That day, Nusantara High School looked like an unattainable paradise to Nadia. On the school bulletin board, the graduation announcement paper hung in all its glory. Nadia’s name sat right at the very top. Those numbers—the row of flawless grades she had earned by studying under the dim flicker of a candle while battling chronic hunger—were displayed in plain sight. She was this year's valedictorian.

All around her, her peers cheered in delight. Some hugged each other, others were already busy chattering about college plans in the big city, and a few laughed as they imagined their future farewells. Nadia smiled, but the smile tasted completely hollow. She stared at those rows of numbers with bitter sentiment. Those figures were proof of her hard work, yet simultaneously, they served as a death sentence for her dreams.

Inside the pocket of her gray skirt, Nadia clutched tightly to a brochure she had picked up from the administration office yesterday—a pamphlet for the State University of Prime. The blue color of the brochure looked painfully vibrant, clashing against the yellowed fabric of her uniform. Her eyes locked onto the final line: Registration and First Semester Tuition: Rp8,500,000.

Eight and a half million rupiah.

To her, that sum wasn't just money; it was an impossible number. For a family that had to weep over a single packet of instant noodles, eight million was an absurd amount. It was roughly what they lived on for two years if they stretched every penny to its absolute limit.

"Nadia, congratulations! You're definitely heading to a top university, right?" The voice belonged to Rina, a classmate from a well-to-do family. Rina smiled sincerely, but the question felt like a knife twisting into Nadia's chest.

"Thank you, Rina," Nadia replied flatly. She quickly folded the brochure and shoved it back into her pocket. "I haven't figured out my plans yet."

"Oh, don't be so modest! With grades like yours, you're bound to land a scholarship," Rina chirped, entirely oblivious to the crushing weight on Nadia's shoulders.

Nadia managed a tight nod before excusing herself. She walked out of the school gates with dragging, lifeless steps. The blue bag left behind by her father felt infinitely heavier than usual. Every step along the way home felt like she was walking further and further away from the future she had always dreamed of.

Upon reaching the house, the atmosphere was uncharacteristically tense. Nadia could hear Mother Ratna sobbing, but this time, it wasn't from hunger or exhaustion. There was another sound—a heavy, harsh, and deeply intimidating voice. A man's voice.

Nadia hurried her pace. She pushed open the front door, which was never securely locked anyway. In the cramped living room, she found Mother Ratna kneeling on the bamboo floor, her hands raised defensively toward a burly man wearing a filthy leather jacket. The man stood tall, clutching a tattered piece of paper.

"I don't care, Mrs. Ratna," the man boomed, his heavy voice reverberating off the wooden walls. "Your late husband borrowed this money six months before he passed away. He said it was for medical treatment. Now, the payment is overdue."

Nadia froze in the doorway. Debt? Her father had debt? All this time, Nadia had assumed they were poor simply because of her father's erratic income as a laborer, not because they were shackled by loans.

"Please, sir... give us more time," Mother Ratna sobbed. "Nadia just finished school; she needs money to find work. We don't have anything left to sell."

"I'm not a charity running on empty promises," the man scoffed, his eyes sweeping across the room as if calculating the resale value of their rickety wooden furniture. "The principal and interest now total seven million. If I don't have cash within a week, I'm coming back to seize whatever is in this house. Starting with the house itself."

Seven million.

Nadia felt the room spin. Seven million rupiah. An amount nearly equal to the college tuition fees she dreamed of. The brochure in her skirt pocket suddenly felt scorching hot, burning against her skin.

"Sir, please..." Mother Ratna reached out to grab the man's ankle, but he kicked her hand away roughly.

Nadia couldn't stand by any longer. She stepped forward, positioning herself in front of her mother, looking the man dead in the eye with a gaze she forced to remain steady, even though her heart hammered wildly against her ribs. "Sir, we will pay. But give us more than a week. We need time to gather the money."

The man turned his gaze toward Nadia. He looked her up and down with blatant, patronizing contempt. "You're a high school graduate, right? Go find a job. Be a maid, a laundrywoman, anything. Don't make me burn this house down just because you people are useless with money."

After the man stormed out, the roar of his motorcycle cutting through the stillness of the afternoon, the suffocating gloom settled back over the wooden house. Mother Ratna remained kneeling, her face buried in her hands.

Nadia stepped closer, dropping to her knees beside her mother. "Mom... why didn't you ever tell me about this debt?"

Mother Ratna looked up, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. "I didn't want you to know, honey. I wanted you to focus on your studies. I wanted you to have a better future than ours."

Nadia drew a long, shuddering breath. She glanced at the blue bag sitting in the corner of the room. The dream of college—a dream she had guarded like a fragile flame amid a raging storm—was now well and truly buried. How could she even think about higher education when the roof over their heads was about to be repossessed?

She reached out and took her mother's hand. "It's okay, Mom. We'll find a way. Nadia will find a job."

Yet deep inside, Nadia wanted to scream in absolute agony. She pulled the torn pieces of the blue university brochure back out of her pocket. Slowly, deliberately, she shredded it into tiny fragments and tossed them into the corner of the room.

However, just as she let go of the final scrap, a silhouette appeared in the doorway. Uncle Tono stood there with a smirk far more sinister than the loan shark's, a cigarette dangling lazily from his lips.

"Good," Uncle Tono said, spitting onto the floor. "Now that you know what's going on, I don't need to beat around the bush. Tomorrow night, your prospective husband is coming over to settle that debt—and to take you away as his wife."

Nadia fell silent. The world around her turned utterly hollow. The college dream she had built over three years was dead, replaced by the bitter reality that she was about to be sold off to clear her late father's debts.

Didn't Dad say I had to step out of the darkness? Nadia whispered inwardly. But how am I supposed to do that when the darkness has just come to claim me?