At twelve o'clock sharp, when the bell signaling the lunch break echoed faintly across the faculty buildings, I finally took my phone out of my pocket. It felt heavier than usual, as if the small Nokia carried more than plastic and circuitry—like it held the weight of pride, history, and whatever was left of a friendship that had once meant something.
My fingers were trembling. Not violently, not enough for anyone passing by the corridor to notice—but enough that I had to steady the phone with my other hand before opening the contact list. I scrolled down slowly. Names of classmates. Group project partners. Lecturers. And then—
Akmal.
The last call log between us was from a week ago. Back when the tension was already thick, but not yet poisonous. Back when I still believed things would cool down on their own.
I stared at his name for a full five seconds.
Then I pressed "Call."
The ringing tone began. One tone. Two. Three.
Each beep felt stretched, elongated, like time itself was hesitating.
Four.
Five.
For a second, I almost hoped he wouldn't pick up. That would have been easier. Silence I could handle. Rejection, maybe less so.
Then—
"Hello?"
His voice was cold. Flat. No greeting. No "what's up." Just that single word, like he already knew and didn't care.
"Akmal. It's me." I forced my voice into neutrality. No accusation. No emotion. "We need to talk."
There was a brief pause. Then a short, cynical laugh.
"Talk?" he repeated. The word dripped with mockery. "For what? So you can snatch Vina again? The girl I'm getting close to?"
The accusation was immediate, sharp, rehearsed. He'd been waiting for this.
"It's not about that," I said firmly, tightening my grip on the phone. Students moved past me in the corridor, unaware that my chest felt like it was being compressed from the inside. "It's about what you've been telling people. About me. And about what actually happened."
"Oh, that."
I could almost see the smirk on his face.
"It's true, right? You're a traitor. Always have been."
The word hit like a fist to the sternum.
Traitor.
It was dramatic. It was unfair. It was heavy enough to echo in my head long after the syllables faded.
"Listen, Akmal," I said, lowering my voice, not wanting the people around me to hear even half of this conversation. "I want to meet. Just the two of us. Clear this up. Where are you now? On campus?"
He didn't answer immediately. The silence stretched just long enough to feel intentional.
"I'm at the Architecture Building," he finally said. "With Vina. And her friends."
His tone shifted slightly—louder, almost performative. As if he had angled the phone away from his mouth so others could catch fragments of the conversation.
"Don't bother me right now, Randi," he added, his voice deliberately raised. "I'm busy dealing with people who are actually worth working with."
CLICK.
The line went dead.
For a moment, I just stood there in the middle of the corridor, phone still pressed to my ear even though the call had ended. The background noise of campus life returned gradually—the murmur of students, the squeak of shoes against tile, distant laughter.
It felt like being slapped.
Not just rejected.
Displayed.
He had done it intentionally. He wanted the people around him to know I was the one calling. That I was seeking him out. That he considered me beneath his time.
My jaw locked so tight it hurt.
"Randi?"
Cantika's voice came from behind me, soft but alert.
I turned slowly.
She had clearly been watching from a distance, waiting for the outcome. The moment our eyes met, she read everything on my face. The humiliation. The anger. The sting of being dismissed like I was nothing.
"He refused?" she asked quietly.
I nodded once. I couldn't trust my voice.
She stepped closer. Not dramatically. Not drawing attention. Just enough that her presence felt grounding instead of distant. Her hand—small and slightly cool—touched my arm briefly. The contact was light, but it snapped me back to the present.
"Don't meet him now," she whispered. "He's looking for a reaction. If you go there, he wins."
I exhaled sharply through my nose. She was right. The image formed clearly in my mind: me walking into the Architecture Building, Akmal surrounded by Vina and her friends, tension escalating, people watching.
He would frame it however he wanted.
Desperate. Jealous. Guilty.
"But the gossip—" I started, frustration breaking through.
"We fight it with our work," she said, cutting me off. Her eyes, usually gentle, were blazing now. Focused. Strategic.
"The presentation has to be perfect. Yours too. If Pak Dani is satisfied—if the other lecturers give strong evaluations—what gossip can damage that?" She leaned in slightly. "Your credibility isn't built by arguing in hallways. It's built in front of the whiteboard."
Her words settled into me slowly.
"People will see your dedication themselves," she continued. "That's what shuts mouths. Not shouting. Not chasing him."
I closed my eyes for a second. The pain of being called a traitor by someone who used to trust me still throbbed. That wound was personal. Deep.
But she was thinking long-term.
Cantika wasn't reacting emotionally. She was calculating risk.
"Cantika… I—"
"Shhh."
Her finger brushed the back of my hand as she adjusted her position. The contact was accidental. Brief. But the warmth lingered in a way that steadied me.
"I'm here," she said softly. "We fight this together. The way engineers do. With proof."
A small smile appeared on her lips. Not playful. Not shy.
Determined.
For the first time that morning, I felt oxygen reach the bottom of my lungs.
"Let's go," I said, managing a faint smile of my own. "Show me your SPT revision. Done yet?"
Her eyebrows lifted slightly. "Almost. But the ten-meter depth data still bothers me."
"Good," I replied. "Let's attack that first."
We headed to the engineering cafeteria.
The place was loud, chaotic in the usual comforting way. Spoons clinked against plates. Someone laughed too loudly at a joke. The iced tea seller shouted orders from behind his stall. The smell of fried food mixed with spilled syrup and cheap detergent.
Normally, I would have been hyperaware of who might be staring.
But once we spread our papers across the scratched plastic table—printouts, graphs, pens, highlighters—the rest of the world faded into background noise.
Cantika leaned forward, explaining with intensity.
"Terzaghi's method assumes uniform soil conditions," she said, tracing a line across the graph. "But Bekasi clay is inconsistent. The undrained shear strength fluctuates."
I nodded, grabbing a pen. "That's why Meyerhof gives a safer bearing capacity in this case. It accounts better for variation."
We argued over coefficients. Corrected minor miscalculations. Recalculated load factors. Every now and then, our hands reached for the same sheet of paper at the same time. We both pulled back slightly, pretending not to notice.
The tension between us had shifted.
Not romantic.
Not fragile.
Focused.
Until—
"Hey, Pranata!"
The voice cut through the cafeteria noise.
I looked up.
Irwan stood at the end of our table, flanked by two other classmates. His smile was exaggerated—too wide to be sincere. His eyes, however, were sharp and searching.
"Heard you're the hot topic lately," he said loudly enough for nearby tables to hear. "You betrayed Akmal, huh? They're saying you're a backstabber."
The cafeteria volume didn't drop completely—but it dipped. Conversations softened. Heads turned subtly.
Beside me, Cantika stiffened. I could feel it without even looking at her.
I stood up slowly.
Blood roared in my ears, but my mind was suddenly very clear.
Irwan continued, enjoying the attention. "So is it true you stole his girl yesterday, Pranata? Crazy if you did. Your own best friend and—"
I stepped forward before he could finish.
Not aggressively. Not shoving.
Just enough to invade his comfortable teasing distance.
"That's cheap gossip, Irwan," I said evenly, locking eyes with him. My voice was low but carried clearly to the nearest tables.
"The truth is, Akmal and I have had personal issues for a long time. Misunderstandings. Nothing to do with stealing anyone. I didn't stab him in the back."
I paused deliberately.
"Instead of repeating rumors, maybe focus on your Structural Analysis report. Pak Dani criticized your moment of inertia calculation yesterday, right? That's something you can actually fix."
A ripple of reaction moved through the students behind him.
Irwan's face turned red instantly. He hadn't expected a direct counterpunch—especially one grounded in fact.
For a split second, uncertainty flickered across his expression.
"Acting all holy now!" he shot back, but his volume had dropped.
"I'm just focused on my assignments," I replied calmly. Then I turned around and sat back down, dismissing him as if the conversation had ended before he could recover.
He muttered something under his breath and walked away with his friends. The cafeteria noise gradually resumed, though I could still feel eyes lingering.
Cantika was staring at me.
Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyes wide—not with fear, but something else.
Relief?
Maybe even pride.
"Randi…" she whispered.
"Which one do you want to fix first?" I asked, pointing at the SPT graph as if nothing unusual had happened. My voice was steady.
Under the table, my hands were shaking.
She closed her eyes briefly, inhaling. Then a small smile appeared—the first genuine one since morning. Weak, but real.
"The graph," she said, tapping the ten-meter data point. "That value looks like an outlier. I want to recheck it."
I nodded. "Let's do it."
We leaned back into the work.
Around us, conversations resumed. Plates clattered. Someone laughed loudly at another table.
But something had shifted.
The uneasiness was still there—like dark clouds gathering overhead. Akmal was still out there. The gossip would not disappear overnight. The presentation loomed ahead like the next battlefield.
Yet at that cluttered cafeteria table, covered in scribbled calculations and half-finished drinks, I felt something solid beneath the chaos.
When Cantika explained why the ten-meter SPT value might have been mismeasured—possibly due to inconsistent hammer energy—I listened carefully. Not just because it mattered academically. But because focusing on it kept me from spiraling.
We weren't running.
We weren't hiding.
We were building something stronger than rumors—proof.
I realized then that this wasn't just about defending my name.
It was about earning it.
And as Cantika leaned closer to show me a corrected data set, her shoulder brushing mine briefly, I understood something else with quiet certainty:
I wasn't alone in this anymore.
There was a "we."
The war wasn't over. Not even close.
But at least now, when the next wave hit, I wouldn't be standing on the front line by myself.