The yellowish glow of the desk lamp stood as the sole, silent witness to the sheer intensity of Nazma's mental labor that night.
It flickered occasionally, casting long, distorted shadows against the raw, unplastered red bricks of her bedroom wall.
The forest-green brochure she had held so protectively earlier that afternoon now lay sprawled open. It sat beside a precarious stack of old textbooks, their pages yellowed with age and smelling of damp, stagnant air.
Nazma's mind remained haunted by the image of her father in the living room.
Naura's mocking laugh rang in her ears again; Nazma pressed her lips tight as her breath turned shallow and heavy.
"I won't just be a display piece," she whispered, her voice a fragile rasp.
She began scratching numbers onto a scrap of paper. Her fingers trembled, gripped by a cold sweat as she calculated the impossible math of her future.
One hundred and fifty thousand rupiahs.
Even with a top-rank scholarship, that initial building fund remained an immovable mountain. It was a staggering sum for someone who measured life in two-thousand rupiah notes. The figure swirled in her head.
Nazma's thoughts drifted to Helena. In her mind, Helena was the golden standard, a beacon of effortless brilliance whose intelligence had purchased a future free of such grubby, desperate calculations. Helena didn't have to choose between a meal and a dream.
A sudden sound broke the stillness. From several houses away, the high-pitched whine of a neighbor's air conditioning unit kicked into gear, followed by the distant, rhythmic thud of a heavy iron gate sliding shut on greased tracks.
They were the noises of people who slept without counting pennies. Inside Nazma's room, however, the only soundtrack was the faint, dry scratching of a cricket somewhere in the masonry and the erratic pulse of her own heart.
"Naz, aren't you asleep yet?"
Mak Endah's voice drifted through the slightly ajar door. Nazma lunged to cover the scrap paper. She couldn't let her mother see those calculations.
"In a minute, Mak. Just finishing the brochure."
Her voice shook. It was the sound of a bridge straining under too much weight. She kept her eyes fixed on the smooth paper.
"Don't push yourself until you're sick," Mak Endah commanded.
Mak Endah offered a thin, tight smile. It was an expression that held a thousand unspoken fears. She knew the world beyond their alley was not as welcoming as Nazma imagined.
After Mak Endah retreated, closing the door with a firm click, Nazma turned to the small, tarnished mirror hanging on the wall. The reflection was jarring. Her skin looked sallow, almost grey under the artificial light.
She looked far older than her years; her eyes held a weight of anxiety usually seen only in the exhausted faces of adults.
She had to be her own shield. She had to be the one to fight the world because there was no one else to stand in front of her.
"I have to work harder than anyone else."
She pulled a small calendar toward her and circled the date of the entrance exam in thick, red ink. The days were dwindling, slipping through her fingers like sand. Every wasted second felt like a personal betrayal of her father's sweat.
Nazma reopened her mathematics textbook. She forced her eyes to focus on the complex formulas, variables, and abstract puzzles
Her mind drifted again, yearning for the phantom of an older brother.
If such a person existed, perhaps he would have stood between her and Naura's venomous remarks. Perhaps he would have been the one to explain the intricate logic of these equations when her brain felt like it was shutting down.
He could have been the one to carry the secret of the one hundred and fifty thousand, sharing the burden so her heart didn't have to thrum with this constant, sickening anxiety.
Instead, the reality was cold and solitary. She had to be her own protector. She had to be the spine of her own dreams.
The night deepened, turning a bruised purple outside her window. The neighbor's radio, which usually blared mindless pop music, had finally gone silent. Only the crickets.
She thought of Helena once more. Helena received a full ride every single year.
The thought was both a fuel and a poison. She had to be that perfect. She had to be that flawless. The expectation pressed against her chest, making it hard to draw a full breath, yet she refused to look away.
Nazma took a pen and wrote a single, jagged sentence across the front page of her notebook: RANK ONE OR NOTHING AT ALL.
She pressed her palm against her chest, trying to steady the frantic thumping of her heart.
Nazma finally switched off the desk lamp as the first faint call to prayer drifted from the mosque at the end of the alley. The room plunged into a soft, grey dawn.
She slept for only a few minutes, a shallow and restless drift. Yet even in that brief lapse, she saw the green gate again.
This time, the iron wasn't cold. The gate swung wide, the hinges silent and welcoming, ushering her into the light as a victor.