Chapter 100: The Last Transaction
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(AI-generated image of Melinda)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
Jakarta in 1999 smelled like petrol, sweat, and ambition.
After the May riots, the fear still lingered. Burnt-out shophouses, whispers of gang rapes, and the trauma of shattered Chinese homes still echoed in conversations. But life had resumed. Office towers buzzed, the stock exchange hummed again, and behind every suit was the quiet tension of rebuilding a society still aching from rupture.
I came for a week-long observership, to build my understanding on how local banks invested in maritime trade flows. I didn’t expect to be met at reception by a woman with red lips, a clipped tone, and the poise of someone used to navigating chaos.
“Call me Melinda,” she said, handing me her card. “Melinda Tjoeng. I’m your handler for this week.”
⸻
Melinda was Indonesian Chinese, in her late twenties, with polished speech, a high-neck grey suit, and heels that struck tile like punctuation.
Her hair was pinned neatly. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Over coffee, she dissected trade zones with brutal clarity.
“I survive this city by remembering two things,” she said. “
Efficiency
gets you respect.
Visibility
gets you danger.”
She looked out the glass window of the bank.
“They looted my uncle’s pharmacy last May,” she added, almost casually.
“Just because we had different surnames. I don’t forget that.”
⸻
That evening, she invited me for drinks at the Sky Bar of the Grand Hyatt, watching the traffic crawl in the city below.
“You think Singapore is pragmatic?” she asked. “Jakarta is
ruthless
.”
I asked her what it was like to be Chinese now, post-Suharto.
She sipped her whisky.
“It’s like being dressed too brightly at a funeral. You’re tolerated. But not welcomed.”
I met her gaze. “You deserve more than tolerance.”
She leaned in. “You have a good mouth. Let’s see if you use it well.”
⸻
Her apartment in Menteng overlooked the skyline: minimalist, chilled, high above the noise.
She poured us whisky in silence, then slipped off her blazer.
“I don’t do small talk in bed,” she said. “Only negotiation.”
I stepped closer. “Then let’s open discussions.”
She undid the first button of her blouse. “You listen. You obey. You don’t fall in love.”
⸻
She wore a silk black bra that barely contained her high, full breasts, and matching panties edged in lace. Her stomach was taut, her waist narrow, her eyes daring me to misread her.
I stripped in silence. She examined me like a ledger.
Then she walked over, capped me, already hard.
“Hm. Efficient.”
She pushed me onto the sofa and climbed onto me.
⸻
She kissed with teeth and hunger, slid down onto me with a gasp, tight and slick, grinding like someone used to riding momentum.
Her hips moved in perfect rhythm, her moans sharp, deliberate.
I thrust harder, gripping her waist, then flipped her onto the rug, entering her from behind, watching her arch, her back a bow of tension.
“Harder,” she hissed. “You want this? Take it.”
She came with a strangled cry, slamming her hand into the floor.
I followed with a groan, shuddering as I poured into her, both of us collapsing into a slick, breathless sprawl.
⸻
We lay in silence, the ceiling fan turning.
After a while, she spoke.
“My mother told me never to sleep with outsiders.”
I turned. “And you?”
“I only sleep with men who understand risk.”
⸻
She was already dressed by the time I left.
“I’m not a souvenir,” she said, adjusting her lipstick.
“You don’t get to remember me in soft focus.”
I looked at her. “I’ll remember the woman who made me work for every word.”
She smirked, then whispered:
“Good. That’s how Jakarta loves, with calculation, not confession.”
⸻
[End of Chapter 100]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 101: The One After a Hundred
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(AI-generated image of Raven)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
By the time I met Raven, I’d already crossed the line… a hundred women, a hundred stories, a hundred shades of want and forgetfulness.
I should have known better than to tempt fate again.
But she wasn’t like the others.
She reminded me of Winona Ryder in
Sex and Death 101
… pale, piercing, and paradoxically delicate and dangerous. She wore black like a second skin, laughed like someone who’d seen too much, and spoke in half-quotations from
Camus
and
Bukowski
.
We met at a book launch in Bras Basah, where she was in a red dress that didn’t belong in the dusty hall. I asked what she thought of the author’s prose. She said, “
Derivative. But so are most men.
” I should have walked away.
Instead, I asked her out.
That was 1999. We would come together and fall apart over and over across the years, as lovers in the margins, never in the main text. I went through jobs, degrees, apartments. She went through revolutions: haircuts, causes, cities, lovers. But somehow, we always found each other again, like scratched records looping back to the same groove.
She was never warm, but she was never cold. She burned
just enough
to keep me circling.
