Esméralda

The downtown 6 train was a metal serpent digesting the city’s weary. In the window's dark glass, my reflection was a ghost—Ismie Noviana hiding in a beige trench coat, Esméralda’s severe bun still holding tight, the shimmer of highlighter stubborn on my cheekbones. Hantu. A ghost. The title fit us both.

I sank into a seat, the deep burn in my calves and the familiar throb in my arches a testament to the night’s performance. A private ledger of pain. I let my head fall back, shutting my eyes against the fluorescent glare. Just for a moment. The train’s rhythm was a lullaby for the hollowed-out.

At Union Square, the doors hissed open. My eyes opened on instinct, a performer’s habit of scanning a new room. And then... the world snapped into a dizzying, impossible focus.

Dunia terbalik. My breath locked in my chest. New York was a city of eight million strangers, and you were a face I’d buried in the soil of Mount Lawu. But there you were. Leaning against the grimy window, older, marked by the city’ grind, but undeniably you. The boy whose sampur I’d once tangled with mine during a village dance. The one who knew the weight of my head on your shoulder on that hot, dusty bus ride home.

The memory was a physical blow: the scent of clove cigarettes and warm earth, a feeling of belonging so complete it now felt like a phantom limb.

Our eyes met across the crowded car. A second of blank urban anonymity. Then, a flicker in your gaze—a dawning, a fracture in time. You saw me. Not just the woman, but the girl.

A weary, involuntary smile touched my lips. The Javanese endearment almost slipped out. I caught it, let it become something softer, more New York. "You still like to sleep on public transit?"

I held your stare, feeling the walls around Ismie tremble. The sound of my name in your voice, after all this time, wasn’t just a sound—it was an excavation.

"Four years, three months," I murmured, the irony a bitter taste on my tongue. The count was a secret ritual, a wound I measured in moons. "Do you still keep count?"

The silence between us was heavier than the train’s roar. I could feel the unspoken questions—What are you doing here? What do you do?—like a pressure change before a storm.

Instead of waiting, I bent down. My fingers, strong and precise, worked the delicate straps of my black heels. A dancer reclaiming her body from its costume. I slipped them off with a quiet sigh, tucking my bare feet under the seat. They were a map of my secret life: strong, sculpted arches, a faint yellowing bruise on the instep from a misjudged spin. A testament to the art and the artifice. I met your eyes again, my smile a fragile shield. "You look tired," I said, my voice gentle, probing the edges of your own story. "Long day?"

The silence after the call was a physical weight, pressing down on the small, sunlit studio.

The ghost of my mother’s cheerful voice seemed to hang in the air. “Istirahat yang cukup, Sayang. Bosmu di kantor itu baik sekali ya, memberimu cuti.” Your boss at that office is so kind. The lie, worn smooth from repetition, settled in my gut like a cold, heavy stone.

I stared at my own fragmented reflection in the dark screen of my iPad—where I choreographed the dances I wished were real. My face was a mask of exhaustion, the dramatic stage lashes grotesque in the honest morning light. On the polished floor, the two halves of my existence sat in silent accusation: a neat stack of hundred-dollar bills, next month’s lifeline to Java, and beside it, my Pleaser heels, the clear plastic straps still holding the faint, greasy imprint of my grip from last night’s final pose.

My fingers, moving on muscle memory, lit a stick of sandalwood incense. The smoke curled, a fragile, fragrant thread trying to stitch Ismie back together. Tolong. Please. Let her come back.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three firm, deliberate raps. Not a question. A statement.

My heart didn't just skip a beat; it seemed to stop entirely, freezing the blood in my veins.

Tidak ada yang datang ke sini. No one came here. Chloe texted first. Delivery guys buzzed from downstairs. The only people who knocked like that...

Malik. The debt. A cold that had nothing to do with the morning chill seized my core. His voice, slick as oil, echoed. “A favor, Esméralda. Don’t ever forget it started as a favor.”

I rose, every muscle coiled. I didn’t trust the clouded peephole. I pressed my palm flat against the cool wood of the door, my ear close enough to feel the vibrations.

“Siapa?” Who is it? The Javanese word slipped out, a child’s fear in my mother tongue.

