It was the third day Thomas had come to the Lake Kenanga area, sitting on the same bench, staring at the same ripples in the water, yet the figure he sought was nowhere to be seen.
Thomas hadn't come just to say hello. He came because his last meeting with Mr. Rudi had left a strange residue in his chest. Mr. Rudi's answers back then had felt reasonable—very reasonable, logically speaking. The concepts of being "unconscious" and "emotional awareness" had given him a new framework of thinking.
But that was the problem.
It all stops in my head, Thomas thought, his eyes staring blankly across the lake. My logic accepts that I was evil because I lacked empathy. But my heart? My heart still screams that I am a monster.
He felt his understanding was like oil and water; clearly separated and refusing to mix. He needed a binding agent. He needed something more than just psychological theory to dampen the noise in his head that kept replaying Dimas's screams.
***
"Finally, after two weeks of pretending to be busy, we can eat together again," Bernard said, placing his food tray down dramatically.
Thomas, Clara, Bernard, and Farhan walked together toward an empty table in the corner of the bustling cafeteria. The aroma of soto and fried chicken filled the air, mixing with the laughter of students.
"Yeah, it feels good to gather again," Clara replied with a sweet smile, pulling out a chair next to Thomas.
"You guys were so busy, anyway. Acting all ambitious," Farhan teased as he sat down.
Thomas only offered a thin smile. He was still holding onto the fragile belief that by socializing, he could slowly become "good." So, he agreed to this invitation even though his energy was actually drained by guilt.
"Lead the prayer, Nad. I do it too often," Farhan piped up. "Yeah, your turn," Clara chimed in. "Oh come on, alright then. You sinners," Bernard joked, greeted by small chuckles.
Thomas looked down. The laughter never truly reached his eyes.
"Before we eat, let's pray. Hopefully, this food can become positive energy for our bodies and our brains that are starting to dull. Let's pray…"
A moment of silence. "Amen."
The atmosphere immediately melted back into ease. Spoons and forks began to clatter against plates.
"Hey, did you guys understand what Prof. Herman was explaining earlier? I swear, I went totally blank when he got into the second part," Bernard complained with his mouth full.
"HAHAHA, same here!" Farhan exclaimed, pointing his fork at Bernard. "I was just nodding along to look smart."
Clara chuckled. "I understood the beginning. But once he started discussing the case studies, my brain started buffering." She turned to her side. "How about you, Thom? Usually, you connect with it the most."
Back in middle school or early high school, Thomas would have answered with a condescending tone, 'How could you not understand something so simple?' But now, that sentence felt like poison on his tongue. He knew how evil that arrogance was.
"I… same as Clara," Thomas answered quietly, forcing an awkward smile. "Understood it at first, but it got more confusing towards the end. Maybe I just wasn't focused."
"Makes sense, the material was really dense," Bernard comforted casually.
"Btw, speaking of focus," Farhan suddenly leaned in, his tone turning teasing. "Who was that girl who approached you in the corridor earlier, Thom? She was pretty."
Thomas's heart jolted.
"Must be his girlfriend," Bernard snapped quickly. "Thomas here—still waters run deep."
Thomas's face heated up, not from shyness, but from fear. That girl was a classmate from middle school. A living witness to how arrogant Thomas used to be.
"No… not a girlfriend," Thomas denied quickly, his voice shaking slightly. He tried hard to look calm. "That… that was an old middle school friend. She just came over, said she was happy an old acquaintance also got into UI."
"Oh, I thought she was your girlfriend," Bernard went back to spooning his rice. "I was about to ask for a treat."
Thomas smiled stiffly. He desperately didn't want them to know his past. He was terrified that if they knew who the real Thomas was—the bully, the cause of someone's paralysis—they would look at him with disgust, just like Chelsea used to look at him.
Thomas hurriedly changed the subject before Farhan asked further. "Oh right, have you guys finished the Basic Chemistry assignment? I'm stuck on number 2, the formula is a bit tricky."
