The week after the festival carried a strange quiet. Classes dragged on, homework piled up, and the sky seemed to shift toward autumn faster than anyone expected. The courtyard that had been lit with lanterns just days ago now looked bare, like the magic had been packed away with the stalls.
Bayu didn't usually think too much about festivals or who liked who. But Yun had been around more lately, stopping by their group during lunch, laughing at jokes that weren't even funny. And somehow, that turned into murmurs.
It started with Rani, as usual. "Yun definitely likes Bayu," she said one afternoon, leaning across the desk. "You can tell, right, Arka?"
Arka grinned, twirling his pen like it was a microphone. "Oh yeah. I mean, who doesn't like our stone-faced hero? He's tall, mysterious, and smiles once a year; it's irresistible."
The group laughed, even Bayu, but the sound felt hollow to him. Later, when he and Arka ended up walking home together, the words still stuck.
Halfway down the street, under the fading orange sky, Bayu stopped. "Arka."
Arka glanced back, plush rabbit in one arm like always. "What, need me to carry your bag too?"
Bayu shook his head. His throat felt tighter than it should. "I think… I might like Yun."
The words hung in the air. Not a confession, not really, more like testing the shape of something he didn't fully understand.
Arka blinked. Then he laughed, too loud, too quick. "Well, who wouldn't? She's basically a human firework. Cute, loud, sparkly. Makes sense."
Bayu studied him, searching for something beneath the grin. But Arka only kept walking, chattering about how Yun would probably beat him at ring-toss too, how Citra was doomed because Lestari would outshine him in the cooking club, how everyone around him was a rival in something.
Bayu let it drop.
That night, Arka sat at his desk, the rabbit plush slumped against his chair like usual. His notebook lay open.
He stared at the page he'd written earlier that week:
"The storm howls and laughs, but even storms get tired. The tree doesn't know. The tree thinks the storm never ends."
His pen hovered. Then, without warning, he ripped the page out, harsh, jagged, the sound too loud in the quiet room.
He crumpled it, shoved it into the wastebasket, and slammed the notebook shut.
But he didn't know Rani had been passing by the window outside, balancing her phone while waiting for Citra to finish practice. She froze at the sound of paper tearing, catching just a glimpse of Arka's expression through the glass, no grin, only something raw and unguarded.
She didn't call out to him. But the image stayed with her, sharper than anything, sharper than words.