Chapter 14 — The Promise Beneath the River Bridge
918 Words
The village had already decided she would marry him.
That terrified Alya more than threats ever had.
There had been no engagement.
No ceremony.
No yes from her.
Still, day by day, her future slipped from her hands and into everyone else’s mouths.
Women smiled at her with knowing eyes.
Men suddenly treated her grandfather like someone important.
Children whispered as she passed.
“Haji Karim’s future wife.”
Every time she heard it, something inside her locked tighter.
One afternoon, Alya stayed late after class, pretending to organize books in the cramped library storage room. Dust clung to her fingertips as she stacked the same crooked pile of textbooks three times over, listening to the rain gather on the tin roof above. Really, she was hiding. Delaying the moment she had to walk back into that house and hear them speak about her life as if she were already gone.
By the time she left, storm clouds had swallowed the sky.
The road home lay empty and wet.
Halfway across the old river bridge, she saw Rizal waiting against the railing.
His shirt sleeves were damp from the mist, dark hair plastered slightly to his forehead. He looked like he had been standing there for a long time.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said softly.
Alya kept her eyes on the river below, thick and brown and angry from the rain.
“I’m tired.”
“I know.”
Silence stretched between them while muddy water churned violently below, swollen from days of rain. The bridge creaked beneath passing wind, carrying the smell of wet wood and river mud.
Then Rizal pulled something from his bag, wrapped carefully in plastic.
A newspaper clipping.
Alya unfolded it slowly, her fingers trembling from the cold—or maybe not the cold at all.
The article was about Indonesians leaving for Malaysia—factory workers, restaurant workers, plantation laborers.
Some legal.
Some disappearing across borders without papers.
Her pulse stumbled.
“You know someone there?” she asked.
“My cousin.”
The bridge suddenly felt unsteady beneath her feet.
Rizal lowered his voice.
“He works near Klang.”
Malaysia.
Until now, it had existed only as a distant word, unreal as a dream.
Now it felt dangerously close.
“I’m not telling you to do something stupid,” Rizal said quickly. His jaw tightened as if he regretted speaking the moment the words left him. “But if you ever decide to leave… there are ways.”
Alya stared at the article while rain began tapping softly against the bridge.
“You already planned this?” she whispered.
Rizal let out a short, humorless laugh and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
“You think I haven’t been scared for you?” His voice cracked slightly on the last word. “Every time I hear them talk about your wedding like it’s already done, I feel sick.”
The words hit harder than she expected.
No demands.
No bargains.
No one trying to claim her.
Just fear for what might happen to her if she stayed.
Alya folded the newspaper carefully.
“I don’t even have money.”
“I can help.”
“No.”
The answer snapped out of her instantly.
Rizal blinked.
Alya shook her head, hugging the clipping tightly against her chest.
“If I leave, I won’t survive by belonging to someone else again.”
Something shifted in his face then.
Not offense.
Recognition.
Rain hammered harder against the river, loud enough to drown the world beyond the bridge.
Then Rizal spoke again.
“My sister was sixteen when they married her off.”
Alya looked at him sharply.
For a moment, he said nothing. His fingers curled around the rusted railing until his knuckles whitened.
“She used to sing while she cooked,” he said quietly. “Loud enough for the whole house to hear. My mother would yell at her to stop because she never remembered the right lyrics.” A faint smile flickered across his face before disappearing. “After the wedding, I visited her one night. I could hear her crying through the walls.”
Rainwater dripped from his chin as he swallowed hard.
“She cried every night for months,” he continued. “I remember sitting outside her door once, listening to her try to muffle it into her pillow so nobody would hear.” His eyes stayed fixed on the river. “Then one day she stopped.”
His voice carried the exhaustion of someone who had watched a slow death and could do nothing to stop it.
“What happened to her?”
Rizal stared into the rushing water.
“She forgot who she was.” He exhaled shakily. “Now when I visit, she barely looks at me. She just moves around the house like… like she’s apologizing for taking up space.”
The words landed like stones inside her chest.
He turned to her fully now, rain running down his face like tears he refused to acknowledge.
“I don’t want that happening to you,” he said. “And I hate that I don’t know how to stop it.”
Heat burned behind Alya’s eyes.
Not weakness.
Not shame.
Something worse.
Because deep down, she already knew the truth.
If she stayed—
if she let them decide everything for her—
one day she would wake up and find nothing left of herself at all.
- Writer