She told me once, “You think I’m chaos. But I’m just a mirror. You chase women so you don’t have to face the loneliness you’re cultivating.”
I didn’t reply then; I just kissed her.
⸻
The first time we slept together, it was messy, just like our undefined relationship.
We were both drunk. Not sloppy, but glassy-eyed, slow-spoken. We staggered into my flat, tearing at each other’s clothes with equal parts hunger and resentment. She pushed me onto the bed, climbed onto my chest, kissed me with open disdain.
“You don’t know what to do with a woman like me,” she whispered.
“Teach me,” I said.
She rode me like she meant to erase the others, scratching her nails down my back, thighs gripping hard, lips brushing mine only when she wanted to make me beg. Her body was lithe, all soft skin over sharp bones. Her breasts were small, natural, firm and her nipples brushed against my chest as she bounced, hair loose, eyes defiant.
When she came, it was silent… her mouth open, breath stopped, body taut as a drawn bow. She collapsed into me like a dying flame.
We didn’t cuddle. That wasn’t our language.
⸻
Ours was a relationship defined by pauses, with months of silence punctuated by explosive reunions. Sometimes we made love. Sometimes we just fought. And sometimes we just lay side by side, the silence louder than touch.
She never called herself my girlfriend. And I never dared ask her to stay.
Other women came and went… flings, affairs, sweet mistakes and curated fantasies. But Raven always lingered. She never took up space, yet she was always present. A shadow in the corner of my mirror. A line in every journal entry I never finished.
She once said, “You’ll write about me last. Because I’ll be the one you can’t reduce to a punchline.”
She was right. This was the last Chapter I wrote, chronologically.
⸻
The last time I saw her, we were both much older… greyer at the edges, heavier with years.
She was in town for a photography exhibit. I met her at the gallery. She wore the same red lipstick. She still dressed like a noir heroine. And I — I had finally become the man I once pretended to be: accomplished, composed, and exhausted.
We had dinner. We laughed. We didn’t kiss.
At the taxi stand, she looked at me for a long time. “You look tired.”
“I’ve loved too many women,” I said.
“No,” she said, gently. “You never loved anyone. You collected them. Like souvenirs.”
She leaned in, kissed me once on the cheek, then whispered, “
Don’t write me like the others.
”
And then she was gone.
⸻
Now, as I pen this chapter, I realise what she meant.
Raven wasn’t the one that got away. She was the one who stayed just far enough to remind me of who I was, and who I could never be with her. Or maybe with anyone. Yet.
She was the femme fatale I never solved, the question I never dared to answer.
If I was Casanova, she was my consequence.
[End of Chapter 101]
Mirror Site:
Author’s note: Why Chapter 101 Was Written Last
Chapter 101 wasn’t placed here by accident. In fact, I’ll freely admit that it was the very last one I put down… and yes I have completed the book by now. There’s a reason for writing it last.
Raven has always stood apart from the other women in the story. She isn’t a girlfriend, a fling, or a phase; she’s the femme fatale who hovers at the edges, never fully claimed, never fully gone. While I moved way beyond a hundred encounters, she remains a recurring shadowy figure who continues to unsettles me across years, like a mirror I can’t look away from. To write her earlier would have risked diluting that presence. She had to wait until the end of the writing process, when her role could finally be seen for what it was.
But Raven isn’t the only figure who matters in this arc. If Raven is the shadow at the margins, another character, still to come, will take a very different place in his life: not as a haunting, but as a companion in an open relationship. That later relationship, spanning years rather than nights, contrasts sharply with Raven’s fleeting, dangerous allure.
For readers who’ve followed this far, Chapter 101 is a milestone. It marks the close of one era of the story and hints at the shift that will define the final third of the book.
Chapter 102: Not Broken, Just Bruised
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(AI-generated image of The Therapist)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
I didn’t feel proud after hitting a hundred.
There was no medal.
No notch.
No locker-room grin or drunken high-five.
Just silence.
And a strange, pulsing question I hadn’t heard before:
“
Is there something wrong with me?
”
I didn’t tell anyone.
Not even the girl I’d just slept with: Melinda, a banker from Jakarta with a grey jacket and ruthless efficiency.
I booked a session at a private clinic under a different name (
we could still do that before electronic medical records were commonplace
). The receptionist didn’t blink. Just handed me a clipboard.
When I finally sat across from the therapist, a calm-eyed woman in her fifties with a warm voice and a thicker folder than I expected, I didn’t know how to start.
I told her, awkwardly: “I think I might be a sex addict.”
She asked, “Why?”
