The two o'clock street view from the Senopati café was a study in brutal contrasts.
Outside the vault-thick glass, Jakarta screamed. The sun was a cruel, white-hot eye, glaring off the roofs of a thousand cars trapped in the city's permanent metallic gridlock. Heat shimmered above the asphalt, turning the air into a thick, vibrating soup. The blare of horns, the growl of modified engines, and the distant shouts of a juru parkir—it was all a muted symphony of chaos.
Inside, there was only polite silence.
Inside, it was 22 degrees Celsius, filtered, and smelled of light-roast coffee beans and lemon-scented cleaning products. The hiss of the espresso machine and the soft clack of laptop keys were the only permissible sounds.
Rossie Aurora stirred her iced latte. A single bead of condensation traced a slow, rebellious path down the glass. The ice cubes clinked. It felt like the only spontaneous thing in the room.
At twenty-one, Rossie's life was a curated masterpiece. She had just graduated, cum laude of course, from the right university. She had the right friends, the right clothes, and a future that stretched out before her like a brightly lit, freshly paved, private toll road.
She was the living proof of the Aurora family's "prosperity." The golden girl.
She was supposed to be happy.
Instead, she felt the familiar void—a gaping, cold hollow so vast she feared that if she took too deep a breath, her entire being would collapse inward. It was a constant sensation, a low-frequency hum of wrongness.
The phone on the marble tabletop buzzed, shattering her reverie. A text from her mother.
'Can't wait to celebrate my 21-year-old!!!' Followed by a string of champagne, cake, and balloon emojis. 'Caterers are here! Don't be late! <3'
Rossie's fingers moved automatically. 'OTW soon. Love you too <3'
The words, as always, felt hollow. Acidic and flat on her tongue. She didn't feel love. She didn't feel anything. She was an actress in a lavish production, playing the part of "The Perfect Daughter." She knew her lines, she knew her blocking, but she had never understood why the play had to be performed at all.
She reflexively rubbed the skin just beneath her left collarbone, a motion hidden by the loose drape of her silk blouse.
The mark.
It wasn't a flaw, not really. It was a pale, intricate whorl of skin, almost like a scar but with no memory of trauma. It was shaped like a stylized, inverted crescent, or perhaps a coiled serpent. Her family doctor had once called it a "unique capillary formation" and patted her on the head. Her mother had told her to never show it; it was "unflattering" with an evening gown.
Most of the time, she forgot it was there.
But not today.
Today, on her twenty-first birthday, it itched.
It wasn't a surface itch. It was a throb—hot, deep, and insistent. As if something under her skin was waking up. As if a string, anchored in that one spot, had been plucked by an unseen hand, resonating at a frequency she couldn't hear. It had been pulsing for a week, growing stronger and more urgent as the clock ticked toward today.
The void and the itch; she'd never consciously connected them, but they had always coexisted.
"Rossie! Oh my God, we were looking everywhere for you!"
Bianca's sharp voice sliced through the silence. Rossie looked up, automatically pasting on her smile—the bright, easy, and utterly fraudulent one.
Bianca and Sissy slid into the booth opposite her, bringing an aura of expensive perfume and unexamined privilege. They were reflections of her own life: perfectly highlighted hair, handbags that cost more than a year's salary, and a conversational range that spanned from "horrifying" (a slow waiter) to "amazing" (a new dress).
"Are you ready for tonight?" Sissy asked, her eyes glittering. "Your party is going to be the party of the year. I heard your mom flew in a DJ from Singapore?"
"I heard that," Rossie said, reaching for her glass. The ice was nearly melted.
"And your dress! My mom sent me a picture. Stunning," Bianca sighed, checking her own reflection in the gleaming surface of a teaspoon. "I bet Leo is going to try and make a move tonight. He so has a crush on you, cousin or not."
Rossie fought the urge to wince. "Leo is my cousin. That's disgusting, B."
"Whatever. He's rich." Bianca waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, my God, that reminds me." She slammed her Birkin onto the table, making Rossie's water glass jump. "Dad finally got me my new car for graduation. But guess what? It's Rose Gold, not Champagne Gold. I literally cried. It ruins my entire aesthetic."
Sissy gasped in sympathetic agreement, launching herself into a detailed discussion on the incompetence of car dealerships to understand the nuances between two nearly identical shades of gold.
