"Felzein! Don’t tell me the young scientist was...” Melati’s voice wavered, her words trailing into silence as her eyes widened with dawning horror.
She could not finish the sentence. The realisation had caught her breath and stilled her tongue, as though even speaking the thought aloud might make it unbearably true.
Rosa and Dewi turned towards Felzein with a suddenness born of urgency.
Their eyes bore into him. Piercing, unrelenting, each seeking confirmation, or perhaps hoping for denial.
The silence that followed was thick, almost suffocating.
It wrapped around them like a fog, broken only by the faint, restless cadence of their breathing.
Yet Felzein did not speak.
Instead, a faint smile touched his lips. Quiet, unreadable, haunting.
It was not a smile of joy, nor pride. It hovered somewhere between sorrow and surrender.
And though no words escaped him, the truth radiated from his eyes. Silent, unyielding, and heavier than any of them had dared to believe.
At length, Cherlyn found her voice, her tone measured, yet laden with truth long buried.
“You are right, Melati…” she said quietly, though there was no tremor in her words, only the weight of certainty.
Her gaze swept over the three women standing before her, steady and solemn, as if she were granting them entrance to a chamber long kept locked.
“He was the young scientist,” she continued.
“The one the world believed perished in the Vuska Laboratory catastrophe."
"The brilliant mind whose body was never found. The ghost the world consigned to ashes and oblivion."
"And yet, here he stands, not a memory, not a myth. But a man still breathing, still carrying the burden of what was never meant to be known.”
Those words descended like a hushed explosion, reverberating not with sound but with sheer force of truth, shattering the fragile assumptions Rosa, Dewi, and Melati had unknowingly clung to.
None of them spoke.
Silence held dominion, thick and unyielding, as if time itself had recoiled from the weight of the revelation.
The world they thought they knew now tilted on an unseen axis, and all certainty felt momentarily suspended.
At the heart of that silence, Felzein slowly raised his head.
His eyes, calm and fathomless, swept across their faces, not with pride, nor defiance, but with the quiet dignity of a man who had carried too much, for too long.
In that gaze lay wounds unspoken, and truths borne in solitude.
“Cherlyn is right,” he said at last, his tone even, yet carrying a gravity that could not be denied. “That young scientist… was me.”
Shock cracked through the air like distant thunder.
Dewi gasped, her mind racing ahead of her voice, “But…” she faltered, the pieces clashing inside her head. “The reports I remember, surely they named the scientist as Professor Vaf. Yes… I’m certain they did!”
Dewi’s gaze remained fixed upon Felzein, as though searching his features for remnants of a ghost from the past.
The elusive figure whispered about in old headlines and half-forgotten murmurs.
“His true name was never disclosed,” she murmured, her voice hushed, almost reverent, as if she feared that speaking too loudly might shatter the delicate thread of memory she was weaving.
“They knew him only as Professor Vaf.”
A silence followed, taut and fragile, before she added, firmer now, as certainty settled into her bones, “He was always called Prof Vaf.”
The air grew denser, as though the room itself had taken a breath and dared not release it.
All eyes turned towards Felzein or rather, the man cloaked in that name. Their perception of him unravelling, thread by thread.
For a moment, he said nothing. Only that faint, knowing smile touched his lips.
The kind born not of amusement, but of someone long accustomed to carrying the weight of truths too dangerous to utter.
Then, with a voice calm and deliberate, he looked upon the three young women before him.
“Tell me…” he said, each word tinged with shadowed history, “…what do you think my full name truly is?”
Dewi, Rosa, and Melati exchanged furtive glances before their voices rose together, resolute and sure.
“Vradistza Adrian Felzein.”
Felzein let out a soft, amused chuckle and inclined his head in quiet affirmation, “Indeed,” he said. “Now, try this! Take one letter from each of my names and weave them into a single word.”
The three women regarded one another, eyes flickering with tentative understanding.
“Vradistza… the letter V,” Rosa murmured, deliberate. “Adrian… the letter A… and Felzein… F…”
“Put them together…” Melati prompted.
“V-A-F… Vaf?” Dewi’s voice rose with a hint of surprise, her brow arching in question.
“Vaf… What on earth?!” Rosa exclaimed, breath caught by the sudden clarity.
