A Season for Lies

The World on Mute

Saskia’s world stopped.

It didn’t slow down or blur at the edges. It simply ceased to be. As if a giant projectionist had slammed the pause button on the film of her life. The clinking of spoons from the next table vanished. The rich, sweet aroma of espresso from the bar evaporated. The face of Rina across the table, her brow creased with a growing worry, became a wet, unfocused watercolor painting.

The only reality left was the voice in her ear. The voice of a woman she had never heard before, speaking from thousands of kilometers away. A voice that was calm, clinical, and devoid of emotion—a voice trained to deliver catastrophic news with the detached calm of a weather forecaster. And it was that voice that kept striking her with words that felt like sharp shards of glass.

“…severe head trauma… unconscious…”

In Saskia’s mind, a powerful denial screamed. No. A wrong number. This has to be a wrong number. Bima? Her Bima? Impossible. Bima had just sent her a good luck text this morning. Bima was at the library, working on his thesis. Bima was safe. Bima was fine. This was a cruel, vicious mistake.

Saskia’s hand, holding the phone, began to tremble—a small, uncontrollable tremor that started in her fingers and traveled up her arm. The tremor spread to the table. The espresso cup next to her rattled, then tipped over. Its black, potent contents spilled, creeping quickly across her brilliant presentation sketches, creating a dark, damaging stain that bloomed like a terrible omen. But she didn’t care. Her eyes were fixed on the void, her ears locked on that voice.

“…currently in the ICU… Dr. Lee Seo-jin is performing an emergency neurosurgery…”

Surgery. Neurosurgery. Oh, God. The names sounded so foreign, so clinical, so horrifying. Those words weren't supposed to be associated with her brother. Bima. Her clumsy but most beloved brother. The brother she could always make laugh with a single silly joke. The brother who had sent her a message of encouragement just this morning, ending with the promise, “…I’ll call you later!”. A promise that now felt like its own special form of torture.

“…his condition is critical… we need the guardian to come as soon as possible…”

Critical. That single word was the final sledgehammer that shattered the last remnants of Saskia’s denial.

“Sas! Saski! What’s wrong?!” Rina’s panicked voice finally pierced through the thick fog in Saskia’s mind. Her best friend was already by her side, her warm hands gently shaking Saskia’s shoulder, which felt as cold as ice.

Saskia looked at Rina, but she didn’t really see her. She didn’t see her best friend; she saw her brother’s smiling face as they said goodbye at the airport a year ago. With her breath caught in her throat, she managed to utter a single phrase to the woman on the phone before the connection ended. “I’m… coming.”

She lowered the phone with the robotic movements of a rusty automaton. Her hand fell limp in her lap, the phone dropping onto the seat without her noticing.

“Bima…,” she whispered to Rina, her voice as raw and broken as sandpaper. “Rin, it’s Bima. He was in an accident. In Seoul. He’s critical.”

The color drained from Rina’s face. Without another word, she sprang into action. She threw a few hundred-thousand-rupiah notes onto the table to cover their bill, grabbed Saskia’s purse and the stack of now coffee-stained mood boards, and pulled her friend, who was still frozen like a wax statue, to her feet. They had to go. Now.

The journey out of the office and into a taxi was a series of blurry fragments for Saskia. She felt Rina guiding her, felt the warm Jakarta night air on her skin, heard the blare of car horns, but it all felt like it was happening to someone else, in a different movie. She was a spectator in her own body.

Inside the taxi, crawling through Jakarta’s morning traffic, Saskia could only stare blankly out the window. Her mind was empty. Shock still wrapped her in a thick, cold blanket, numbing her to the outside world. But when the taxi passed a giant digital billboard displaying an image of a happy family laughing on a beach, her defenses crumbled.

She sobbed. It wasn't an elegant cry. It was a raw, primal, silent explosion of grief. Her shoulders shook violently, and she pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle the wails that wanted to tear out of her throat. Hot tears flooded her cheeks, an outpouring from a toxic cocktail of sorrow, terror, and an unbearable guilt. Why didn't I pick up his video call last night? Why was I so busy? Why was my last message to him so brief? I should have told him I loved him too. I should have… I should have…

Rina pulled her into a tight embrace, letting Saskia cry on her shoulder. “Let it all out, Sas. Just let it all out. Don’t hold it in,” she whispered, her own voice trembling with unshed tears.

After a few minutes that felt like an eternity, Saskia’s sobs subsided, replaced by ragged, heavy breaths. Suddenly, she straightened up. She gently pushed Rina away. Tears still stained her swollen face, but the vacant look in her eyes was gone, replaced by something else. The panic had mutated, hardening into a fierce, cold determination.

“I have to get there, Rin. Right now,” she said, her voice hoarse but lined with steel. This was no longer the brilliant, cheerful Saskia. This was Saskia the older sister, a warrior just given the most important mission of her life.

Rina nodded quickly, understanding the shift. “Okay. Okay. We’ll figure it out. You have your passport, right?”

“It’s at the apartment.”

Wiping her tears roughly with the back of her hand, Saskia pulled out her phone. Rina did the same. In the dim light of the taxi, the glow from their two screens became their only source of light. Their fingers flew across the screens, searching for a sliver of hope in the digital world.

“Fastest flight… Korean Air,” Rina said, her voice tense as she squinted at the details. “It leaves in three and a half hours from Soekarno-Hatta. It’s tight, but we can make it. The price…” Rina paused for a moment. “Oh my god, Sas. It’s twenty-five million rupiah. One way. Economy.”

Saskia’s stomach twisted into a knot. She opened her banking app with a trembling finger. Balance: Rp 7,342,150. The number seemed to mock her. It wasn’t even enough to cover two months of her apartment rent.

“The Tirtayasa project…” she whispered desperately, a final hope.

“That won’t come through for at least thirty days, Sas. You know that,” Rina replied softly, voicing the bitter reality they both knew. Rina offered, "I have some savings..."

"It won't be enough, Rin," Saskia cut her off. She remembered the email from the hospital. She opened it again. A PDF attachment with the cold, official letterhead of Asan Medical Center. She showed it to Rina.

Rina’s eyes widened. “This… this is in US Dollars?” she whispered in horror. “Sas, this is more than the price of a car.”

As if that blow wasn't enough, Rina, the voice of logic, found the final, highest, thickest wall. “And the visa,” she said, her voice sounding just as hopeless. “Okay, let’s say we get a quick loan for the ticket and the hospital. But the visa? You can’t stay there long-term on just a tourist visa, Sas. To take care of Bima, you’ll need a guardian visa or something similar. I’m reading the embassy website now… the requirements are insane, and the processing time… four to six weeks.”

Weeks. Not days. Weeks.

The taxi was stuck at a red light. Saskia stared outside. People walked on the sidewalk, laughing, starting their day normally. The world kept spinning as if her brother wasn’t fighting for his life on an operating table. But for Saskia, her world had stopped. She looked at her glowing phone screen: an impossible flight price, an unimaginable hospital bill, and an insurmountable visa problem.

A few hours ago, she was a queen ready to conquer the world from the forty-second floor. Now, she was just an older sister, trapped in a taxi in the middle of Jakarta traffic, helpless, thousands of kilometers away from the only family she had.

***