Metamorphosis

“Suri hasn’t updated much, hasn’t she?”

  Nadirah peered at Arina over her laptop, nonchalantly shrugged.

  “Her last entry is about hypocrites,” she skimmed the article, scoffing aloud. “I doubt there’s a reason for Zahari’s constant tormenting towards me. He lies at my face all the time. He’s definitely a psychotic hypocrite.”

  “There is a reason,” said Widad. “You’re an easy target, that’s the reason.”

  “Psycho, then,” provided Nadirah.

  “Definitive psycho,” Arina acceded. “Sometimes I wish that I was an only child—”

  “No,” said Nadirah flatly.

  “Okay, maybe not that extreme,” she amended her words, “Maybe not to have an older brother but a younger brother instead—”

  “No,” said Widad coldly.

  “Okay,” Arina’s voice went slightly high-pitched, “Older sister—” her eyes flickered toward Widad, “Maybe not.”

  “Why are we here again?” Widad sipped her coffee impatiently, her eyes clearly bored as she cupped her chin on the air-conditioned café’s coffee table.

  If it wasn’t for the noticeably sour faces of the two cousins, the café would have retained its tranquil and peace atmosphere. Yet that was not possible, not when they’d been unwillingly forced to accompany Arina by the vicious words of her own, all for the sake of her daily internet dose of celebrities’ gossips.

  Not exactly unwilling on Nadirah’s part; she truly needed the connectivity more than anything right this second. But she tried to keep a blasé front. She didn’t want the two of them to pry into her little affairs if her true colors were to burst out-front.

  “Don’t pretend that you don’t know,” Arina muttered, “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “It is?”

  “Of course it is,” she snapped, but then her eyes brightened as she shook Nadirah’s hand. “I’m right yet again!”

  Nadirah creased her brows. “Huh?”

  “I challenged Ty,” she said jubilantly. “I won, yet again.”

  “You—”

  “Always won, I know! Ty said it himself,” she grinned mischievously. “But no one has such luck with Ty.”

  “Matter of life and death,” muttered Widad.

  Arina ignored her completely, animatedly conversing to Nadirah. “I bet Ty is furious right now.”

  Nadirah shrugged.

  Truthfully, Ty had expressed his annoyance toward Arina more than once in several occasions.

  No one in the virtual world knew that both of them were related. The only thing that they knew was that Suri had an extremely nosy cousin who loved gossips more than anything—the reason for her continuous pestering toward Ty— but never in their mind would they assume that the person in question was no other than Arina herself. For that, Nadirah was thankful that such confidential information was out from their ears, especially Ty’s.

  However, now that the fleeting suspicion of xyru breathing in the same place as her had been more prominent as the time ticked by, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Widad sighed. “I should’ve asked my mother to install the internet at Grandmother’s house.”

  “Why?” asked Arina, flummoxed by her cousin’s lack of interest. “This place is nice, the Wi-Fi is free, honestly,” she leaned in, “You have nothing to lose.”

  “Oh yeah, nothing to lose,” Widad rolled her eyes, “Except for a couple of mere notes for overpriced coffee.”

  “You drink it all the time!”

  “I do,” she admitted, “But I usually pay for one, not for three.”

  “You have your personal income!”

  Widad scoffed. “You don’t?”

  “Allowances and personal income are two totally different things,” Arina pointed out firmly, “Much, much different.”

  Widad stared at Arina in a mixture of pity and supercilious, “Which planet are you living in, dear cousin?”

  Arina decided to feign ignorance, shifting her attention toward her other cousin, who undoubtedly, not as grouchy. “What are you doing anyway?” she nudged Nadirah on her elbow. “You look pissed.”

  Not as pissed as Widad. That was for sure.

  Nadirah staggered slightly on her seat. “I do?”

  “Maybe you don’t,” Arina scrunched her face, “Sleepy, maybe.”

  “Sleepy,” Nadirah echoed. Sighing, she pointed at her laptop. “Mails.”

  “Ugh, I hate mails. All those spams and junks,” she shuddered. “I just delete everything most of the time.”

  “Of course you would,” Widad said dryly. “Your emails are junks anyways.”

  “They’re not.”

  “They are,” her tone was undeniably smug, “I’d bet your inbox are filled with computer-generated notifying messages from those various forums you visit every single day.”