I paused. “Because I’ve slept with more women than I can remember. I keep going, even when I’m tired of it. Even when it means nothing. And now… I don’t know what I’m looking for anymore.”
She nodded. Didn’t write anything.
Over the next few sessions, we dug deeper.
She never called it an addiction.
She used other words:
patterns, coping, avoidance, intimacy fear, emotional control through physicality.
I wanted a label.
But she didn’t give me one.
Instead, she said this:
“You’re not addicted to sex.
You’re avoiding grief.
Somewhere between woman number one and woman number one hundred, you started mistaking conquest for healing.”
She was right.
We talked about Angela… the woman in my twenties I almost settled down with but didn’t.
We even talked about my parents… not in that Freudian cliché way, but enough to realise that the first lesson I ever learned about love was that it was unreliable.
She asked me, “What does sex give you that love doesn’t?”
I said: “Control. Certainty. Escape.”
Then she asked: “What does love give you that sex never can?”
I sat with that one longer.
“Stillness,” I said eventually. “And permission to be flawed.”
⸻
That was an important turning point for me.
Not the end.
Not a dramatic epiphany.
But the beginning of a different kind of honesty.
I didn’t stop sleeping around right away. There were still mistakes to be made.
But I started asking myself harder questions before I did.
Not out of shame, but from awareness.
I stopped thinking of myself as broken.
And started seeing myself as bruises, and finally willing to heal.
⸻
The therapist once said,
“You’re not a Casanova.
You’re just someone who forgot that being wanted isn’t the same as being loved.”
I never saw her again after the tenth session.
But her words followed me quietly, all the way to the woman I would eventually marry, and the home I never thought I could deserve.
[Chapter 102]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 103: The Last High Before the Slow Fade
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(AI-generated image of The Slow Fade)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
I turned in my final paper on a rainy Wednesday in late November. The printer jammed twice, the university server lagged, and when I finally hit “
Submit
,” the confirmation page felt less like victory and more like exhalation.
Just like that, my time as a full-time Masters student ended.
No more long mornings in cafes pretending to read.
No more late nights walking strangers home and deciding… silently and mutually… whether the night would end with one goodbye or two orgasms.
I’d accepted an offer from a consulting firm two weeks before, something strategic, regional, vaguely prestigious. The kind of job where the title sounded more impressive than the salary, but the grooming was worth more than the pay.
I was stepping into the next version of myself.
Sharper. Quieter. Better dressed. And much more tired.
⸻
The truth is: I didn’t stop being a Casanova.
I just got more selective.
More situational.
And, whether I admitted it or not, more alone.
⸻
People ask what I learned from all those women.
They expect magical sexual technique or erotic stories about threesomes and taboos.
But that’s not what stayed with me.
What stayed were the rules I wrote into myself, not from books, but from the moments just before and after climax, when truth lingers bare on the skin.
⸻
Lesson 1: Don’t shit where you eat.
No colleagues. No direct clients. No project team members.
The sex might be amazing, but fallout never is.
Lesson 2: Always wear a condom. Always.
Don’t negotiate your health for five minutes of heat.
Lesson 3: Never get drunk when you’re hunting.
It clouds your judgment. And you tend to forget things, important ones like consent, tone, or name.
Lesson 4: No drugs. Ever.
Not for you. Not for her.
You want pleasure, not ghosts.
Lesson 5: Learn to read the room.
No means no. Maybe is still no.
Only yes (
said by her
) is yes.
Lesson 6: You can’t fix anyone.
Not the single mother with a smile that hides exhaustion.
Not the high-powered executive with scars under her silk.
You’re a night (
or sometimes nights
), and not a therapist.
Lesson 7: Don’t stay too long.
If it was meant to last, it wouldn’t have started with secrets.
⸻
But the most surprising lessons were cultural.
From a Minangkabau guide in Padang (
Chapter 104
), I learned that matriarchy doesn’t always mean softness, and sometimes the strongest hands are the ones that hold the home together while letting the men drift.
From a Thai artist (
Chapter 99
), I learned that pain can be sacred, inked into skin not for rebellion, but for protection.
From a Vietnamese mother (
Chapter 95
), I learned that flatness doesn’t mean lack, and that the body is not a measure of worth, but of memory.
From a Singaporean Malay woman (
Chapter 97
), I learned that survival isn’t something you declare; it’s something you endure. Quietly. Daily.
And from a Singaporean Chinese saleswoman with diamond studded ears and dead eyes (
Chapter 98
), I learned that some people never let you in, and that’s still a kind of intimacy, if you respect it.
⸻
I’m not proud of everything I did.
But I’m not ashamed either.
I was still learning… through bodies, mouths, silences, and sighs.