Rossie let their voices wash over her. She nodded in the right places. She false-smiled at the right cues.
And inside, the void widened. Was this it? Was this what she was for? A future defined by the correct shade of gold?
She felt a sudden, violent wave of nausea, so strong she had to grip the edge of the table. The throb beneath her collarbone was no longer an itch. It was hot.
"...so I told him, if he can't get it in Champagne..."
"Sorry," Rossie interrupted, her voice huskier than she intended. Bianca and Sissy stopped, staring at her with the blank look of the interrupted.
"I... I have to use the bathroom," Rossie managed. She grabbed her handbag and practically fled from the table, ignoring their baffled looks.
She locked herself in a cold, marble-tiled stall, sinking onto the closed toilet seat. The air smelled of artificial lilies. She ripped the collar of her silk blouse aside, her fingers fumbling for the mark.
In the sterile, artificial light, her skin looked pale. But the mark... it looked different. Usually, it was just a shade lighter than her skin. Now, it seemed faintly raised, and there was a subtle, angry pinkish hue around its edges. And it was pulsing.
Hot. Definitely hot.
She pressed her knuckles against it, trying to still the sensation. Stop. Stop. Stop.
A rap on the door. "Rossie? You okay? You've been in there for like five minutes." Sissy's voice, tinged with annoyance.
Rossie took a deep, shuddering breath. She pulled her blouse back into place, hiding her strange, small secret. "Fine. I'm fine. Just... cramps."
It was an easy lie. An acceptable one.
When she emerged, she had fixed her mask back in place. "Sorry about that. Ready to go? Can't be late for my own party, right?"
Her smile was so bright, so convincing, that her friends didn't even blink. They gathered their bags, complaining about having to pay the bill ("Why is the waiter so slow?"), which, of course, Rossie paid for, putting it on the "family account." Prosperity.
The three of them walked out of the sterile bubble of the café and back into the real world.
The second the heavy glass door hissed shut behind them, the sensory assault of Jakarta hit Rossie like a physical blow.
It wasn't just the 35-degree heat that slapped her skin. It was everything. The smell of diesel from a passing Kopaja bus. The sweet, rancid aroma of a street vendor's cart around the corner. The faint, sharp smoke of a kretek cigarette from a driver waiting across the street. The sound of a hoarse horn, the shout of "Terus, terus!" from a parking attendant, the hiss of tires on melting asphalt.
It was real. It was alive. And it was agonizing.
And the mark on her collarbone—
It no longer itched. It no longer throbbed.
It burned.
The pain was so sudden, so sharp, that she staggered, gasping. It was a white-hot spike, driven directly into her skin.
"Ugh, it's so hot!" Bianca complained, fanning her hair while fussing with her phone, trying to summon the valet. "They should really have an awning here."
Sissy just grunted in agreement, already typing furiously, probably complaining about the Rose Gold again.
They hadn't noticed. Of course they hadn't.
Rossie clutched her collarbone, her knuckles white. She was bent over, panting against the searing pain that pulsed in time with her own heart. She looked up, her eyes watering, past the oblivious shoulders of her friends.
She looked across the street, at the towering steel and glass office buildings, their dark facades reflecting the sun like black mirrors.
And for the first time in her life, Rossie Aurora felt the cold, undeniable sensation: she was being watched.
It wasn't paranoia. It wasn't imagination. In the middle of the sweating chaos of Jakarta, among the millions of souls, a single gaze was fixed on her. She couldn't see a person, but she felt it. It was ancient, possessive, and terrifyingly patient. As if something had been waiting right there, in the shadows between the skyscrapers, just for her to step out into the sun.
"Rossie! God, what is with you?" Bianca's voice finally cut through. "The valet's here. You're spacing out."
The pain receded as fast as it had come, leaving a cold, sick ache in its wake.
Rossie straightened up, her tremors hidden by a sudden, fierce act of will. She fixed her brightest smile in place. "Sorry. Just... dizzy from the heat."
She slipped into the cool, air-conditioned car, letting the heavy door thud shut, sealing the world out once more.
As the car pulled into traffic, she didn't look at her friends. She stared out the window, at the soaring buildings.
The feeling of being watched didn't go away. And for the first time, the void inside her didn't feel empty at all.
It felt like an anticipation.