"Clara's done, she's diligent," Bernard pointed out. "Yeah, I'm done, Thom. I'll show you the method later, okay? It's easy once you find the pattern," Clara offered kindly.
"nice, perfect! I want to see too, Clar. But not just the method, the answers too!" Farhan exclaimed without shame.
"You freeloader," Clara scoffed, but laughed anyway.
The light chatter continued to flow, covering Thomas's awkwardness, until the plates before them slowly emptied, leaving only glasses of melting iced tea.
After lunch was over, they left the table and walked out of the cafeteria, then parted ways at the faculty corridor intersection to attend to their own business. Clara waved cheerfully before turning toward the rectorate building, followed by Farhan and Bernard who took different paths, leaving Thomas alone amidst the crowd of passing students.
As soon as his friends' backs disappeared around the corner, the smile on Thomas's face slowly faded. The mask of normality crumbled instantly. Without his noisy friends, the voices in his head began to buzz again. The emptiness he tried to drive away by socializing was still firmly lodged there. He needed answers. He needed a peace he couldn't find in the campus crowd.
His footsteps didn't lead him home to his boarding house. His feet walked surely toward the one place where he hoped to resolve the lump in his heart.
Thomas walked toward Lake Kenanga.
Upon arriving, the atmosphere seemed quiet. The afternoon wind blew a little harder than usual, fluttering the edge of a newspaper held by someone on a park bench. Thomas's daydream shattered instantly when his eyes caught the figure he had been waiting for over the last two weeks.
On the same bench, under the shade of the banyan tree that was the silent witness to their first meeting, Mr. Rudi sat with a calmness that seemed untouched by time.
"Mr. Rudi," Thomas greeted. There was a palpable note of relief in his voice, as if he had just found an oasis in the middle of a hot desert. "I've tried to find you a few times, and finally, we meet."
Rudi turned slowly. He folded his newspaper with deliberate, characteristic movements, then smiled warmly. The lines on his old face looked peaceful, without a single sign of judgment or haste.
"I apologize, Thomas. For the last two weeks, I was out of town, visiting an old friend," Rudi answered gently. He patted the empty space on the wooden bench beside him. "Sit. How are you? The last time we spoke, the burden on your shoulders seemed very heavy."
Thomas sat down. His shoulders slumped, as if gravity was pulling him down stronger than anyone else. He stared at the dusty tips of his shoes, not daring to look directly into the old man's gentle eyes.
"Honestly, Sir," he said quietly, his voice hoarse. "The burden is still there. I'm still haunted by this guilt. The strange thing is... I understand everything you said back then about 'emotional awareness'. Logically, I understand why little Thomas did bad things. But..."
Thomas wrung his own fingers, his knuckles turning white from the pressure.
"...it feels like that understanding is floating in the air, Sir. It refuses to land in my heart. I still can't forgive myself. It feels... far easier to forgive others than to accept who I am now."
Rudi nodded slowly, giving a space of silence so Thomas could finish his sentence. "Can you give me an example? Who is it that you find easy to forgive?"
Thomas took a deep breath, his eyes drifting back to high school—the time when karma seemed to come to collect.
"In high school... I was a target," Thomas confessed. His voice trembled, holding back emotion. "There was a group of seniors. They... they made my life like hell."
Rudi looked at him intently, listening carefully, absorbing the tremor of trauma in the young man's voice without interrupting.
"They often extorted my lunch money. If I refused, they punched me in the stomach in the school toilet," Thomas continued, his memory replaying the physical pain. "Once, my bag was thrown into a black gutter. My books were scribbled on. My uniform was often ruined, the buttons ripped off forcibly."
"That is a heavy experience, Son," Rudi murmured sympathetically. "Very heavy."
"Yes, it was," Thomas replied quickly. Then he turned, looking at Rudi with a strange, intense gaze—a mixture of pain and misguided conviction. "But strangely, Sir... I never hated them. Even now, at this second, I have forgiven them completely. There is not a shred of grudge."
Rudi raised his eyebrow slightly, catching an anomaly in Thomas's emotions. "Why? What makes you so easily let go of their actions?"
