Empty fields
1502 Words
After Arka walked away, the world became unrecognizable.
Not dramatically.
That would have been easier.
The sun still rose every morning over the rice fields. Farmers still worked cattle beneath unbearable heat. Motorbikes still rattled down muddy roads while old women swept porches before sunrise.
Life continued exactly the same for everyone else.
But for Fabrizio, something fundamental had been ripped out of reality itself.
Everything looked wrong now.
The stable felt too quiet.
The river looked empty.
Even the horses seemed restless around him, as if they sensed grief clinging to his body like smoke.
The first few days after the separation, Fabrizio convinced himself Arka would come back.
That was the dangerous thing about love — it trains you to expect return.
He kept waiting for headlights outside the house at night.
Waiting for footsteps near the stable.
Waiting for a message saying:
Meet me at the river.
Please.
Anything.
But nothing came.
At first Fabrizio tried reaching out constantly.
Messages.
Calls.
Voice notes deleted before sending because he sounded too desperate.
Most went unanswered.
The few replies he did receive were painfully short.
Busy.
Can’t talk.
Please stop messaging me for now.
That last one shattered him completely.
Please stop messaging me.
Not because it sounded cruel.
Because it sounded afraid.
One evening Fabrizio sat alone near the river where they used to meet almost every night. Rain clouds drifted slowly overhead while insects buzzed through tall grass around him.
He stared at his phone for nearly an hour rereading old messages.
Pictures.
Jokes.
Late-night confessions.
Plans about leaving together someday.
Tiny pieces of a life that no longer existed.
His thumb hovered over Arka’s contact again.
Then stopped.
Because deep down he finally understood something terrible:
Arka wasn’t staying away because he stopped loving him.
He was staying away because he still did.
That realization somehow hurt worse.
The loneliness became physical after that.
A real ache.
Not just emotional sadness.
Fabrizio felt it in his chest every morning when waking up. Felt it during meals. Felt it while riding horses through open fields where Arka used to ride beside him laughing loudly into the wind.
Now there was only silence.
One morning his father noticed him struggling to saddle one of the horses properly.
“You sick?”
Fabrizio shook his head quickly.
“Tired.”
His father studied him quietly for a moment.
“You’ve been tired a lot lately.”
Fabrizio avoided eye contact.
The truth sat trapped behind his ribs constantly now, screaming to escape.
But he couldn’t say it.
Couldn’t explain that he felt like someone had reached inside his body and hollowed him out completely.
So instead he worked harder.
Longer hours.
Less sleep.
Anything to exhaust himself enough not to think.
But grief doesn’t disappear because you stay busy.
It simply waits.
Patiently.
Then attacks during silence.
And nights became unbearable.
Especially the nights that rained.
Rain reminded him of everything.
Their first kiss in the stable.
Motorbike headlights cutting through storms.
Arka’s voice in darkness.
The smell of wet leather and cigarettes.
Sometimes Fabrizio would wake up convinced he heard Arka outside.
He’d rush to the window only to find empty roads glowing beneath streetlights and rain.
Then came the rumors.
At first they traveled quietly through the village like whispers beneath doors.
People saying Arka had become dangerous now.
That he worked with criminals in Surabaya.
That he carried drugs.
That he collected debts violently.
That somebody got stabbed outside a nightclub and his name came up afterward.
Fabrizio refused to believe most of it.
Not because he thought Arka incapable of violence.
Because he knew fear changes people.
Survival changes people.
And whatever Arka was becoming now probably had very little to do with choice.
Still, hearing strangers speak about him like some monster made Fabrizio sick with anger.
One afternoon at a roadside food stand, two older men started talking openly about Arka while Fabrizio sat only a few feet away.
“That tattoo tells you everything,” one man muttered while sipping coffee. “Those boys end up dead eventually.”
The other laughed darkly.
“Or in prison.”
Fabrizio stood so quickly his chair nearly fell backward.
The entire stand went silent.
For a second he genuinely considered hitting them.
Instead he just walked away shaking violently with rage.
Because defending Arka publicly now felt dangerous too.
Everything connected to him felt dangerous.
That was the cruelest part.
