Chapter 6:
The Looped Lovers
Liyana heard them in the pasar (market), whispered between folded shawls and glances. They said she’d been seen with him. The white man’s son. The one with the sketchbook and strange words.
At first, she didn’t care. The kampung had always whispered. But when her father came into the room without knocking, his face stiff with decision, she understood.
“You will marry Tuah’s eldest. The penghulu’s boy. We’ve spoken. You will not see him again.”
She said nothing. Just bowed her head.
Later that night, beneath the banyan tree where they had exchanged letters for weeks, she found a folded page.
Xavier’s handwriting.
“I’ve written your name so many times I no longer know where mine begins.”
She held the note tightly, but she didn’t write back.
She couldn’t.
Xavier sat across from his father in the colonial estate’s dining room. The silence was thicker than the jungle heat.
His father placed a bundle of papers on the table—letters. Their letters.
“I trusted you with restraint,” the old man said. “But this? You’ve brought shame. To our family. To the administration.”
Xavier’s hands curled into fists.
“She taught me more in a week than you have in my entire life.”
The slap came quick. But Xavier didn’t flinch.
“You’re going back to England. You leave next week.”
He spent his final three nights carving.
Using a piece of kampung wood, he shaped a pendant and etched her name in Jawi as best as he remembered it. The curves weren’t perfect, but they felt true.
He wrapped it in a scrap of batik cloth, placed it into their hollow tree, and whispered:
“Please find it.”
The rain fell hard on the night she found him.
He stood beneath the banyan tree, soaked through. Mud on his boots. A candle flickering beside the hollow.
He turned when he heard her steps.
She didn’t run to him. She just stood there—hair clinging to her cheeks, eyes tired and endless.
“I can’t stay,” he said, voice hollow. “But I needed to see you.”
She stepped closer. Said nothing.
He reached into his pocket and pressed the wrapped pendant into her palm.
“I carved it wrong,” he admitted. “But I tried.”
Liyana looked at him for a long time.
“When I come back—” he started.
“Don’t,” she cut in. Her voice barely a whisper. “I won’t be here.”
He swallowed, his lips parting like he wanted to say more.
But she leaned in—just enough to press her forehead against his.
Then she turned. And walked away without looking back.
Present day.
Lana sat on her bed, holding the wooden pendant she bought from the vintage shop days ago. She had worn it every day since.
Sometimes she found herself tracing the carved name with her thumb.
She had Googled it—found nothing.
But she didn’t want to stop wearing it.
That evening, she opened Xander’s photo portfolio and paused on one image.
A banyan tree.
Her breath caught.
She didn’t know why, but it felt like the tree.
She sent him a voice message.
“Did you take this photo near a riverbank?”
A minute later, the reply came.
“I… think so. But I don’t remember when.”
She visited him that night.
They didn’t talk about the tree. Or the pendant. Or anything they couldn’t explain.
They sat in his apartment, lights low, an old jazz track playing from his speakers.
She looked at him like she was trying to memorize him.
He showed her a notebook filled with names—hers among them.
Written in different scripts, different spellings.
She touched the page, then looked away.
“I feel like if we fall in love,” she said quietly,
“we won’t survive it.”
He didn’t respond.
They didn’t kiss.
When she stood to leave, he didn’t stop her.
And when the door clicked shut, the music kept playing.
[END OF CHAPTER 6]
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