Thomas smiled bitterly, a smile that was painful to watch.
"Because I felt... we were even," Thomas whispered.
"Even?"
"When they hit me, when they ruined my things... inside my small heart, a voice said: 'Take it, Thomas. Enjoy this pain. This is your payment for Dimas and your friends.'"
Thomas swallowed, his throat tightening as he remembered the face of his elementary school friend who now sat in a wheelchair forever.
"I remembered what I did to Dimas in elementary school. I remembered my arrogance in middle school. So, when those high school seniors tortured me, I felt the universe was working fairly. I deserved it. I deserved to be treated like trash. That is why I forgave them. Because they were just tools to punish a sinner like me."
Silence fell between them. Heavy and suffocating. Thomas's explanation revealed a twisted logic to Rudi—a belief that pain was currency to pay for sins.
Rudi didn't answer immediately. He stared at the calm lake, letting the afternoon breeze caress their faces. He didn't know the details of what Thomas did to Dimas—whether it was just taunts or physical blows—but he knew Thomas considered it an unforgivable sin.
"So..." Rudi's voice sounded very cautious, gentle yet piercing, "you forgave them not because you understood their position, but because you considered your suffering as 'payment'?"
Thomas nodded weakly. "More or less. Even, right? Pain paid with pain."
Rudi sighed deeply, then turned his body to face Thomas completely. His gaze was sharp but full of affection, like a grandfather seeing his grandson lost.
"Thomas," Rudi called gently. "That isn't forgiveness. That is a transaction."
Thomas looked up, confused. "What do you mean, Sir?"
"You think that your suffering in high school was a coin you could use to pay your debt to Dimas," Rudi explained slowly. "You thought, 'If I hurt, if I suffer, then my sin is paid off'. You made yourself a martyr to calm your own conscience."
Rudi leaned in slightly, his voice lowering but full of emphasis.
"But let me ask you one thing, Son. When you were beaten in the high school toilet, when you cried because your bag was thrown into the gutter... did your suffering cancel out what happened to Dimas?"
Thomas's heart felt like it stopped beating.
"Did your pain..." Rudi continued, without knowing how accurate this question was, "...make the wound you gave Dimas disappear? Did it make his condition return to how it was, as if you never touched him?"
The question hit Thomas harder than any physical blow ever could.
In Thomas's mind, the image of Dimas in the wheelchair flashed. Paralyzed. Permanent. Rudi didn't know Dimas was paralyzed, but his question stripped that bitter reality bare. Thomas's pain in high school didn't make Dimas's legs move again. That spine remained broken. That wheelchair remained.
Thomas went rigid. His face went pale, his lips trembling.
"No..." he whispered, his voice cracking. "It didn't change anything. His condition... his condition remains the same."
"Exactly," Rudi said firmly yet gently. "Your suffering doesn't heal anyone, Thomas. That is an illusion. Your pain in high school only added to the amount of suffering in this world, it didn't reduce it. Dimas remains hurt, and you are broken. Two people suffering, no one healed."
Thomas's tears fell uncontrollably. His last line of defense—that he had "paid" for his sins through high school bullying—collapsed instantly into dust.
"Then what should I do?" Thomas sobbed, covering his face with both hands. His shoulders shook violently. "If my pain cannot pay for my sin, then how can I redeem it? The fact that his wound will never heal is killing me! I realize now how evil I was, but that awareness is torturing me because I know the damage is permanent!"
The word "permanent" slipped from his lips, carrying the weight of Dimas's paralysis that he had been hiding.
Rudi caught that pure despair. He reached out his wrinkled hand, gently patting Thomas's shaking shoulder, channeling calm.
"That is the hardest part of becoming emotionally mature, Son," said Rudi with a voice that pierced the soul. "Accepting that there are glasses that are broken and cannot be glued back together."
Rudi let Thomas cry for a moment, letting the poison out.
"Awareness is indeed painful," Rudi continued after Thomas's crying subsided a little. "When you 'wake up', you see the mess you made while you were 'asleep'. And it's natural if you panic. But punishing yourself in a prison of regret won't clean up that mess."
