Kara laughed louder than she needed to, the kind of laugh that tried to disguise a heavy heart. She was sitting across from her brother, Alec, at a small café in Yogyakarta, their table tucked near an open window where the night breeze carried the scent of coffee and clove cigarettes. The city glowed with the gentle pulse of students, tourists, and dreamers, everyone seeming to know their place, their path. Everyone except her.
She flicked ash into the tray, her cigarette burning low between her fingers. Alec smoked too, though he wasn't as practiced, he coughed after the first drag, rolling his eyes when Kara snorted at him. Still, he lit another, stubborn, like proving something. They both let the smoke curl out into the night as if it could carry their worries away.
She had promised herself tonight wouldn't be sad. Not because it was her last night with Alec before returning to Jakarta tomorrow, but because she couldn't bear to think about the rejection letter still burning in her chest. She hadn't been accepted into the same university as him. Worse, she hadn't even gotten into one of the national-grade universities, those are the kind that stamped approval on your life. In this country, anything less was a stain. People would underestimate her, measure her worth against a list of names she wasn't on.
Alec set down his glass, smoke trailing from the cigarette between his fingers, eyeing her quietly.
"You don't have to laugh like that, you know."
Kara froze mid sip. "Like what?"
"Like you're trying to convince me you're okay," Alec said softly. "You don't have to."
Her throat tightened. She wanted to protest, but instead, she whispered, "If I tell them, Alec you know it, if I tell Mom and Dad… I don't think I can take the way they'll look at me."
"They'll be disappointed," Alec admitted, not sugarcoating it. "But you're not ruined because of one letter, Kara. Dean didn't get everything right either. You just… didn't see it."
She blinked at him, startled. "You think Dean ever failed at anything?"
"Of course he did," Alec said with a faint laugh. "He just learned to hide it better than most of us."
His honesty stung, but it also warmed her chest. For tonight, they let the streets of Yogyakarta distract them. Drifting from one café to another, sipping drinks too sweet, watching smoke rise from their lips, staring at street musicians under yellow lights, it was enough to let her rest for a little while.
But the night always ends.
Back at their guesthouse, the silence grew thicker. Kara began folding her clothes into her suitcase, each shirt pressed flat under her hands, her movements deliberate, like she could iron away the ache. Sadness pricked at her eyes as she thought of her parents. She couldn't bear to face their reactions if she told them the truth. The disappointment, the sighs, the way they might look at her as if she had already failed.
Kara leaned back, staring at the ceiling fan spinning lazily. "I don't even know who I am without someone comparing me. To Dean. To Alva. Even to you."
Alec gave a sharp laugh, bitter at the edges. "Don't compare yourself to me. I'm stuck with a girlfriend who screams at me one minute and begs me not to leave the next. I hate her, Kara. But I can't stop going back."
Kara smirked through her sadness. "Guess we're both idiots then."
"Guess so," Alec muttered, raising his glass for a clink. They drank, coughed, laughed again, and then sat in silence, the smoke hanging heavy around them.
Alec watched her carefully, smoke curling from his lips. "You're thinking about Mom again, aren't you?"
"She wants me to be Dean," Kara muttered, voice cracking. "And I'm not. I'll never be."
Alec stood and pulled her into a hug, his shirt reeking of smoke and whiskey. "You don't have to be Dean. You just have to be Kara. Alva and I, we need you for who you are, Not the version Mom's trying to build."
Her tears broke then, spilling fast. Alec's did too. Two siblings in the haze of smoke and liquor, crying into each other's shoulders, talking in half-sentences, confessing things they'd never dare in daylight. They told each other their mistakes, their fears, their stupid loves and stupid losses. Kara with her insecurities, Alec with his toxic relationship, both laughing at how messed up it all sounded, then crying again because the truth always hit too hard.
The night stretched on like that—smoke, whiskey, laughter breaking into sobs, silence breaking into confessions. Their world felt so small inside that room, but for the first time in a long while, neither of them felt alone in it.
And though Kara's suitcase was packed, her heart was scattered across the floor with the ash and the empty glasses. Tomorrow would come, whether she was ready or not.