Through the women who undressed not just for pleasure, but to be seen, even just for one night.
⸻
At this point in my life, with office hours and slide decks filling my calendar, I find myself missing the rhythm of those days.
But I know this:
I’ve changed.
I dress better. I speak slower.
I know how to say no, and when not to chase yes.
And sometimes, when I walk through Raffles Place at dusk, I catch the scent of perfume, or hear a foreign laugh, or see a bare shoulder, and a memory comes rushing back.
Not of the sex,
but of the moment just before it.
The moment when she looked at me, and I knew:
This is all we are. All we’ll ever be. And it’s enough.
⸻
At last count, I had slept with just over a hundred women.
Nearly sixty of them during my master’s course… a sprint, really… a fever of youth, appetite, and unchecked opportunity.
The next fifty will take time. A decade, or slightly more.
Because there was a woman, a gentle Bidayuh woman from Kalimantan, who moved to Singapore with wild eyes and softer hands.
We were in an open relationship for years, navigating boundaries and intimacy with care.
She didn’t try to change me. But she slowed me.
Loved me without needing to own me.
We were unmatched… culturally, spiritually, temperamentally.
But in another life, we might have made it.
That kind of love doesn’t end in anger and heartbreak.
It just… ends.
Quietly. Like a favourite song fading into the next track.
⸻
And now?
I’m flying to Indonesia next month.
Padang first. Then Batam. Then Jogja.
The Indonesian arc begins.
I tell my bosses I’m mapping trade corridors and regional partnerships.
But the truth is simpler:
I’m tracing the geography of longing… through islands, dialects, skin tones, and smiles.
And I still have stories to collect.
Before I stop counting.
⸻
[End of Chapter 103]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 104: Spice and Storm
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(AI-generated image of Rani)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
She met me at the airport in Padang, wearing a blue batik blouse tied tight at the waist and jeans that hugged her hips with casual confidence.
“Welcome to Ranah Minang,” she said, tossing her hair behind her shoulder.
“This is Sumatra. We don’t wait for the world to notice us.”
Her name was Rani, 23, born and raised in Padang City, now working part-time as a guide for visiting researchers and traders. She was short and curvy, with dark, sun-warmed skin, large eyes, and hips and breasts that moved like they had their own gravity.
Even her handshake had a rhythm.
I’d come to West Sumatra on the tail end of my logistics fieldwork, which was a survey of small port towns being considered for future trade corridors. Padang was my final stop before heading back to Singapore.
Rani was assigned by the local office to show me around.
“I’m not just your translator,” she said as we got into the jeep. “I’m your gatekeeper. Be good.”
⸻
As we drove through the city, she pointed out food stalls, mosques, and markets with the ease of someone who knew every turn by scent.
“You see those rooftops?” she asked, pointing at the horn-shaped Minangkabau houses. “They curve like buffalo horns. Our people defeated the Javanese with brains, not swords. We sent a baby buffalo to the fight. It won.”
She grinned. “We’ve always known the women here are smarter.”
The Minangkabau, she explained, were one of the world’s largest matrilineal societies. Property passed through the female line. Men went off to wander; women stayed and ruled the hearth.
I nodded, impressed.
“Sounds progressive.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t mistake matrilineal for feminist. We still cook. We still serve. But we do it on our terms.”
⸻
She brought me to a coastal cliffside village that overlooked the Indian Ocean, the sky heavy with pre-monsoon tension. We watched the waves crash while sharing rendang wrapped in banana leaves and cooling our mouths with cendol.
“I used to swim here as a kid,” she said. “Before my breasts showed.”
I tried not to look.
She caught my eye.
“You’re not used to Indonesian women like me, are you?”
“No,” I admitted. “You don’t just walk; you command.”
She smiled. “That’s because I own my body. Men here learn early:
Minang girls choose. Not the other way around.
”
⸻
That night, a thunderstorm rolled in.
But she had already invited me back to her aunt’s homestay, a traditional rumah gadang with creaking wooden floors and sweet-smelling mosquito coils burning in the corners.
“We have a guest hut. Spare mattress. But no electricity tonight.”
She handed me a kerosene lamp.
“You afraid of the dark?”
“Only if I’m alone,” I replied cheekily.
She stared at me for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Then her expression went tender and she turned seductively, her silhouette framed by the lightning flashes behind the paper windows.
“Then don’t be.”
⸻
The guest hut was small, the fan dead from the blackout, the air heavy and thick. The sound of rain pounding on the roof filled the silence.
Rani lit a second lamp and placed it on the floor.
Then, without a word, she pulled her blouse over her head.
She wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her breasts were large, full, and high, the dark nipples swollen from the heat. Her skin shimmered with sweat… deep bronze under the flickering light.
She undid her jeans and stepped out of them slowly, revealing black cotton panties soaked through from humidity, or maybe anticipation.
“You still want to pretend you’re the one seducing me?” she asked, softly.
I shook my head.
She climbed onto the mattress and pulled me down with her.
⸻
I kissed her deeply… upon her lips hot, full, and eager. My hands explored her hips, her waist, the swell of her breasts.
She pushed my shirt off and straddled me, grinding slowly, her wetness soaking through both layers of fabric.
“Remove it,” she whispered.
I did.
After placing the condom, she slid down onto me in one smooth motion…
so tight
… dripping and pulsing around me.
She rolled her hips in wide, slow circles, riding me with control and confidence, her breasts swaying, her mouth open in a low moan.
Her nails raked down my chest.
I grabbed her waist, thrusting up to meet her rhythm, sweat streaming down both our bodies.
“Faster,” she groaned. “Like thunder.”
I flipped her over, kissed her neck, then took her from behind, each thrust deep and firm, the sound of our bodies slapping echoing in the storm-filled night.
She came with a loud cry, biting into the mattress, her thighs shaking as she clenched around me.
I followed moments later, spilling deep inside her, gasping into her shoulder as the lightning lit the room.
⸻
Afterward, we lay naked on the mattress, still sticky and breathless, listening to the storm subside.
She ran her fingers across my chest.
“Do you think you’ll remember me when you’re rich and gone?”
“I’ll remember the girl who rode the thunder,” I said.
She laughed. “We Minang women… we don’t beg to be remembered. But we like it when you do.”
⸻
[End of Chapter 104]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 105: Saltwater Silk
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(AI-generated image of Dina)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
The ferry to Batam took just under an hour from Singapore, but it felt like stepping into another rhythm of time… slower, saltier, and scented with fried shallots and engine oil.
The port bustled with men unloading crates of detergent, dried goods, and spare electronics. Above them, a massive billboard read: “
Batam: The Future Industrial Island.
”
But under the gloss of development, the Riau spirit still lingered, a culture shaped by seafarers, Islamic poets, and slow coastal living, where people spoke in gentle Malay and lived by tides rather than clocks.
I had come on assignment again, following up on a port inspection and customs zone mapping. It was supposed to be a short in-and-out visit.
Then she walked into the duty-free shop.
⸻
She was bent over the perfume display, adjusting bottles. Barefoot in flat sandals, long black skirt, white cotton blouse tucked in neatly.
She looked up. Her eyes were dark and calm. Her smile arrived before her words.
“
You want to smell something nice?
”
I held her gaze. “I already did.”
She blushed, then laughed.
A real laugh, from deep in her throat.
⸻
Her name was Dina, 21, born and raised on Batam, the daughter of a fisherman and a schoolteacher. She worked part-time in retail while pursuing a diploma in Batam Polytechnic.
“
You ever been to Riau before?
” she asked.
“This is my first time.”
She nodded. “
Riau girls don’t rush. We like to take our time. But once we choose, we choose fully.
”
That evening, we met for seafood by the jetty. Grilled stingray. Sambal cockles. Fresh lime over ice.
She spoke about her dream to one day open a perfume shop in Tanjung Pinang, something with Malay poetry on the bottles.
“
Perfume
,” she said, “
is the memory of a woman you cannot forget.
”
⸻
I told her I couldn’t bring her back to my place. That I was only here for two nights.
She tilted her head.
“
My cousin has a coastal villa near Nongsa. Empty. You want to see the moon from her balcony?
”
I said yes before she finished the sentence.
⸻
The villa overlooked the sea, a two-storey wooden house with slow ceiling fans and a veranda facing the water.
Inside, Dina lit a mosquito coil and placed it by the open door. She poured us ginger tea from a thermos and turned on the small radio. Old Malay ballads crackled through.
Then she stood and slowly removed her blouse.
No words. Just a smile.
⸻
She wasn’t shy. But she wasn’t showing off either.
Her body was slender but feminine, with small, pert breasts, long elegant arms, and skin the colour of toasted palm sugar.
She stepped out of her skirt, revealing white cotton panties. Then walked to me barefoot.
“
You want to remember Batam?
” she whispered.
“Only through you.”
⸻
I kissed her slowly… her lips soft, warm, opening under mine.
I lifted her, carried her to the woven mat by the open window.
She undressed me slowly, piece by piece, fingers brushing skin like a breeze.
Then she straddled me, pulling her panties aside, and waited for me to put on a condom before she slid down onto me, her womanhood tight, smooth, and already dripping wet.