"I feel I have no right to be happy..." Thomas mumbled behind his palms.
"That is arrogance in another form," Rudi corrected quietly.
Thomas lowered his hands, looking at Rudi with red and wet eyes. "Arrogance?"
"Yes. You feel your sin is so big, so special, that God's forgiveness isn't enough for you, and you have to create your own hell," Rudi smiled sadly, a smile full of understanding. "Thomas, forgiving yourself doesn't mean forgetting that you were once wrong. It doesn't mean trivializing your friend's suffering."
Rudi looked straight into Thomas's eyes.
"Forgiving yourself means you decide to stop adding to the damage. You decide to use your energy not to punish yourself, but to pay it forward."
"Pay it forward?" repeated Thomas, confused.
"You cannot change Dimas's past. You cannot turn back time. That is a bitter pill you must swallow," Rudi said firmly. "But you have a future. You can become a different human being. Hands that once hurt, can now be used to heal. A mouth that once demeaned, can now be used to uplift others."
"Redemption isn't about how much you suffer, Thomas. Redemption is about how much goodness you can birth from the ruins of your mistakes. Don't let Dimas's suffering be in vain by letting the perpetrator be destroyed too. Be the person who makes this world a little better, precisely because you once learned from that fatal mistake."
Thomas fell silent for a long time, absorbing those words. The afternoon breeze blew again, this time feeling a bit cooler on his sweaty skin. The concept was still heavy. Paying it forward. Not paying backward.
Silence enveloped them both again. Thomas stared blankly at the lake, his brain working hard to rearrange the pieces of his understanding. If his pain in high school wasn't a payment for his sinful debt, then how should he place those seniors in his head?
As if he could read Thomas's confusion, Rudi spoke again.
"Thomas," Rudi called softly. "When I said your pain wasn't payment, I didn't mean for you to take back your forgiveness and start hating those seniors. Forgive them, but for the right reason."
Thomas turned, his forehead furrowed deep. "The right reason?"
"Yes," Rudi nodded. "Forgive them not because you deserved to be tortured. But forgive them out of empathy. Because you see..." Rudi paused for a moment, looking straight into Thomas's eyes, "...that your seniors were the same as you."
Hearing the word "same", Thomas's brain worked fast. He immediately remembered their conversation last week about the sparrow and the concept of awareness. The puzzle pieces clicked into place.
"You mean..." Thomas cut in, concluding quickly, "...they also did it because they were 'unaware' of their actions? Exactly like me back then when I did evil things to my friends? Right?"
"Yes, exactly Thomas," Rudi answered calmly. "I just want to reinforce what we discussed. That humans do evil not because they are inherently evil from the start, but often because they are unaware. They are asleep."
Rudi looked at Thomas intently. His goal was clear: if Thomas could truly absorb the fact that "criminals" (his seniors) deserved understanding due to unconsciousness, Thomas should be able to grant that same understanding to himself.
Thomas was silent, his eyes darting slightly, trying to digest that logic as deeply as possible.
"But," Rudi added hurriedly, adding an important footnote so Thomas wouldn't be misled, "that doesn't mean we should let cruelty happen. We must still uphold justice, and those who do evil still need to face consequences. Because if not, they will become wild and never 'wake up'."
Thomas nodded slowly. He tried to process it all.
What Rudi said felt very intellectually reasonable. The theory was solid. That evil is often born from unconsciousness. If he could understand the seniors who bullied him because they were "asleep", he should be able to give the same understanding to himself, right?
However, when he tried to apply that logic to his heart... the wall still stood firm.
It still felt very difficult. There was one variable that was different. When he was the victim of the seniors, he could rise and forgive. But Dimas? Dimas couldn't "rise" back to how he was.
Rudi observed the change in Thomas's face, which had turned clouded again. He realized that the concept of "unconsciousness" and "paying it forward" had indeed entered Thomas's brain, but it hit a moral wall in his heart.