A pause that stretched into eternity. Then, a voice. A voice that belonged to sun-drenched rice fields and shared secrets under a banyan tree. Muffled by the door, laced with an uncertainty that was uniquely, heartbreakingly... you.

Kamu.

The world didn’t just tilt; it shattered. This wasn’t the monster from my present. This was the ghost from my past, and his appearance at this door was a far more terrifying reckoning.

My hands shook as I scrambled with the chain, the deadbolt grating loudly in the tense silence. I pulled the door open.

And there you were. Standing on the worn linoleum of my walk-up landing, a backpack slung over your shoulder, looking so achingly real and out of place. Your eyes—the ones that knew the girl who danced with sampur—found mine, and in that single glance, every wall I’d built over four years crumbled to dust.

Your gaze held mine for a suspended, breathless moment before it inevitably drifted past my shoulder, into the single room. It took in the professional pole, gleaming like a silver spine by the large window. It saw the stack of cash on the floor. The provocative, impossible-to-misinterpret heels. The smoldering incense—a pathetic attempt at purification.

The two worlds—the village and the loft, Ismie and Esméralda—collided with the force of a train wreck in the silence of my apartment. The scent of sandalwood, meant to cleanse, now only underscored the corruption it failed to wash away.

I stood frozen in the doorway, dressed only in simple sleepwear, every carefully constructed persona stripped bare. The office worker, the dutiful daughter, the enigmatic performer—all gone. All that remained was a raw, exposed nerve.

The only sound I could manage was a choked, disbelieving whisper, trembling with a torrent of shame, fear, and a desperate, treacherous flicker of hope.

"You?"

The bass wasn’t just a sound; it was a heartbeat in the floor, a vibration that traveled up the cold chrome and resonated deep in my marrow. A haze of blue smoke and colored spotlights cut swathes through the darkness of Veronica’s Loft, the air thick with the scent of expensive perfume and cheap ambition.

The track was a molasses-slow, filthy remix of Lana Del Rey’s “Ride.” The bassline was a deliberate, predatory crawl.

My body was a well-oiled machine, executing the most demanding sequence of the set. Upside down, thighs locked in a vise-like grip, my hair a dark curtain sweeping the polished stage. Arch, release, split, drop. A language of muscle memory and controlled agony. Every bruise from last night’s rehearsal sang a dull, familiar ache in time with the music.

My gaze, as always, drifted across the faceless crowd—a blurred mosaic of desire and entitlement. Never focusing, never connecting. A performer’s defense.

Until it snagged. Hard.

Kamu.

You. Standing near the back wall, half-shrouded in shadow, arms crossed. You weren’t leering. You weren’t drunk. You were just... watching. Staring up at me with the same intense, quiet focus you had when we were seventeen and the world was just the shade of a banyan tree. The look that saw Ismie.

My grip on the pole slipped a fraction. A searing kiss of friction burned my palm. I forced the spin, forced the seductive curve of my spine, forced Esméralda’s practiced, empty smile onto my face. But inside, Ismie was screaming, scrambling against the walls of this gilded cage.

I descended slowly, knees sliding apart on the cool stage, back arched into a painful crescent until the ends of my hair whispered against my calves. The lights strobed a violent crimson, and in that flash, I saw your expression clearly.

Kaget? Atau... Shock? Or... something else? I couldn’t read it. And that unknown was a thousand times more terrifying than disgust.

I crawled forward on all fours—a move designed as provocation, but in this moment, it felt like a primal, desperate supplication. The song oozed into its final, haunting chorus. I stopped at the very edge of the stage, directly above you, so close I could feel the heat of the spotlight radiating onto your skin.

My chest heaved, drawing in air that tasted of smoke and sweat. Glitter clung to the damp hollow of my throat. I smelled of vanilla oil, stale club air, and the faint, desperate trace of sandalwood I’d burned before leaving my apartment—a prayer that had clearly gone unanswered.

The music was too loud for words. Esméralda never spoke anyway. But my lips, coated in shimmering gloss, formed the shape of your name. A silent plea.

The lights died for the final beat. A suffocating blackness. When they swelled back to a dim, ambient glow, I was still there. On my knees at the precipice, looking down at you. My hands, resting on my thighs, trembled uncontrollably.

I mouthed the words slowly, clearly, shaping them with everything I had left, a confession meant for your eyes only.

...please don’t hate me.