She moved with a grace I hadn’t felt before , like a dancer trained by the sea, her hips rocking gently, her breath steady, eyes never leaving mine.
I cupped her breasts, kissed her neck, ran my hands down her back.
When I began to thrust upward, she closed her eyes and whispered:
“
Pelan-pelan…
”
Slowly…
And I obeyed.
⸻
She came in silence, her mouth open, her thighs trembling, a hand over her chest as if holding her heart still.
I followed soon after, burying myself deep inside her as the sea wind cooled the sweat between us.
⸻
Later, we lay facing the window, naked under a thin batik sheet.
“
I think I will be forgotten
,” she said.
“Never.”
She touched her wrist, where a faded friendship bracelet still clung.
“
Riau girls are like sea foam. We come, we kiss the rocks, then we leave.
”
I kissed her shoulder.
“
And some of us follow you back into the water.
”
⸻
[End of Chapter 105]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 106: Marked by Her
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(AI-generated image of Sekar)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
The train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta cut through rice fields, volcanic silhouettes, and red earth temples, all blurred by heat and the hum of old carriage fans. I had come to Jogja not for ports or trade, but as part of a cultural immersion tie-in woven alongside a project related to my consulting work.
The city, unlike Jakarta’s chaos, moved with a ceremonial slowness.
Everything here, from the way people walked, to the way they spoke, and even the way the wind whispered through gamelan instruments, felt composed and deliberate.
“Java is soft, but never weak,” someone had told me.
“Here, power lies in restraint.”
⸻
I met her in an alley gallery behind Jalan Malioboro, a minimalist space with calligraphy, erotic batik, and bone-ink sketches strung up like prayers.
She was leaning against a column, smoking clove cigarettes with one bare foot resting on the wall behind her.
Her name was Sekar, meaning flower in old Javanese.
She wore loose black pants and a batik halter, arms dusted with ink, hair tied in a messy knot, and a single tattoo of a lotus curling over her collarbone. Her eyes were lined in kohl, her cheekbones high and shadowed.
“You don’t look like a tourist,” she said.
“And you don’t look like someone who paints flowers.”
She smiled. “I don’t. I only paint what people hide.”
⸻
She asked if I wanted to be sketched.
I said yes.
She took me into her studio, lit a stick of menyan incense, and asked me to sit shirtless on a rattan mat.
“Don’t pose,” she said. “Just breathe.”
She sketched me for half an hour in silence, eyes flicking between paper and skin. Then she set the charcoal down and said,
“You have questions in your body. Not just your mind.”
I laughed. “What kind?”
She walked over, kneeled beside me, and touched the curve of my shoulder.
“Questions about control.”
⸻
I came back the next night. She had prepared the space.
Oil lamps glowed on the floor. Batiks hung from the ceiling like curtains, and the soft drone of gamelan pulsed beneath our breath.
She wore a sheer sarong tied low on her hips, her breasts bare, nipples dark and upright, her skin a honeyed brown under the lamplight.
She held a small bowl of black ink.
“Before you enter me,” she said, “I want to mark you.”
⸻
She dipped her fingers into the ink and drew symbols on my chest. Down my ribs. Over my navel.
“Javanese magic,” she whispered. “Not to bind you. To awaken you.”
She undressed me slowly… tracing the ink over my thighs, kissing each spot like sealing a spell.
Then she straddled me on the mat, guiding me inside her in one fluid, silent motion.
She was tight and smooth, her hips moving with the tempo of ritual, not lust… but slow, spiraling, and deliberate.
She took her time.
She watched my face.
She whispered in
Kromo Inggil
, the high Javanese reserved for respect and seduction.
“Teruskan… pelan… rasakan…”
Keep going… slowly… feel it…
⸻
We moved like dancers in trance, with her body arching, mine following, our limbs knotted in sweat and breath.
She kissed my eyes as I came, shuddering, deep inside her, our bodies collapsing into the ink-smeared mat.
⸻
Later, she painted my back with a brush dipped in warm water, washing away the ink, but leaving its memory.
“You won’t forget me,” she said. “Even if you try.”
⸻
She was right.
Every time I see the curve of a batik swirl, I remember Sekar,
the Ink Witch of Jogja
, who drew secrets from my body before I even knew they were mine.
⸻
[End of Chapter 106]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 107: The Way She Slowed Time
https://freeimage.host/i/KieVnFS
(AI-generated image of Elya 1)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
She arrived in Singapore in early 2001, on a humid January morning with a leather backpack, soft-worn shoes, and a polite smile that didn’t quite hide her curiosity.
