The yellow light bulb on the shack ceiling suddenly went out.
Everything turned pitch black.
Thick darkness immediately covered Anom and Inem.
Only the light from cars passing on the toll road above created brief white flashes before the night swallowed them again.
Anom had just finished his work.
In front of him, on a warped wooden board, piles of white plecostomus fillets were still visible even in the dimness.
Today’s catch was amazing.
Sixteen fairly large fish.
But the price of that white meat was extreme exhaustion.
Skinning plecostomus isn’t work for the weak.
The fish skin is like armor from ancient times.
Anom even had to use pliers to pull the skin after cutting it.
He put in full effort, so his arm muscles tensed and shook every time he pulled.
Usually, after skinning ten fish, his palms would be full of new scratches from the scales that were as sharp as saw blades.
Tonight, even though he felt tired, his palms stayed intact.
Anom didn’t want to bother thinking about it.
…
He leaned his back against a cold concrete pillar.
In the darkness, the fishy smell of blood felt sharper.
His sense of smell wasn’t distracted by light.
But something was strange.
That fishy smell wasn’t rotten.
It smelled like rainwater that had just fallen on dry ground.
“The water here is good,” Inem’s voice broke the silence.
Her voice…
it was as if the darkness couldn’t swallow her frequency.
Anom laughed a little.
He grabbed a cloth to wipe the remaining slime off his hands.
“You call sewer water good, Nem?
Didn’t you see the plastic trash stuck in the net earlier?
That was baby diapers, detergent, plastic, and used pads.
Or the black oil floating from the workshop waste above?
This water is poison.
If a normal person drank this, by tomorrow morning, they’d be dead.”
Inem didn’t laugh along.
…
Anom could feel the girl’s presence in the corner of the shack.
Sitting still like a breathing statue.
Her clear eyes pierced through the darkness, staring at Anom even though he couldn’t see her.
“I’m not talking about the physical water, Anom.
There’s something down there that chooses.”
Anom fell silent.
Inem’s sentence didn’t make sense.
But somehow, his memory spun like a film reel playing fast.
He remembered the fillets in front of him that never turned brown even after hours in the open air.
“Chooses?” Anom repeated.
His voice lowered.
“You mean, this water chooses me?
I’m just an outcast, Inem.
Trash from society.
If this water could choose, it would definitely choose some rich person in the housing complex up there.
Not a homeless person under the bridge.”
“Exactly because you have nothing, the water doesn’t ask anything from you.” Inem’s voice was soft.
“The world up there is full of people who want to take.
They want profit, they want power, and they even want to heal without feeling pain.
But you…
You just sit, observe, and accept what’s given.
Water likes quiet honesty.”
Anom frowned.
This darkness made their conversation feel much deeper.
As if they were talking from two different dimensions.
“Who are you really, Inem?
The way you talk, the way you rubbed my wound that night…
that’s not how people from under the toll road act.”
Inem didn’t answer quickly.
The sound of a truck in the distance passed by.
Its vibration traveled all the way to the concrete pillar where Anom was leaning.
Only after that sound completely faded did Inem speak.
“I’m…
someone who was thrown away.”
“Thrown away from where?
An orphanage?
A hospital?”
“From a place where everything was perfect.”
“A place where mistakes weren’t allowed,” Inem continued.
“There, if you got tired, you were considered broken.
If you gave something wrong, you were considered a curse.
They couldn’t stand my existence, starting to make mistakes.
So they threw me into the mud.”
Anom tried to process those words.
He didn’t know if Inem was speaking metaphorically or if she was a little crazy from trauma.
But under this toll road, lies were a luxury they couldn’t afford.
Honesty was the only currency left.
And Inem’s voice tonight sounded more honest than any sermon Anom had ever heard from a distance.
“So that’s why you like it here?
In a place full of trash and stench?”
“Here, at least I don’t have to pretend to be perfect.”
Anom snorted.
“Pretend to be perfect?
Under the toll road?”
Inem ignored the sarcastic tone in Anom’s voice.
“The fish meat you skinned, Anom…
they’re thanking you.
You released them from that heavy skin.
You turned them into something useful for others.
That’s an honest process.
Painful, but honest.
In my original place, all processes had to be smooth.
No pain allowed.
No blood allowed.
But here, blood and pain are real.
And after that, there’s relief.”
Anom stared at the pile of fillets in front of him.
In the dark, he could only see vague shapes.
But he felt their presence.
He just realized that all this time he saw his work as a curse.
As punishment for being poor.
But for Inem, skinning plecostomus was a ritual of release.
Silence once again covered the shack.
“Do you want to go back there?” Anom finally asked.
That question came out of nowhere, and at the same time, Anom also felt a vague fear in his chest.
Maybe fear if Inem answered “yes.” Maybe even fear if his source of luck, his conversation partner, the only person who didn’t look down on him, suddenly disappeared to that perfect place.
“They won’t accept me.” Inem’s voice was reassuring again.
“And I’ve forgotten how to shine there anyway.
I prefer the smell of this mud now.
Because in the mud, I found you.
You who never asked me to heal the world.
You just asked me to eat rice with you.”
Anom didn’t know what to say.
He just nodded in the dark.
A small movement that Inem probably couldn’t see.
…
He took the knife from the wooden board.
Moved it to a safe spot, away from where feet might step on it.
“Go to sleep, Inem.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll take this meat to Pak Haji Duloh early.
He said there’s an order from a big food stall.
They said our plecostomus meat is the best for making meatballs.”
“This isn’t the toll road anymore, Anom.”
Inem’s sentence was exactly what he had been thinking about yesterday.
He lay down on a cardboard covered with cloth.
Staring at the darkness on the shack ceiling.
Inem’s breathing sounded steady beside him.
Anom closed his eyes.
But he couldn’t sleep.
The darkness inside his eyelids was as thick as the darkness outside.
He heard Inem breathing.
Inem was still awake, too.
Her eyes were still open in that darkness.
Night wind came through the gaps in the wall.
Cold.
But Anom felt warmth on his left side, where Inem was lying.
Warmth from the girl’s body.
Warmth that slowly spread to Anom’s arm, to his chest, to his tired entire body.
He opened his eyes.
“Inem.”
“Hmm.”
“Are you asleep?”
“Not yet.”