Staring At the Reflection
1008 Words
Reynold stepped in deeper, his eyes sweeping every inch of the room carefully. He did not touch anything, only observed. He approached the study desk, then bent down slowly to look at the floor surface under the desk.
"The floor is still a bit damp," whispered Reynold while turning toward Dyah. "Just mopped."
Dyah approached the single bed. She reached out her hand and touched the surface of the bedsheet. The fabric felt cold and slightly stiff, like it had just been ironed with strong pressure. She mustered the courage to lift the pillow. Empty. Not a single object was left under it.
"Was there anyone who entered here after Bu cleaned?" Reynold asked Ibu Dibyo, who still stood at the doorway.
Ibu Dibyo shook her head firmly. "Only I hold the master key. And Sudiro already returned his room key a month ago, exactly when he moved out."
Dyah felt the wooden key in her jacket pocket. Her grip tightened. If Sudiro had already returned his key, then what key did she find in the campus locker earlier?
Dyah walked toward the wardrobe and opened it. Empty. She knelt on the floor, trying to look into the dark space under the bed. Light from the neon lamp illuminated part of that space, showing a floor also perfectly clean from dust or spiderwebs.
"Like..." Dyah murmured, her voice trembling. "...like this room was prepared to be left forever."
Reynold stared at her sharply. "Left by whom, Dy? Sudiro already left a month ago."
"Or," Dyah interjected, her eyes staring at the reflection of the light on the ceramic floor, "he came back here secretly."
The air in the room suddenly felt several degrees colder. Ibu Dibyo looked uncomfortable; she rubbed her own arms. "I... I'll wait downstairs then. Please close the door and make sure it's locked when you're done."
After the sound of Ibu Dibyo's footsteps receded and went down the creaking stairs, Dyah stood in the middle of the room. She turned slowly, observing every detail. Everything was too sterile. Sudiro was a person who lived in organized chaos—scattered sketches, books opened at random pages, a collection of odd objects from dusty flea markets. This room was not a representation of the Sudiro she knew. It was like an empty box whose contents had just been erased.
"Dy, look at this," called Reynold from the corner near the wardrobe.
Dyah immediately approached. Reynold was pointing to a narrow gap, less than two centimeters, between the wardrobe and the cream-painted wall of the room.
"There's something tucked there," said Reynold.
He tried to shift the wardrobe. The wardrobe turned out to be much lighter than imagined, perhaps because it was truly empty inside. With one gentle tug, the wardrobe shifted a few centimeters. In that gap, a piece of paper folded small into a square was visible.
Dyah's heart beat fast as she pinched that paper with two fingers and pulled it out. It was a folded version of a Bogor map commonly sold at stalls near train stations. Dyah opened it with slightly trembling hands. The paper felt old and thin in her fingers.
The map was full of scribbles. Several main road lines were crossed out thickly with a blue ink pen. And at one location, exactly in the Dramaga area, there was a blue ink circle drawn with very strong pressure until the paper was almost torn in the center of the circle.
Next to the circle, there was Sudiro's handwriting, very familiar to Dyah:
Here I found an honest silence.
And right below it, written with the same ink but with smaller and more hurried letter size:
IPB Dramaga. The pond of thought.
Reynold peeked from behind Dyah's shoulder, his eyes squinting reading that writing. "IPB? Why is he interested in an agriculture campus? That's very far from his studies at FIB."
Dyah did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on another writing in the corner of the map, exactly under the legend section. That writing was very small, almost unreadable, resembling quick scribbles in the midst of urgency:
If I do not return, look for Ardnes.
Ardnes. That name appeared again. Dyah felt her throatchoked. It was the same word she had seen on Sudiro's hard disk.
Dyah stared at the blue circle on the map once again. IPB Dramaga. Sudiro had never once mentioned that place in their conversations over the last several months. That place had no logical connection to Sudiro's interest in installation art orthe narrative theories they studied at FIB.
"He... he once said something about a collaboration," Dyah suddenly uttered. Her voice broke; she had to take a deep breath to stabilize it.
Reynold frowned. "What collaboration?"
"With art students from another campus. He said about an interdisciplinary project, something combining nature and the structure of human thought. But he never said where the location was. Dyah refolded the map carefully, following its old fold lines.
Reynold nodded slowly, his eyes sweeping over the sterile room again. "But he never said if it was in Bogor."
They stood in the silence of room number 8 for a moment. Outside the window, the roar of vehicles from the Pejaten main road could still be heard, but inside here, the silence felt pressing. The map in Dyah's hand felt hot, as if the old paper was the only object that still had "life" in this room where traces had been erased.
This room was intentionally silent. Every clean corner seemed to be laughing at their search.
Dyah inserted the map into her jacket pocket, right next to the wooden key of Kos Bambu Kuning. She could feel both objects pressing against her thigh.
"We must go to Bogor," said Dyah. This time her voice sounded firmer, although her hands were still slightly trembling as she reached for the doorknob to leave.
"Now?" asked Reynold while following Dyah out.
"Tomorrow very early morning," answered Dyah while pulling the room door until it closed with a sharp click sound.
- Writer