Her name was Elya, and she was Bidayuh, from Kalimantan: the Indonesian portion of Borneo, a land of thick jungles, longhouses, and rivers that shaped everything from trade to identity.
The Bidayuh people, once called “
Land Dayaks
,” are a distinct indigenous group, known for their bamboo instruments, rice rituals, and baruk (
circular headhouses where elders once kept skulls and secrets
). Unlike the more widely known Iban or Kayan, Bidayuh culture is quieter, more insular. Many of them straddle the Malaysian-Indonesian border, living in rural districts like Bau, Lundu, and across to the Kapuas river basin.
She wasn’t exotic to me.
She was just… real.
And unexpectedly grounding.
⸻
We met at a mutual friend’s barbecue in Choa Chu Kang. She was there for the satay. I was there for the beer.
I ended up skipping the beer.
She was two years younger, working in operations for a regional logistics company.
Didn’t speak much.
And didn’t mind my occasional silence.
“I’m not good at cities,” she said.
“I’m not good at settling,” I replied.
We made no promises, though I invited.
But she came over that weekend.
⸻
My condo in River Valley wasn’t luxurious, but it had wooden floors, a wide bed, and morning light that felt gentler when she was in it.
By this time, I was at my physical peak, well-built from disciplined workouts, with cut abs, sculpted shoulders, and the calm swagger of someone who’d finally figured out how to fill out a shirt properly.
We lay side by side, fully clothed, saying nothing much for nearly an hour.
Then I reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear.
She said, “If I sleep with you, we are still not boyfriend-girlfriend. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
⸻
She undressed with quiet dignity, with no theatrics, no poses.
Her bra was simple.
Her underwear was plain.
But her body…
Cream-fair skin, the soft swell of her hips, breasts full and unscarred, a small birthmark on her right thigh.
She looked like a woman from a carved hardwood statue, utterly graceful, warm and unmistakably alive.
I undressed slowly.
She watched. Then gently kissed me.
⸻
Our very first time was tender.
I took my time with her, my mouth on her neck, my lips over her breasts, my hands tracing the curves of her waist.
I teased her thighs apart with gentle fingers, circled her slowly until she shivered and arched toward me.
She tasted earthy and sweet, like saltwater and memory.
When I slid into her, she gasped; not out of pain, but recognition.
We moved slowly.
Each thrust a kind of exhale.
She whispered my name as if it was a place she had reached.
She came softly, biting her lip. I came moments after, burying my face in her neck.
We lay together in silence.
That silence felt like it lasted for months.
⸻
She started coming over once a week. Then twice. Then for entire weekends when I wasn’t traveling.
She never asked who else I was seeing.
And I never lied.
It wasn’t a fairytale.
But it was fair.
⸻
A few months later, I visited her family in a village outside Bau.
We took a local bus, then a shared van, then walked through pepper fields to a wooden house on stilts.
She introduced me as “
a close friend.
”
Her grandmother smiled.
Her cousin asked no questions.
They fed me spicy chicken and rice cooked in bamboo.
That night, we slept side by side in her childhood room, without touching.
But I heard her crying softly.
And I didn’t ask.
I just held her hand until she fell asleep.
⸻
In Singapore, the rhythm resumed.
Her toiletries slowly started appearing in my bathroom.
She left clothes in my drawers.
She cooked for us. We watched DVDs together on the couch.
But I didn’t stop chasing strangers or stop counting.
Not because I was boastful.
But because I was exacting. Methodical.
Every woman marked a page… not a notch.
By this time, I had crossed some distance across 100.
Elya wasn’t a pause.
She was a comma. A long one.
A slowing. A softening. A reprieve.
⸻
Whenever we made love, it was like the world had faded to one room.
She liked long, slow strokes.
She also liked kissing, deeply, tongue-tied, hungry.
She really liked curling around me after and breathing into my chest.
Sometimes she would cheekily tie my hands with her scarf and ride me, hips rotating, breast to mouth, moaning rhythmically until I begged.
Other times, I worshipped her body… licking her thighs, sucking her nipples until she writhed, fingers inside her as she clutched the sheets and cried out my name.
Whenever I came inside her, she always pulled me closer.
Like she was trying to hold something in.
Or keep something out.
⸻
We rarely said “I love you.”
But whenever I was sick, she would skip work and bring me porridge.
When her father died, I sent flowers… but didn’t ask to go.
We were more than friends.
Less than fate.
We were real, for a long while.
⸻
Often she would whisper to me:
“
Don’t look for forever. Look for now
.”
And we did.
Until we couldn’t.
