Rain came down in sheets that evening, turning the city lights into trembling halos. Alya Pramesti sat by the apartment window, the glass cold under her palm, watching cars thread through the blur. Her laptop screen was a grid of unanswered applications. Her phone buzzed on the table: another rejection, another "we regret to inform you."
She rubbed her temples and tried not to think of the overdue rent notice folded into the pocket of her wallet, or of the way her mother's voice had sounded over the phone that morning — smaller than it used to be. The apartment was quiet except for the rain and the distant hum of traffic, and the silence felt heavier than the storm outside.
A call came through from an unknown number. For a moment she let it go to voicemail, but something in the voice that left the message — crisp, professional — tugged at her. She dialed back.
"Alya Pramesti?" the voice asked. Formal, controlled.
"Yes," she answered.
"This is Arjuna & Partners. We represent Mr. Leonard Arjuna. He requests a meeting with you this afternoon. It is urgent."
Alya frowned. Leonard Arjuna. The name was one she'd heard in passing from magazine covers and business reports: young, ruthless, always in the headlines. "I think you've got the wrong number," she said, although a strange flutter of curiosity warmed her chest.
"No," the caller said without hesitation. "We have matters pertaining to your legal consent. Please come to our office at six."
She argued a little — that she was unemployed, that she didn't know anyone by that name — but the voice was immovable. By the time she hung up she had already decided she would go. Maybe curiosity. Maybe desperation. Maybe both.
The glass-and-steel lobby of Arjuna Holdings filled her with a small, private kind of awe. Everything smelled faintly of polish and expensive coffee. A receptionist guided her to a boardroom on the twenty-first floor. The city unfurled in a dim, rain-smeared map through the windows.
He stood with his back to the glass, hands clasped behind him. When he turned, the room seemed to shrink. Leonard Arjuna was as the magazines promised: tall, composed, with an expression that made casualness impossible. His suit fit like it had been carved onto him. His eyes, however, were what pinned her: grey and calm and very, very sure.
"You're Alya Pramesti," he said. A statement, not a question.
"Yes," she managed.
He slid a leather folder across the table. The paper inside snapped softly when she opened it. The heading read: Confidential Agreement — Personal Contract.
Panic and disbelief warred in her mouth. "Is this a joke?"
Leonard's lips barely shifted. "We are not joking."
The first line made her laugh, short and ugly. Temporary Marriage Agreement. She read the clause that came next: one year duration. Sealed financial compensation. No claims on assets. Complete confidentiality.
"You want me to marry you," she said. The sentence came out like a question because her brain refused to file it as anything else.
"For legal and personal reasons, yes," Leonard replied. "There are liabilities that require this arrangement. You would be compensated generously. No public declaration. No obligations beyond the terms of this contract."
She looked at the figure on the contract and the number pinched something in her chest: enough to clear debts, enough to pay bills for years if she did it right. Enough, perhaps, to change the small life she'd been trying to keep together.
"Why me?" she asked finally. Her voice sounded small.
"Because your name aligns with a clause that matters to us," Leonard said. "Because you are not bound by prior commitments. Because you would accept the terms as presented."
His reasons were clinical; the offer felt clinical, too. It should have offended her. It should have made her walk out, slap the folder on the table and tell him to find someone else. Instead, in the quiet between the rain and the hum of offices below, she felt the practical parts of her brain tally what was at stake.
There was her mother's cough that had gotten worse. The rent that doubled next month. The freelance gigs that paid late. A year, she repeated to herself, wasn't forever. A contract was a contract. She had always been careful with numbers; maybe this was just another calculation.
"If I sign," she asked, "what stops me from walking away tomorrow?"
Leonard's gaze didn't waver. "The agreement is legally binding. Violations come with penalties. But if you follow the terms, you have nothing to fear."
She read every clause twice. "No public declaration," she said, nodding slowly. "No claim on assets. One year."
"And compensation released in three installments," Leonard added. "The final installment upon the contract's conclusion, provided all conditions are met."
She closed the folder. Rain traced a line down the window like a slow sentence. The room smelled faintly of lemon and old paper. Her throat was tight.
"What do you want from me, exactly?" she asked.
"You will present yourself as my wife in a limited set of circumstances," he said. "Attend a few family and legal functions. Sign a few documents. Live under the same roof when necessary. That is all."
She imagined sharing a roof with a man she had just met. She imagined telling her mother, who would maybe clap and cry and wish her luck. She imagined the social fallout if the arrangement leaked. She imagined, too, the stack of unpaid bills she could finally close.
"How long do I have to decide?" she asked.
"Tonight," Leonard said.
The word tasted like pressure. The choice, she understood then, was not between dignity and indecency; it was between survival and the slow erosion of it. She thought of the dingy kitchen back home where her mother cooked with one tired hand and the other pressed against her side. She thought of mornings when the light felt like a critique. She thought of the little moments she wanted to keep — the books on her shelf, the smell of rain on hot pavement.
Her hand found the pen before her mind agreed. Her signature cut a short, decisive line across the page. It was a small, ordinary motion — a name and an ink stroke — but when she lifted the pen she felt a strange, luminous rupture in the air, like a page turning toward a new chapter she hadn't chosen but would now have to read.
Leonard closed the folder with a soft click. "Welcome, Mrs. Pramesti," he said, and the title was an echo she would carry with her long after the lights blinked and the elevator hummed her down into the rain.
Outside, the city blurred again into light and water. Inside, Alya sat for a moment with the contract warm beneath her palms, aware that one signature could reroute an ordinary life into something both frightening and, possibly, extraordinary.