CHAPTER 7: THE HANDS THAT REMEMBER
1542 Words
Friday, 7 August 2026
Valerie’s Residence, Stutong, Kuching — 9:40 A.M. (MYT)
Mak Cik Enot packed food as though Valerie were leaving for a month instead of two nights.
Rice, fried chicken and sliced fruit already filled the insulated bag. She added another container and closed the lid before Valerie could object.
“What is that?”
“Something you will eat before it becomes dinner.”
From the dining table, Munirah looked up from the Project KIZUNA schedule. “She means me.”
“You forgot lunch yesterday,” Mak Cik Enot said.
“I remembered eventually.”
“At eleven forty.”
Munirah lowered her gaze. “Point accepted.”
Valerie stood near the hallway in a cream blouse, dark trousers and low leather shoes. Two document cases waited beside her overnight bag. The folder containing the divided curve remained in her hand.
She had slept better.
For the first time in several nights, no river had entered her dreams. Nothing had tightened around her wrist. The silence should have felt like relief.
Instead, it felt borrowed.
Smith sat directly in front of the door. He had returned home with Valerie from the studio the previous night and had apparently decided one journey was enough.
“You’re staying,” Valerie told him.
“He knows,” Mak Cik Enot said. “He disagrees.”
Munirah closed her laptop. “Encik Edwin expects us before three. Shinji and Aris will remain in Kuching until permission is given. No additional staff.”
“Good.”
Mak Cik Enot handed Valerie the food bag, then studied her face.
“You look less tired.”
“I slept.”
“That is not the same answer.”
Valerie smiled faintly. “I’ll be back on Sunday.”
“Come back before you forget this is your home too.”
Smith watched from the doorway until the lift closed.
Pan Borneo Highway — 11:25 A.M. (MYT)
Kuching loosened its hold on the road one building at a time.
Commercial blocks gave way to green stretches, roadside stalls and houses beneath zinc roofs. Rain had darkened the earth, leaving pieces of sky reflected in roadside water.
Valerie sat in the rear of the SUV with the drawing folder across her knees. Munirah occupied the other side, reviewing Shinji’s revised installation measurements.
“He sent these at six twelve this morning,” she said.
“That is early.”
“That sounded almost impressed.”
“It sounded factual.”
Munirah smiled and returned to the screen.
A river appeared between rows of trees, broad and brown beneath the late-morning light.
Valerie watched it.
No pain came. No sound rose inside her head. The water remained only water.
She opened the folder.
The divided curve resembled no motif she knew. Two lines circled an empty centre without meeting. The form felt familiar in the way a forgotten word sometimes did—present at the edge of speech, impossible to retrieve.
Valerie closed the folder before the feeling could deepen.
Ahead, the longhouse emerged beyond a bend in the road.
Betong — 2:38 P.M. (MYT)
Children noticed the SUV first.
By the time it stopped, two of them were already running along the lower walkway, calling towards the ruai that Valerie had arrived.
Edwin came down the steps before she could reach for her overnight bag. More silver ran through his hair than she remembered from her previous visit, but his shoulders remained straight.
“You came home carrying work again.”
“This work needs to come home before it goes anywhere else.”
“Better than your usual answer.”
He took one document case despite her protest.
Puan Jelini waited on the ruai beside Delila Ani. Prepared thread rested near the weaving room while ordinary longhouse life moved around them—children crossing between doors, someone calling from a kitchen, the rhythm of a loom continuing farther down the gallery.
Delila greeted Valerie with a brief embrace.
“You look tired.”
“Everyone has decided to say that.”
“Then everyone is probably right.”
The review began at 3:20 P.M.
Valerie laid out the three revised concepts and nothing more.
Reception panel. Guest-suite panel. Furniture application.
“The literal Nabau has been removed,” she said. “The new form is broken across separate surfaces. No visitor sees the whole body from one position.”
Puan Jelini studied the rendering.
