Melanchton Akademie

Azmi Hoffmann

by Azmi Hoffmann

Story
Köln

Budi asked her to watch a movie together, Sarah was already over the moon and nervous thinking whether or not, she needs to tell Lukas about this date like hang out. What’s the limit for someone who is never has the reason to get jealous? This whole time, she guesses that kiss is the limit, for something to be consider as cheating, but if she knew that Lukas has movie date with someone, she would be furious. As someone who is very against double standard in everyday life, she thinks that she has to come clean to Lukas. But the thought that Lukas just gonna google Budi and sees how he looks like, she knows deeply that he wouldn’t feel threatened and just laugh at her.

„It’s a movie about mass murder in ’65 Indonesia, do you know anything about that?“ says Budi. Sarah shakes her face quickly to stop her face dropping, but too late Budi catches her face becomes red and apologize for not telling her what kind of movie they are watching. „Don’t you have someone else to invite?“ Sarah blurbs her thought out loud. „Why? I want to watch it with you…“

The door opens and an elderly Indonesian woman invites them in. All the awkwardness was paused for a minute, Budi kisses her hand and introduced Sarah to Tante Mayang, whom Sarah thinks is his real aunt. The woman politely explains the idea of respecting older woman by kissing their hands, in which Sarah digress by saying that Budi doesn’t even touch her pink as a sign of respect. They laugh and Budi excuses himself to mingle, while Tante Mayang keeps her to introduce her to the director of the movie. She then prattles on how lucky she is to have him as her boyfriend, because how much he keeps helping her just by his stay in the last two years has shown that he is a respectable gentleman, a great future husband.

All those thoughts about having a serious relationship with someone consume her, just slight after the movie starts. There, she feels like she wants to hide, the questions that come right after that is too serious for her to be thinking about. She just wants to crawl back to her room, munching popcorn while watching Emily in Paris. Her head could only gives out question marks after question marks after many question like „who am i? and what’s my identity?“ pop in. Crazy how myriad of emotions could be transcend through language, nationalities and race, how humans are merely being with emotions that actually connected to each other.

„I think i know why do you want to watch the movie with me… “ Sarah stops herself on the bridge facing the beauty of Rhein River that solemnly flows beside the greatness of the Dom.

„Yeah?“ Budi stands beside her ever so closely, his face tilts to the right of her face, teasing her. „Yeah…“ Sarah winks at him with her glassy eyes and just like that they bond over the trauma of being rejected and disappointed by someone that supposed to love them most. While discussing Indonesia as his home, her mind wanders about hers. „Why do you think i am trying to stay longer here? I love it so much there, the food, the culture, but i don’t think that’s the prerequisite to find a home..“

Sarah looks at him, just like he did before „I wish i could hug you right now.“

© Azmi Hoffmann 2024-08-31

Genres
Novels & Stories
Moods
Lighthearted
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