"I understand your explanation, Sir. It makes sense," Thomas said softly, his eyes staring wistfully at the lake, avoiding Rudi's gaze. "I understand that they and I were both 'unaware' when making those mistakes. But..."
Thomas gripped his pants, his voice trembling.
"...it still feels unfair."
"Unfair how?" Rudi asked gently, giving space.
"It's unfair if I use that 'unaware' excuse to forgive myself, then I live calmly, get married, and be happy... while the wound I created in someone else might be permanent," Thomas's voice choked at the end of the sentence.
Thomas turned to look at Rudi with wet eyes.
"The fact that I am now 'awake' and have become a good person doesn't make the wound I caused healable, Sir. The damage remains. So it feels like cheating... it feels evil if I feel peace alone while he still bears the consequences of my actions for a lifetime."
Rudi sighed deeply. He nodded slowly, fully understanding the dilemma. Thomas felt he didn't deserve recovery because he considered himself the pure cause of another's destruction. Thomas still saw himself as the source of the catastrophe.
To crumble that assumption, Rudi knew he had to prove one thing: that Thomas was not the source of that poisonous spring. Thomas was merely the polluted downstream.
Rudi needed to invite Thomas to look upstream.
"Thomas," Rudi called, his voice lowering and changing the direction of the conversation carefully. "To unravel that feeling of unfairness, we must look further back. We must look at why you could fall 'asleep' so deeply."
Rudi looked at Thomas intently.
"How is your family? Are your parents still around?"
The question surprised Thomas. He flinched slightly, not expecting the conversation to veer into private territory when he was talking about justice.
"My father and mother are still alive, Sir. Still working," Thomas answered, confused.
"Can you tell me a little about them? What are they like in your eyes?"
Thomas looked down, hesitating for a moment. But Rudi's calmness made him feel safe to open the door that had been tightly closed all this time.
"My father..." Thomas started in a flat tone. "He is a narcissist. He always wants to look successful in the eyes of others. To him, children are display cases. He always demands we become successful just so he has material to brag about to his friends. When I failed, I was compared. When I succeeded, it was considered his achievement."
Thomas paused, remembering how small he felt in front of his father.
"While my mother..." he continued, "she is very naive. Kind-hearted, but... she doesn't know how to communicate with the heart. She only ensures our physical needs are met—food, uniforms, pocket money—but she doesn't know how to hug or ask about feelings. She is too stiff, and she is always afraid of Father, so she just obeys whatever Father says."
"Do you have siblings?"
"I have one older brother, Eben," Thomas answered, his voice lowering. There was shame tucked in there. "He is a bit... different. Mild mental retardation. Now he works at a restaurant, washing dishes."
"How is your relationship with them?"
Thomas laughed bitterly. "Honestly, we rarely speak like a family. My father is too busy with his ego. My mother is there, but her presence is hollow. And my brother... well, I actually often avoided him out of shame. I was annoyed at all of them, but that feeling has long been buried by my own guilt."
Rudi listened intently, arranging the puzzle pieces in his head. He leaned back on the bench, staring straight ahead with a deep gaze.
"There," Rudi said quietly, his voice heavy yet soothing. "Now it becomes clearer."
Thomas turned to him, confused. "Understand what, Sir?"
Rudi looked at Thomas, not as a sinner, but as an unaware victim.
"Thomas, you feel it's hard to forgive yourself because you think your desire to bully and demean others back then appeared out of nowhere, as if it was proof that your soul was indeed rotten from the start," Rudi explained slowly.
"But try to look at the big picture," Rudi continued, his hands moving to shape an illustration in the air. "Your father planted the idea that you are only valuable if you are great and can be shown off. Your mother never gave you emotional intake or a sense of safety. At home, you were 'invisible' unless you achieved something."
Rudi leaned in, looking into Thomas's eyes.
"That explosive thirst for validation in elementary and middle school... that wasn't pure evil, Thomas. That was starvation."
Thomas's eyes widened slightly. "Starvation?"
"Yes. Your soul was starving for recognition," Rudi asserted. "Your bullying of your friends in elementary school... your arrogance when you became top of the class in middle school... that was your desperate way of screaming: 'Look at me! I am great! I exist!'."
