Night in the suburban slums of Sector 7 always crept down with a wet, heavy silence. Inside Gilang’s cramped attic room, the cheap vapor of a low-end e-cigarette blended with the scent of leftover black instant coffee, sending thin wisps curling into the night air.

The frantic wail of police sirens no longer echoed through the city streets. Corporate helicopters no longer buzzed angrily overhead across the corrugated tin roofs. Ever since the collapse of the Ant Corp central tower weeks ago, the modern world seemed to draw a long, collective breath, shedding the crushing weight that had choked the necks of millions for so long. The corporate giant now remained merely as a name buried within the bankruptcy archives of the century's largest corporate collapse, while its executives rotted behind prison bars the size of shoe boxes.

Gilang sat brooding in his squeaky plastic chair. He wore a faded gray t-shirt and loose lounge pants, his right hand gripping a chipped ceramic mug filled with hot coffee. His weary eyes stared straight at the monitor screen of his obsolete computer sitting atop a cluttered workstation.

The screen displayed a pitch-black void, completely dead, as if sharing the emptiness that lingered deep within the freelancer's chest.

"Hah... feels kind of empty when your wallet's empty, but there's no corporate tax bill shaking you down every day," Gilang muttered to himself, breaking the silence of his room. He took a slow sip of his coffee, feeling the warm, bitter sensation slide down his throat.

He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling how this insane journey had begun. From chasing down cheap retail poltergeists for a box of instant coffee packs, getting dragged into the vicious cycle of the SoulSync soul market, fighting killer cybrids on the wet asphalt of the red-light district, right down to those terrifying seconds in the hundredth-floor main server room when Renata had stepped straight into the pillar of purple light to atone for her sins.

The loss was real. The wounds still lingered. Yet, beneath that grief lay an extraordinary peace—the solace of knowing that the world out there could finally sleep soundly without fearing their soul essence would be stolen by a corporate algorithm.

Suddenly, a soft, whirring hum creaked from within the old computer CPU beneath the desk.

Bzzzt... creak.

Gilang opened his eyes. His brows furrowed in confusion. He hadn't touched the power button, and he had deliberately unplugged the main power cord since last night just to shave down his utility bill.

Yet, the worn-out monitor before him abruptly flared to life on its own.

No Ant Corp logo, no curse-scanning app menu. The pitch-black display slowly filled with thousands of cascading lines of bright green code streaming swiftly from top to bottom, dancing agilely into a pristine, geometric cyberpunk graphic pattern.

Gilang straightened up, setting his coffee cup down slowly onto the table with a slightly tense hand. He leaned forward, studying every pixel shift on the display.

The cascade of green code stopped flowing dead in the center of the screen. In the blink of an eye, the code compacted and fused to form a simple pixelated smiley face—a classic icon once frequently sketched by someone along the margins of secret project blueprints.

Instantly, the mouse cursor on the screen moved on its own to an empty text field, typing out sentence after sentence at the speed of a human hand, yet accompanied by a flawless digital rhythm:

“Good job, Freelancer. Your black coffee is getting cold.”

Gilang’s eyes widened. His heart hammered wildly, and for a fleeting second, the air inside the attic room felt suddenly thin. His throat constricted, yet the corners of his lips slowly curved upward into the warmest, most sincere smile he had worn after weeks of numbing emptiness.

Gilang wasn't surprised. He felt no fear. He knew precisely who was greeting him from beyond the city's circuits and orbital satellites.

"You're late saying hello, Madam Director," Gilang spoke softly, his voice raspy with the emotion welling in his chest. He brought his face closer to the monitor screen as if speaking directly to someone standing right before him. "My coffee is cold, but it tastes just the same as when we first spoke inside your luxury car."

On the monitor screen, the smiley face icon blinked twice, replaced by a fresh stream of automated typing:

“Cold or hot, your instant coffee is still terrible for your heart, Gilang. But at least you no longer have to pay a ninety percent tax to the corporation.”

Gilang let out a soft chuckle—a crisp laugh, unburdened by the crushing weight that had squeezed his life for so long. "Ah, so now you're my new financial auditor? Planning to skim my cut too?"

“No. I am no longer part of the corporation, Gilang,” the cursor typed nimbly across the screen. “I am the system itself. Keeping the network clean, ensuring no more little 'worker ants' get squeezed by a broken system.”

Gilang fell silent, staring at the screen. He fully grasped the truth behind those words. Renata had melted away into eternity, merging with the global data network, becoming an invisible guardian behind the digital screens of the mega-city. She had never truly left; she had become an immortal soul—the Ghost in the Machine.

"Are you happy there, Renata?" Gilang asked softly, his tone dripping with deep longing.

The monitor screen flickered gently, casting a soothing green ambient glow across the corners of the cramped attic. The cursor moved once more to type a reply:

“Much calmer than when I sat in the boardroom chair, Gilang. Up here... I can see everything with complete clarity.”

Gilang let out a long breath, absorbing every word etched upon the display. He reached back for his ceramic mug, took a sip of his black coffee—which had now grown entirely cold—and stared at the computer monitor with a gaze of profound peace.

"Then... congratulations on your new job, Cyber Guardian," Gilang whispered sincerely.

He reached for the keyboard before him, tapping out a final sentence as his closing salutation for the night:

"If you ever need someone to talk to on a quiet night, your main server has access to my attic room, right?"

Hearing those keystrokes, the monitor screen displayed a winking animation from the smiley face icon, followed by a final cursor movement typing out a closing line that made Gilang break into a wide grin:

“There's still a cheap poltergeist case in Sector 7 you need to take care of, Gilang. Don't slack off.”

Finished typing that sentence, the computer screen slowly dimmed on its own, returning to a peaceful black without leaving behind any trace other than the warmth lingering deep within the freelancer's heart.

Gilang leaned back into his plastic chair, letting the night wrap its arms around his room, ready to welcome tomorrow with a fresh cup of coffee and a completely blank page of life.

-The End-