The boy Fabrizio once rode horses with beneath open skies had slowly become somebody people feared speaking about too loudly.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
And still Arka remained gone.
Not dead.
Not completely vanished.
Just unreachable.
Sometimes Fabrizio spotted him briefly around the village.
Always at night.
Always moving quickly.
Always surrounded by shadows.
Once he saw him standing outside a convenience store smoking beneath flickering lights.
Fabrizio nearly stopped breathing.
Arka looked thinner.
The tattoo stretched farther across his neck now.
And his eyes—
God.
His eyes looked exhausted.
For one hopeful second Fabrizio thought about approaching him.
Then another motorbike pulled up nearby carrying two men Fabrizio didn’t recognize.
The way Arka’s posture changed instantly around them made fear flood through Fabrizio’s entire body.
He watched helplessly from across the road as Arka climbed onto the back of the bike and disappeared into darkness without ever noticing him there.
That night Fabrizio cried for the first time since the separation.
Not quiet tears either.
Violent grief.
The kind that bends your body forward painfully because emotions become too large to contain physically.
He locked himself inside the stable afterward so nobody in the house would hear him.
The horses shifted nervously while he sat against the wooden wall struggling to breathe properly.
“I miss him,” he whispered aloud finally.
The words echoed softly through darkness.
And somehow saying them out loud made everything worse.
Because missing Arka no longer felt temporary.
It felt permanent.
Around that time Fabrizio started drinking more heavily.
At first only during weekends with other workers after long days on the farm.
Cheap liquor.
Beer.
Anything strong enough to dull his thoughts temporarily.
The alcohol helped at first.
It softened memory around the edges.
Made sleep easier.
Made silence less sharp.
But eventually even drunkenness stopped helping.
Because grief always waits underneath intoxication.
And once the numbness fades, everything returns heavier than before.
One night after drinking too much beside a bonfire with other ranch workers, Fabrizio wandered alone into the fields behind the farm.
The sky above him looked endless.
Black.
Empty.
He sat down in tall grass while wind moved quietly through the countryside around him.
And suddenly every memory of Arka returned all at once.
The river.
The stable.
Moonlight against his skin.
The sound of his laugh.
The way he whispered “You’d come with me though, right?”
Fabrizio buried his face in his hands immediately.
Because the future they imagined together still felt real inside his mind.
His body hadn’t caught up to reality yet.
Part of him still expected escape.
Still expected healing.
Still expected Arka to return smiling one night saying:
We can go now.
But deep down he knew better.
Something had already broken beyond repair.
And worst of all, Fabrizio had started blaming himself.
Maybe if he pushed harder they could have run away.
Maybe if he never kissed Arka in the first place none of this would’ve happened.
Maybe loving him ruined him.
Those thoughts became constant afterward.
Poisonous.
Relentless.
He stopped sleeping properly.
Stopped eating enough.
His mother noticed first.
“You’re disappearing,” she told him quietly one morning while making breakfast.
Fabrizio forced a tired smile.
“I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t.
Not even close.
He had lost more than a relationship.
He had lost the only person who ever made the world feel survivable.
And without Arka beside him, life suddenly felt unbearably long.
One rainy evening Fabrizio finally rode alone out toward the hill where they used to watch stars together.
The horses moved slowly beneath dark skies while distant thunder rolled softly across the countryside.
When he reached the hilltop, he climbed down and stood silently overlooking endless wet fields glowing beneath moonlight.
This was where Arka asked if he would leave together someday.
This was where they dreamed aloud like freedom actually existed.
Now the hill felt haunted.
Fabrizio sat there for hours while rain soaked through his clothes.
And somewhere deep inside himself, something dangerous quietly began growing.
Not hatred.
Not anger.
Numbness.
The kind of numbness that appears when pain lasts too long without relief.
At the time, he didn’t recognize it yet.
He only knew he was exhausted.
Exhausted from loving someone he could no longer reach.
Exhausted from fearing for him constantly.
Exhausted from waking up every day inside a life that no longer felt meaningful.
The fields stretched endlessly around him in the darkness.
Empty.
Silent.
Just like the future suddenly looked now.
- Writer