"You did those evil things not because you were born a monster," Rudi said gently. "But because you were a wounded child, growing up in a barren field without whole affection. You were 'unaware' of other people's pain, because you yourself were too busy covering your own pain."
Those words hit Thomas's defenses. His logic spun fast.
"So..." Thomas's voice trembled, "you mean, my unconsciousness back then... my cruelty... the root is in my family?"
"Careful, Son," Rudi corrected quickly. "This isn't about finding a scapegoat or blaming parents. That won't solve the problem. But this is about understanding the chain."
Rudi smiled wisely. "I am telling you this so you have a logical reason to make peace with yourself. That the little child who made that fatal mistake was not a demon. He was just a lonely and misguided child. Is it fair to punish that lonely child forever, Thomas?"
Thomas fell silent for a very long time. His eyes glazed over. That explanation didn't erase the fact that he had hurt someone, but it gave him a new perspective: He wasn't a pure villain; he was a product of a wrong environment.
"As I recall," Thomas said finally, his voice hoarse holding back tears, "I indeed never blamed my family. Maybe because my guilt toward Dimas was too big, covering everything. I was just... simply annoyed at Father's demands."
"That is natural," Rudi replied soothingly, his voice almost a whisper but clear in Thomas's ears. "Now you know the root. You were evil because you were 'asleep', and you were 'asleep' because you were hurt."
The sentence hung in the air, slowly seeping into the pores of Thomas's consciousness.
Thomas didn't answer. He couldn't speak anymore. His gaze was fixed on the surface of the lake which was now starting to darken. Inside his chest, there was a great tectonic shift. The self-hatred—which had stood solid like a coral reef all this time—began to crack. He realized he wasn't a monster born from nothingness; he was the result of a sorrowful cause-and-effect.
A long silence fell between the two of them.
Five minutes passed. No one moved. No one felt the need to speak.
There was only the sound of crickets starting to sing and the rustle of the wind sweeping the banyan leaves. That silence felt like a warm blanket spread by Rudi to protect the fragile Thomas. Rudi let the young man breathe, letting the new truth settle without interruption.
The sky above Lake Kenanga slowly changed color completely. The reddish-orange was gone, replaced by a blanket of dark blue night. The park lights began to turn on one by one, creating a glow of yellow light on the path, replacing the role of the sun that had already bid farewell.
After feeling it was enough, Rudi sighed deeply, a sigh of relief as well as exhaustion. He glanced at his old watch briefly, then turned back to Thomas.
"Night has fallen, Thomas," Rudi said quietly, his voice breaking Thomas's daydream very smoothly. "I think your heart's capacity for today is full. Don't force it anymore."
Thomas blinked, as if just waking from a trance. He turned, his eyes still wet but his gaze no longer wild.
"It feels... it feels like I need a long time to digest all this, Sir," Thomas admitted honestly.
"Of course," Rudi smiled understandingly. He patted his knees gently, then stood up with a calm, characteristic movement, straightening his shirt collar slightly. "This isn't a lesson that can be memorized overnight like your college exams. This is a lesson for a lifetime."
Rudi tucked his newspaper under his armpit, then looked at Thomas who was still sitting, looking up at him.
"Go home. Take a warm shower, then sleep. Don't judge yourself anymore tonight. Let the little child inside you rest. He has suffered enough today."
Thomas rose slowly. His legs felt a bit weak, but his heart felt several kilograms lighter.
"Thank you, Mr. Rudi," Thomas said, this time with a tone far deeper than mere politeness. "Thank you for being willing to help me."
Rudi nodded, a sincere smile etched on his wrinkled face. "See you again, Son. Be careful on the way."
Without waiting any longer, Mr. Rudi turned around, walking casually along the path lit by garden lights. His steps were slow and rhythmic.
Thomas stood frozen under the banyan tree, not moving immediately. He watched the old man's back recede until it disappeared around the bend, leaving Thomas alone with the night, the lake, and a small hope that had just lit up in his chest.