"Would you like to hear a story, Nath?"
Noah suddenly asked without looking at Natasha.
Hearing his question, Natasha turned to him.
"What story?"
"About Anika," Noah answered briefly.
"If you don't mind telling me, I'd like to hear it. I want to know why, even after all these years, she still has a place in your heart."
NOAH'S PAST
Noah's Story
Her name was Anika Mahalini, a beautiful and energetic girl whose presence naturally drew people toward her.
She was the cheerful girl I met when we were both still wearing our high school uniforms.
When I was in eleventh grade, I was elected president of the student council. Students in the tenth grade were asked to choose two representatives from each class to join the student council.
Anika was one of the representatives from her class.
That was where we started getting close.
Her cheerful personality was impossible not to fall for.
After spending six months together as friends, I decided to take a chance and confess my feelings to Anika, just like any other high school boy falling in love for the first time.
To my surprise, she accepted.
When I graduated from high school, I thought our relationship would eventually grow distant, especially since I had to move to Australia to study Business and Management.
But I was wrong.
Our relationship only grew stronger.
After spending a year studying in Australia, Anika followed me and enrolled at the same university, the Australian National University in Canberra.
Unlike me, who studied at the Research School of Management, she chose to pursue a Bachelor of Laws.
The two years we spent together there were some of the happiest times of my life.
We studied and dated while still holding tightly to the values we had grown up with.
Even though many couples around us were already living together in the same flats, we held firmly to our own principles.
No sex before marriage.
Then, when I was in my seventh semester and Anika was in her fifth, her health suddenly deteriorated.
At first, I thought her diabetes was acting up again.
Anika had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
But it wasn't her diabetes.
After a series of examinations, the doctors discovered that she had pancreatic cancer.
And by the time it was detected, the cancer was already at an advanced stage.
We were both devastated.
The future we had carefully planned together suddenly felt like it had shattered into pieces.
But Anika wouldn't be Anika if she allowed herself to stay down for long.
She was the one who should have been comforted, yet somehow, she was the one comforting everyone else—me, her parents who had flown in from Indonesia, and her two younger siblings, Merry and Willy.
Even though she knew she only had a few months left, she remained cheerful.
She could laugh about almost anything.
Even when her hair began falling out badly because of chemotherapy and her head was almost completely bald, she still laughed.
Until that day finally came.
Anika was staying at the flat with her mother when she suddenly collapsed.
Her mother immediately took her to the hospital, where she was rushed straight into the ICU.
After spending two nights in the ICU, Anika left us forever.
I was devastated.
I was completely broken.
When Anika's frail body was placed inside the coffin to be taken back to Indonesia, it felt as though a part of my soul had been locked inside it too.
Before her family left for the airport, Anika's mother hugged me tightly.
"Thank you, Noah, for taking care of Anika all this time. I'm grateful that you were by her side during her final days. Now that she's gone, you have to let her go and continue living your own life. You still have a long road ahead of you. Show Anika that everything you both fought for here wasn't in vain," she said before slowly releasing me.
Anika's father simply smiled and patted my shoulder several times.
As two men, we didn't need to say much.
We understood each other without words.
For several weeks after Anika's death, it felt as though my soul had gone with her.
But remembering her mother's words, I forced myself to climb out of that darkness.
I studied harder than ever.
Somehow, keeping myself busy helped me cope with the pain of losing Anika.
I filled my days with more and more activities, trying to keep my mind away from her.
Without realizing it, I became a completely different person.
I spent most of my time studying, doing research, and staying in the library.
There was no more time for hanging out or simply relaxing.
My life became serious.
I no longer gave myself time to have fun or enjoy the little things.
Eventually, I completed my bachelor's degree.
But I wasn't ready to return to Indonesia yet.
At the same time, I didn't want to stay in Australia either.
So I decided to pursue my master's degree at the University of Cambridge in England.
After almost two years in England, I finally managed to put my heart back together.
I returned to Indonesia with two degrees, a BA and an MBA.
There was still a small part of my heart that belonged to Anika, but I had finally learned to let her go.
I was able to live normally again and start rebuilding my future.
When I joined the company and became the CFO, my father offered to assign me a female secretary.
But I firmly turned him down.
I promised him that I would find my own secretary and personal assistant.
That was when I remembered two old friends from junior high school—my inseparable friends, Orion and Tarra.
They were like Siamese twins, even though they had different parents.
Orion was a computer genius who never went to college because he couldn't afford it.
Tarra was just as smart, although he had always been a little mischievous.
I wondered if they were working somewhere now.
After work, I decided to look for them.
I went to Orion's house first.
When I arrived at the small, modest house, I found Orion sitting on the front porch, playing on his phone.
Six years had passed since we last saw each other, yet he hadn't changed at all.
The moment he saw me standing at the door, Orion shouted happily and pulled me into a tight hug.
After catching up for a while, I invited Orion to go to Tarra's house with me.
But he told me there was no need.
Instead, he suggested that we meet Tarra at Mr Bewok's meatball stall.
I agreed.
Mr Bewok's meatball stall had been our favorite place back in high school.
We hadn't been waiting long when Tarra finally showed up.
He was wearing a button-up shirt, dress pants, and polished dress shoes.
The unruly Arka with the strange haircut was nowhere to be seen.
Today, he appeared with short, neatly trimmed and perfectly styled hair.
***