Then, with a gesture that carried more weight than words, he laid a firm hand on Heru’s shoulder, an unspoken benediction from one man of service to another.
“This is more than headlines. This is about justice. About protecting those who can’t protect themselves. And we need voices clear, honest voices, to help us do it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Heru said, the words brimming with quiet emotion.
There was no show, no grand declaration, just a young man who had fought to be taken seriously, now standing a little taller because someone had finally seen what he had to offer.
And then, quite suddenly, he turned to Felzein.
With one eye shut and the slyest twitch of a grin dancing at the corner of his mouth, Heru gave a single, conspiratorial wink.
It was the sort of gesture no one else would have understood, but Felzein did.
“All of this because of you,” the look seemed to say.
And for the first time in hours, Felzein allowed himself a smile that was not tinged with tension or fatigue, just quiet pride in a friend who, against the odds, had stepped into his moment.
Felzein smiled softly, lowering his gaze in a gesture that seemed almost reverential.
There was a quiet stirring within him, something warm, elusive.
Pride, perhaps. Or the bittersweet recognition that a seed he had once seen in Heru had begun to take root in the world beyond them.
He said nothing aloud. But in the hush of his own heart, he whispered, “You will become a fine journalist one day, Heru. And I shall be here still, bearing silent witness to your ascent.”
Suddenly, Sergeant Bowo’s voice cut through the room like a blade.
“Right then!” he barked, the resonance of command reverberating off the pharmacy’s tiled walls.
All movement ceased. Police officers paused mid-step, civilians straightened instinctively, and even the buzz of hushed conversations seemed to fall away.
“Name Welly as the primary suspect in the burglary at Mr Felzein’s corner shop,” he continued, striding deliberately towards the makeshift incident board now thick with notations, photographs, and grim conjecture.
He halted in front of the crude graffiti scrawled across the pharmacy’s floor.
The words, vulgar and venomous, still clung to the tiles like a wound refusing to close.
After a moment of loaded silence, he spoke again. His voice now lower, darker, yet no less resolute :
“And for the incident at Koba Baru Pharmacy, for those rat carcasses and the cowardly message left behind, Welly is to be treated as a suspect as well.”
“Understood, sir!” came the brisk chorus of his subordinates, their tones clipped and earnest, the air around them suddenly thick with purpose.
The quiet pharmacy had transformed in an instant, no longer a place of commerce, but a theatre of investigation.
Everyone moved now with sharp intent, and the name Welly hovered like smoke in the centre of it all.
Melati stood motionless amidst the shifting energy, her shoulders drawn slightly inward, as though trying to shrink away from the weight of what had just been spoken.
Welly.
The name no longer held affection. Only fragments. Ashes.
He had once been the centre of her world, her solace, her undoing, her home.
And yet here she stood, bearing the label of his victim, while he was marked as a perpetrator of not one, but two crimes.
Even now, as a quiet pain stretched itself across her chest, she found somewhere, impossibly, a thread of pity still lingering in her heart.
She could forgive him. That had always been her nature. But she would never forget.
Two years of laughter, of longing, of shared breath and broken promises.
And it had all unravelled into this. His name pinned to an evidence board, hers written silently among the wounded.
Beside her, Rosa glanced gently across. With a tenderness born of long friendship, she reached for Melati’s hand, squeezing it in quiet solidarity.
Melati nodded faintly. No tears stained her cheeks.
Only the slow, aching gravity of disappointment that settles when grief has already done its worst.
And across the room where the scent of disinfectant mingled with the metallic edge of tension, Heru and Felzein observed in silence.
In that moment, something unspoken passed between them. A knowing.
Justice may heal the facts of a case. But not every wound craves a gavel’s strike.
Some pain, more intimate and enduring, can only be met with silence, and when one is ready release.
The affair of the dead rats at Koba Baru Pharmacy had, at last, begun to yield a faint glimmer of comprehension, though all remained, as yet, in the realm of surmise.
Felzein, alongside Heru and a handful of local residents, took it upon themselves to manage the grim task.
With quiet resolve, they gathered the tiny carcasses one by one, their faces set in expressions of grim determination, before calling upon municipal sanitation to carry the remains away for incineration.
Within the pharmacy itself, Rosa, Melati, Dewi, Rasya, and Wina worked shoulder to shoulder, armed with mops and pails.
They moved with silent purpose, scrubbing at the stained floors in an effort to dispel not only the noxious odour that still clung to the air, but also the dark unease that had settled over the place.
The threatening message, bold and vicious, scrawled across the tiles in indelible ink, resisted every solvent and scrubbing cloth.
Still, they pressed on, as though sheer effort might erase more than just the words.
By that hour, Sergeant Bowo and his team had concluded their sweep of the building.
With no more leads to pursue on site, they had returned to the precinct, where a preliminary report would soon take shape, a puzzle only partially assembled, yet already laden with implications.
As the afternoon waned, Felzein made a call to a trusted repairman, arranging for the rear door, splintered and hanging askew from the intruder’s forced entry to be mended without delay.
The damage was more than physical, but it was a start, and every act of restoration, however small, felt like a quiet act of defiance against the chaos left in the wake.