“They should not.”
“The hotel wants three prototypes for evaluation,” Valerie continued. “Not full production. Payment, attribution and final authority remain with the artisans and the community.”
“And the man from Kuching?” Delila asked.
“Shinji Belaja.”
“The handsome one.”
“Delila.”
“I am identifying him efficiently.”
A few smiles moved around the room.
Valerie continued, “He and Aris will come tomorrow only if you agree. They will answer questions. They will not arrive with cameras, investors or a production team.”
Puan Jelini looked towards the other weavers before speaking.
“They may come to listen.”
“Only to listen?”
“And answer when asked.”
Valerie nodded. “That is all I promised.”
Permission was not approval.
That distinction remained clear.
Edwin’s Family Room — 5:18 P.M. (MYT)
Edwin said nothing when Valerie first placed the drawing before him.
His silence answered before his voice did.
“You’ve seen it,” Valerie said.
He touched the edge of the page without moving it.
“Something like it.”
“When?”
“After the accident.”
Valerie sat opposite him. “I drew this?”
“You drew many things.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were eight. You remembered very little clearly then.”
“Did you teach me the pattern?”
Edwin’s gaze moved towards the divided curve.
“I taught you how to hold thread. How to watch tension. How not to rush what your hands had not understood.”
“That was not my question.”
“No.” He leaned back. “I never taught your hands what they already seemed to know.”
The room became quieter.
Valerie thought of Five Foot Way. The man beneath the columns. The invisible pull around her wrist.
“The disturbances became stronger after I saw someone in Kuching.”
“Did he speak to you?”
“No.”
“Touch you?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps he disturbed what was already there.” Edwin looked at the drawing. “He did not create it.”
“What was already there?”
Edwin did not answer.
That refusal carried more weight than denial.
Old Weaving Room — 9:12 P.M. (MYT)
The loom remembered her body before Valerie remembered the loom.
She sat, placed her feet correctly and reached for the prepared thread without thinking.
Puan Jelini watched from the doorway.
“You still hold it the same way.”
Valerie looked down at her fingers. “Uncle Edwin said I learned quickly.”
“You watched once.”
Valerie turned.
“Once?”
“The next morning, you repeated the preparation without asking for help.” Puan Jelini entered and sat beside the loom. “Not perfectly. But correctly enough to make us wonder who had shown you before.”
“No one had.”
“That is what Edwin said.”
Valerie drew the thread gently between her fingers.
“Was I afraid?”
“Sometimes. Mostly you were quiet. You woke before everyone and sat here as though waiting for someone.”
“Who?”
“You never said.”
Puan Jelini’s eyes moved towards the drawing folder.
“The handsome man is coming tomorrow?”
“Apparently that is his official title now.”
“It is easier than Creative Director.”
Despite herself, Valerie laughed.
Puan Jelini rose. “Bring him. Let us see whether he listens as carefully in person as he does on paper.”
After she left, Valerie remained at the loom.
Nothing supernatural answered her.
The thread only rested between fingers that seemed to remember more than she did.
“Where did I learn you?” she whispered.
Edwin’s Family Room — 11:03 P.M. (MYT)
Edwin waited until the longhouse had quietened.
Then he opened the locked cabinet.
Inside lay several belongings from the year of the accident, a thin drawing pad and a sealed hospital envelope he had not opened in years.
He took out the pad first.
The paper had yellowed at the edges. On one page, two broken curves faced each other without meeting.
On another, a red line turned back towards its beginning.
Edwin placed the pad beside the envelope.
For almost twenty-seven years, he had told himself that silence had protected Valerie. She had lost her parents, nearly lost herself and returned to him with memories no child should have carried.
He had given her one version of the truth because it was the only one he knew how to speak.
Valerie had spent nearly twenty-seven years believing she had survived the accident.
Edwin had never found the courage to tell her that survival was not the word the doctor had written.
- Writer
