too quickly. Some were overly aggressive. Some joked excessively, others showed their interest openly. I was used to replying briefly—or not replying at all.

But for some reason, Mira’s message felt different.

Not because of what it said.

But because of how it arrived.

Short. Careful. As if it didn’t demand anything from me.

I remembered how Mira stood at the mall—slightly behind, not loud, not trying to draw attention. Mira and Ani, her friend, had seemed different from the start. They didn’t shout our names. They didn’t fight for attention. They mostly stayed quiet, observing from a distance.

Maybe that was why it felt innocent.

I replied.

Good afternoon, Mira.

Not long after, another message came in. This time, it was about math.

I read it slowly. Took a small breath. Then I pulled out an old book I still kept on my shelf. I tried to recall the formulas I had learned before. I didn’t remember everything perfectly, but I explained what I could.

I didn’t truly know why I was doing it.

Maybe because I felt empty.

Maybe because I was the type of person who found it hard to say no.

Or maybe because I needed someone to talk to at home—even if it was only through a screen.

My parents actually didn’t allow me to date. I was supposed to focus on getting into university. The future, they said, shouldn’t be sacrificed for things that could wait. I agreed with them. At least, I thought I did.

So I replied to Mira only as much as necessary.

From that day on, we started exchanging messages more often.

Not every day. Not long conversations. Sometimes just about schoolwork. Sometimes about assignments. Sometimes about small things that didn’t really matter. I never started long chats, but I also never stopped them.

I let it continue.

The days that followed felt slightly different. Not because I was falling in love, but because the small gaps in my time were being filled. After school. At night before sleeping. There was someone I could talk to, even briefly.

Honestly, Mira’s face was ordinary. Far from what I had imagined for myself.

Since I was young, without realizing it, I had grown up with a certain image of a woman in my mind—my mother. She was beautiful in her own way. Calm. Neat. Sometimes she told stories about her youth—about how many men had liked her before she married my father. She told them without pride, simply as part of her life story.

Besides being beautiful, my mother was also smart. She had entered a public university through the national entrance exam, something that wasn’t easy in her time. At home, she never demanded that I become like her. But that image stayed with me anyway.

That standard grew without me noticing.

And Mira… asked questions.

About math. About lessons. About things that felt simple to me. Sometimes her questions repeated. Sometimes she asked to start again from the beginning.

I knew she wasn’t the type I had imagined.

But I also knew that, at that time, her presence filled something empty inside me.

I never promised her anything.

I never confessed any feelings.

I never invited her to take things further.

I simply replied to her messages.

Answered her questions.

Let her stay.

And without realizing it, I failed to consider one important thing:

that Mira might not be standing in the same place as I was.

For me, this was just a way to fill the emptiness.

For her, it might have been something more.