⸻
But that ending, the quiet drift of us, is for another chapter.
This was the part where we made each other whole enough to continue, even if not together.
And in the years that followed, no one ever slowed me down quite the same way…
⸻
[End of Chapter 107]
Mirror Site:
Chapter 108: Too Sweet, Too Tight
https://freeimage.host/i/KsAuJBs
(AI-generated image of Xiaoyu)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
⸻
I was in Nanjing for two weeks on a client assignment, on infrastructure feasibility for a coastal development zone. Meetings ran late, slides were in Mandarin, and the consultant veneer I wore in Singapore felt thinner under the heavy Jiangnan humidity.
Jiangsu always intrigued me.
The province was cultured and cultivated, home to silk, scholars, and Suzhou’s classical gardens.
It produced zisha teapots, qipao seamstresses, and some of the sharpest minds in the civil service.
Jiangsu women, they said, were soft-spoken but sharp-eyed.
Elegant, like calligraphy, and just as difficult to master.
I didn’t expect to find her in a milk tea shop.
⸻
It was a corner stall beside the project office, with hand-drawn menu boards, fake marbled tiles, and a queue of teenagers every afternoon. I stopped for a drink out of habit more than thirst.
She took my order without fanfare the first time.
Second time, she asked if I was a foreigner.
“I’m Singaporean,” I said.
She blinked. “Then why’s your Mandarin so good?”
I smiled. “Because I worked hard.”
The third time, she laughed when I spilled pearls on the countertop and handed me tissues before I asked.
Her name was Xiaoyu.
She was petite, round-faced, with a small tattoo on her neck: a perfect circle, the size of a coin.
She wore pastel uniforms with childish buttons and thin-soled sneakers. Her voice was clear, tinged with Suzhou’s lilting accent.
I started returning every afternoon.
Sometimes for the drink.
Mostly for her.
⸻
One rainy evening, I waited under the shop awning while she closed. She saw me. Raised an eyebrow.
“You’re not tired of milk tea yet?”
“I thought maybe you’d share one.”
She hesitated. Then handed me a spare umbrella.
“Walk me back. But don’t make it weird.”
⸻
Her apartment was on the sixth floor of an old block: squat, tiled, with green stairwell lights. Inside, it smelled like fabric softener and jasmine.
She poured me warm soy milk and sat cross-legged on her mattress, hugging a plush rabbit.
I watched her for a moment.
Then walked over and sat beside her.
“I like your tattoo,” I said.
She smiled and turned her head, exposing it… and a bit more. “It means wholeness.”
I leaned forward, ostensibly to observe it, and suddenly kissed her just below it.
⸻
She didn’t resist.
Instead, she eagerly climbed onto my lap, legs wrapped around me, kissing back, harder and deeper. I could feel her warmth even through our clothes.
I peeled off her uniform slowly… button by button.
Underneath: plain bra, cotton panties, skin like untouched snow.
Her body was compact and tight with breasts small but soft, her thighs firm and smooth.
When I slipped a hand between her legs, she gasped and buried her face into my neck.
“Don’t go too fast… it’s been a while,” she whispered.
⸻
I laid her gently on the bed.
Kissed her belly, her thighs. Licked the spot where her tattoo curved toward her shoulder.
When I entered her slowly, she tensed, and then let out a half-moan, half-whimper.
“You’re… you’re really quite big,” she said, breathless.
“Slow… okay?”
I nodded, thinking back of Joanne, the pint-sized intern I knew when I was starting out in the corporate world (Chapter 33).
⸻
We moved together, unhurried and tender.
Her nails dug into my back as I entered fully. Her moans then turned into gasps, then back to moans. She clung to me with her arms and legs wrapped tight, every movement drawing me deeper inside.
I kissed her neck, her lips, the hollow of her throat.
She came with a long, trembling sigh, with her voice cracking like silk torn in half.
I followed, holding still inside her, forehead against hers, heart hammering.
⸻
Afterward, we lay in silence.
She ran her fingers over my stomach, tracing the outline of my abs.
“You’re not like the men here,” she said softly.
“And you’re not like the girls I used to chase,” I replied.
She smiled, eyes closed.
“Maybe it’s good we only get tonight.”
⸻
I left the next morning.
When I returned to the shop three days later, she was gone.
The counter girl said Xiaoyu had gone back to her hometown in Suzhou on leave, and would only be back in a week.
I never saw her again.
But I still remember the way she looked in that dim room, lit by the glow of a cheap lamp, skin bare, voice shaking… and the way she whispered, “Don’t break me,” not as fear, but invitation.
⸻
[End of Chapter 108]
Mirror Site:
