The noisy engineering cafeteria slowly returned to its usual rhythm after the incident with Irwan, but the air had not truly settled. Conversations resumed, trays clattered, chairs scraped against ceramic tiles, yet something invisible still vibrated beneath it all. Curious stares lingered a second too long. Whispers broke off the moment I looked up. The tension didn't scream anymore; it hummed—low, constant, irritating, like a fluorescent lamp about to fail. Cantika and I chose to ignore it the only way engineering students knew how: by burying ourselves in numbers, tables, and soil bearing capacity formulas that demanded more attention than gossip ever could.
We spread the bore logs, lab reports, and graph papers across the cafeteria table as if building a small fortress out of data. Every so often, my hand brushed against hers when reaching for the same ruler or sheet of paper. The contact was accidental, fleeting, but it sent a small current through me. When our shoulders touched because the table space was too narrow for the amount of documents we carried, warmth replaced some of the chill that had followed us since morning. It was subtle, unspoken, but grounding.
"I need a worst-case scenario simulation for soft clay at SPT-4 borehole," Cantika said suddenly, pointing at a marked coordinate on the site layout. Her voice had regained its analytical sharpness. "If the safety factor is too low, the foundation could settle unevenly. Pak Surya will definitely ask about this."
I followed her finger to the grid intersection. SPT-4 had always looked suspicious. The N-values dipped there, like a soft pocket waiting to betray an overconfident design. "Right," I said, nodding slowly. "Let's redo the calculation using Vesic's method for saturated soil conditions. If we're wrong, better we find it now than tomorrow in front of him." I reached into my worn-out backpack for my engineering calculator—my Casio FX-991, scratched at the edges, reliable as muscle memory. My fingers touched notebooks, loose papers, a tangled data cable. No calculator.
I searched again, slower this time, already knowing the answer. "Damn," I muttered under my breath. "I left it at home."
Cantika checked her wristwatch. "It's only 1:15. The library's still open. They have engineering calculators you can borrow, but…" She hesitated. "There's usually a queue. And most of the ones left have stuck buttons."
"Or the screen's blurry like it's been through a war," she added, attempting humor, though her eyes remained serious.
The calculator wasn't optional. Without it, manual calculations would eat hours we didn't have. Reworking bearing capacity equations by hand in this noise would be torture. "I'll just run to the library," I said, already half rising from my chair. "You continue plotting the SPT graph."
"Wait," she said quickly, something lighting up in her expression. "I have an idea. My laptop."
I paused. "Laptop? You have one?"
She nodded, a little shy, almost defensive. "Yeah. Dad bought it last week. For assignments." She opened her dark blue sling bag carefully, as if revealing something fragile, and took out a brand-new Dell Inspiron laptop, its surface still gleaming under cafeteria lights. In 2005, a freshman bringing a personal laptop to campus was rare enough to draw attention. A few students at nearby tables glanced over, curiosity flickering in their eyes.
"Wow, fancy, huh, Tik," I said before I could filter the surprise from my voice. A part of me felt impressed; another part felt guilty for needing to use something her father had just bought.
"Not really," she replied quickly while powering it on. The startup hum was smooth, quiet, almost elegant compared to the coughing CPUs in the library. "I only installed TeraPro and Microsoft Excel. I'm still learning, honestly."
The Windows loading screen glowed, and I felt the strange awareness of sitting beside something new—technology that symbolized privilege, opportunity, expectation. "Let's input the SPT-4 data and soil parameters," she continued, focusing entirely on the screen now. Her fingers moved across the keyboard with surprising confidence, far more fluid than when she typed on the sticky, overused library keyboards.
I pulled my chair closer so we could both see the display clearly. Our shoulders pressed together for real this time, no longer accidental. The scent of her apple shampoo mixed with the cafeteria's faint smell of fried food and paper. I forced myself to focus on the columns forming on Excel.
I dictated numbers from the bore report. She typed them into structured cells, creating formulas for corrected N-SPT values, applying overburden correction factors with careful precision. Watching her work steadied me. The anxiety from earlier shifted into concentration.
"Done," she whispered after several minutes. "Now cohesion and internal friction angle from the lab results."
I opened the dusty lab report folder. The pages were slightly curled at the edges, smudged by fieldwork fingerprints. Leaning closer to check the page number, I realized how near we were; my hair nearly brushed her temple.
"Sorry," I murmured, pulling back slightly.
"It's okay," she answered, too quickly, eyes fixed on the screen. "Cohesion 25 kN per square meter… phi 5 degrees?" She frowned. "That's very low, Randi. This is really soft clay."
"Yikes," I said quietly. "Okay. Run TeraPro. Vesic's method. Saturated condition."
She opened the software. The loading bar crawled forward, painfully slow. We sat in silence, listening to the soft whir of the laptop fan and distant cafeteria noise. My pulse felt louder than both.
Then the result appeared.
Safety Factor (SF) = 1.65.
"1.65…" I exhaled, almost a hiss. My heart thudded hard against my ribs. "Minimum should be 2.5 for shallow foundations. This isn't safe, Tik. Not even close."