“So it’s really as simple as that?” Dewi’s gaze searched Felzein’s face, disbelief evident.
“A nickname forged from the initials of his true name?” Melati echoed, astonishment etched across her features.
Felzein laughed, a rich, genuine sound that filled the room, his smile spreading wide and easy.
“Indeed,” he said warmly. “More often than not, the most profound secrets lie nestled within the humblest of disguises.”
Meanwhile, Cherlyn offered a faint, knowing smile, gently shaking her head. Her countenance was calm, yet her eyes betrayed a deep and lingering curiosity.
After a brief, thoughtful pause, she finally spoke, her voice soft yet firm, “Doctor Vradistza,” she addressed him with quiet resolve. “How is it that you survived the explosion at the Vuska Laboratory?”
The room sank into a heavy silence. Not a soul stirred or spoke.
Even Felzein remained motionless, as if the question had awakened some buried shadow within him.
He drew in a slow, deliberate breath, steadying the storm that raged inside before he finally spoke.
“That is a tale that wounds me deeply to recount.”
All eyes were fixed upon him, rapt and expectant.
“But, for your sake, I shall tell it,” Felzein continued, his tone grave and resolute. “Before that, summon Rasya and Wina here without delay. Cherlyn, close Koba Baru Pharmacy for the day.”
“I have come to see you all as trusted confidantes,” he added with sincere earnestness. “Therefore… all must be made aware of this matter.”
Cherlyn gave a slight nod before promptly instructing Rosa and Melati to close the pharmacy for the day and fetch Rasya and Wina, who remained on duty outside.
Startled at first, Rasya and Wina quickly composed themselves upon realising it was a direct command from Doctor Cherlyn, and without hesitation, they secured the doors of Koba Baru Pharmacy for the day.
Rosa and Melati led Rasya and Wina into the back room where Felzein prepared to recount the tale of his past, one unknown to the two women.
With Cherlyn’s careful guidance filling in the gaps, the contours of Felzein’s story gradually unfolded before them.
“Felzein… you truly are a scientist?” Rasya breathed out, disbelief colouring her tone, mirrored in Wina’s wide-eyed, stunned expression.
“But how… how can that be?” Wina stammered, her voice trembling with a mixture of shock and awe, eyes round as saucers as she struggled to grasp the revelation.
Felzein exhaled deeply, his countenance grave yet resolute, eyes steady with a quiet certainty.
“Very well… I shall recount it all now,” he announced, his voice measured yet firm.
He commenced the narration of his past, calm in tone but laden with the invisible weight of a heavy burden once borne.
“At the outset, I was but an ordinary medical student. The sole candidate from Indonesia, quite unexpectedly selected to partake in a pharmaceutical development programme in Switzerland,” Felzein began deliberately.
“I remain uncertain as to why I was chosen. The university offered no explanation, merely appointing me without rationale,” he continued, eyes momentarily distant, as though reaching into memories.
“I initially refused. I felt unready, unworthy of such a daunting honour.”
“But they, the university authorities were insistent. They pressed me, threatening that my graduation would be withheld should I persist in my refusal,” he confessed, the bitterness faint but palpable.
“At length, with a heavy heart, I resolved to journey to Switzerland. To the University of Zurich, specifically.”
“I was but nineteen then, still so young, and barely able to grasp the magnitude of the world I was stepping into,” Felzein concluded, his voice dropping to a softer cadence, shadowed with reflective melancholy.
Felzein paused once more, his gaze clouded by the weight of recollection. The room hung silent, the air thick with anticipation.
“To be nineteen and thrust into a world so alien was daunting beyond measure,” he murmured, voice low and measured. “Language was but the first barrier. The customs, the academic rigour, each a tempest I struggled to weather.”
He drew a breath, steadying himself, before continuing.
“It was then I encountered Kaito Ryu. A young man possessed of a brilliance rare even among the finest scholars, a prodigy whose intellect seemed to bend the very fabric of possibility. His work on cellular regeneration was already making ripples across international circles.”
Felzein’s eyes flickered with a shadow of regret as he spoke the next words.
“Our paths crossing, though fortuitous at first, unwittingly set in motion a chain of events from which there was no turning back, a prelude to a tragedy that would forever alter the course of my existence.”