Thursday began the way consequential days sometimes do — quietly, without announcing itself, wearing the ordinary clothes of a day that intended to be unremarkable.
Hana's alarm went off at six-fifteen.
She lay still for a moment in the particular way she had developed over the past three months — not the anxious stillness of someone running through the day's requirements before they had finished sleeping, but the deliberate stillness of someone who had decided that the first five minutes of the day belonged to no one and nothing except the simple fact of being awake.
The ceiling. The light coming through the curtains — the dry, clear light of a Jakarta morning that had decided to be uncomplicated. The distant sound of the city beginning itself seven floors below.
She thought about Sat