Her face lost color. "So the field data's wrong? Or our interpretation? Or sampling error?" Her fingers flipped through the bore report pages rapidly, panic creeping into her movements. "We have to recheck everything. The presentation is tomorrow."
The word tomorrow landed heavily. I imagined Pak Surya's raised eyebrow, his silence before dismantling flawed logic piece by piece. I imagined Cantika standing in front of him with this number displayed behind her.
"Calm down," I said, though I was steadying myself as much as her. "We split tasks. You recheck corrected N-SPT and lab data from Pak Andi's file. Ask your groupmates to verify cross-sections. I'll check the sampling method and original bore log. Something's off."
I stood. "I'll go to the library for references. You stay here. Guard the laptop."
She glanced around the cafeteria, still carrying the aftertaste of the earlier confrontation with Irwan. "But…"
"I'll be quick," I assured her. "Five minutes. You brave enough?"
She inhaled deeply, then nodded. "Yes. I'm brave." Her smile was small but determined.
I moved fast through the corridor toward the library. My mind rotated around 1.65 like it was carved into my skull. Too low. Unacceptable. There had to be a missed correction factor, a misread sampling depth, something.
Inside the library, I headed straight to the archive shelves containing final projects and practicum reports. Thick brown volumes lined the racks, coated in dust. I pulled several out, flipping pages, scanning sections on sampling techniques in soft clay regions around Bekasi. If there was a precedent, I needed it now.
BRRING. BRRING.
My Nokia vibrated in my pocket. I assumed it was Cantika. Instead, the screen showed: Dea.
"What now, Dea?" I answered in a low voice, eyes still scanning text.
"Randi, where are you?" Her tone was tense.
"Library. Why?"
"Listen carefully," she whispered. "I just saw Akmal and Vina in the back parking lot of the Architecture Building. They were arguing. Loudly. Vina looked like she was crying."
I felt irritation rise. "Arguing about what? That's their business."
"I didn't catch everything. But Vina shouted, 'Why are you always paranoid about Randi? I barely even know him. Am I your property?' Then Akmal yelled, 'You don't understand! He's—' and then he saw me and stopped. His face was… scary, Ran."
My jaw tightened. "And this concerns me because?"
"Vina ran inside. Akmal stared at me like he wanted to kill someone. This is getting worse. I think he's losing it. Because of you."
A mixture of emotions swirled inside me—uneasy satisfaction that Vina was seeing cracks in Akmal, guilt for being the trigger, and a growing concern that instability could turn reckless.
"Thanks for telling me," I said finally. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. Just… be careful."
"Yeah. I will."
I ended the call and stared at the open book in front of me, but the words blurred. Safety factor 1.65. Akmal losing control. Cantika alone in the cafeteria with her new laptop. Pressure layered upon pressure.
I forced myself back into technical focus. Sampling methods. Disturbed versus undisturbed samples. If the SPT hammer energy correction was misapplied, the N-value could be underestimated. If groundwater level assumptions were wrong, effective stress calculations would shift. There—one report noted that improper rod length correction had caused underestimated N-values in similar clay deposits.
I photographed the relevant page with my phone, closed the heavy volume, and moved quickly back toward the cafeteria.
As I approached, I saw Cantika still seated at our table, eyes locked on the screen, fingers moving in quick adjustments. The laptop glowed between stacks of paper like a small island of clarity.
"I found something," I said as I sat down. "Check if rod length correction was applied properly in SPT-4. If it wasn't, N could be higher than reported."
Her eyes sharpened. "Wait." She scrolled through the Excel sheet. "They used default correction factor 0.75. But rod length was over 10 meters. It should be closer to 0.85."
We recalculated.
Numbers shifted. Corrected N increased slightly.
She reran TeraPro.
Loading.
Result: Safety Factor = 2.32.
Still below 2.5—but no longer catastrophic.
"Better," she breathed, tension easing from her shoulders. "But still not ideal."
"Maybe foundation type adjustment," I said. "Or recommend ground improvement as contingency."
She nodded slowly. "At least now it's defendable. We can explain this."
The cafeteria noise faded into background static as relief replaced panic. The crisis had narrowed from disaster to problem-solving.
I leaned back slightly, finally aware of how tense my body had been. Cantika closed her eyes briefly, then looked at me with quiet gratitude.
"Thank you," she said softly.
"For what?"
"For not panicking."
I almost laughed. "I was panicking."
She smiled faintly. "You didn't show it."
For a moment, the chaos of Irwan, the whispers, the argument between Akmal and Vina, tomorrow's presentation—all of it receded. What remained was a laptop screen with numbers that made sense, and the warmth of her shoulder still lightly touching mine.
Outside, the campus continued its restless rhythm. Inside, at our cluttered cafeteria table, something steadier was forming—not just calculations corrected and simulations refined, but a quiet partnership under pressure.
And tomorrow, when Pak Surya raised his eyebrow at the slide displaying Safety Factor 2.32, we would be ready—not because the number was perfect, but because we understood exactly why it wasn't.