  “That,” Arina grabbed her tumbler, bringing it close to the brim of her lips, “Is true, but who use emails anyway, nowadays?”

  “Uh,” Nadirah peeked from under her laptop screen, “Me?”

  “Present company excluded,” she took a swig of her coffee.

  “Your dad?” provided Widad, snickering.

  “Blood relatives excluded!” she said hotly, which might due to the steaming coffee.

  Widad cocked her head toward a neighboring table. “That person?”

  “Present company excluded,” Nadirah grinned, her tone was staccato at its best.

  Arina grunted grudgingly. “Okay, fine. Everyone uses email but me,” she said dryly, eyeing Nadirah flatly. “Do you have a lot of mails?”

  “Kind of,” Nadirah pointed at her pendrive. “Copying.”

  “Oh,” Arina shrugged, proceeding to fixate her eyes at her own laptop screen. “My download will finish in just another 15 minutes.”

  “Good, this chair is killing me—” Widad’s eyes abruptly flew toward Arina. “What are you downloading anyway?”

  “None of your concern, and I happen to think that this chair is comfy.”

  “I’m just bored then,” she twirled her tumbler around, “I have no laptop to occupy myself with.”

  “Here,” said Arina eagerly, “Watch my music video collection. I have tons of them.”

  “I d—”

  “You’ll like them!”

  “I don’t—”

  “You like them.”

  Nadirah snorted, quickly replacing the uncouth sound with a little coffee swigging, avoiding from being Arina’s next victim.

  Being distracted was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

  Nonetheless, they didn’t lounge at the café more than necessary. After Arina had successfully brainwashed Widad with her horrid choice of music, they returned home with much contentment, except for Widad apparently—the sound of the said music manifesting her stereo did nothing but beleaguer her.

  Nadirah walked toward the open garden, proceeding to open her laptop in the outdoor’s picnic table. She had forwarded all of xyru’s emails to her own email address, deleted any evidence that may linked to her file transferring, and after pinpointing the related mails, she had come to a total of eight mails. Excluding the first mail, she had seven messages waiting to be intruded and invaded by her own eyes.

  She was such a nosy person. She never knew.

  She doubted anyone would though, considering how her personality was the reserve and oblivious type.

  It was a good thing that her inner thoughts were muted against the ears of mere mortals.

  Subject: A butterfly with no wings 11.04 am Sunday

  What is a butterfly, if one cannot flutter the wings and let it fly with the wind?

  You must find her wings, ransack the house if you must, but please, let the butterfly find her way back to me.

  Do not waste any more time. I have more contacts than you can imagine, so there is no reason for you to meet a dead end.

  I cannot live in wrath, and I know that you are dying to escape from my wrath.

  Subject: The spa
rkling butterfly is crying diamonds 10.00 am Saturday

  Why do I feel as if the butterfly is aging and shredding its skin? Granted, it is not a snake, so a mild shredding is like a throbbing pain. Please, do not let the skin completely shred. You need to hurry and save the butterfly, or else a phoenix I will be, and none of us would appreciate that.

  Subject: The butterfly is still on the loose? 8.00 pm Friday

  So I am told that there is a witness who could aid our way.

  I have organized the rest; you will receive your invitation momentarily.

  Do not rests assure, since the case has yet to rest.

  Subject: Where is the scent of the butterfly? 5.00 pm Friday

  The blackmailing of the butterfly has not escaped my ears, yet I have not seen the sheet.

  I need to see it now, my dear grandson. I need to see it now.

  Subject: The hunt for the butterfly is still going strong 11.01 pm Thursday

  I have crucial information waiting to be shared.

  Do kindly visit me at my house.

  Subject: The captivators of my sparkling butterfly 10.25 pm Thursday

  I need a list of the potential kidnappers. Who would dare to keep my butterfly in their custody, suffocating my butterfly with the terrible fragrance of death, engulfing the cage with their most loathsome scent? They are the lowest human beings, and I detest them greatly.

  For the longest time, Nadirah did nothing but stare at the mails, her eyebrows raised at the sheer absurdity of it all. She didn’t have the slightest idea of the true misery beneath the overbearingly confusing words, but at least the investigation had sealed her suspicion—the butterfly was indeed the lost hairpin of Ikhwan’s grandmother.

  Furthermore, if she were to decipher the first mail—undoubtedly the latest one— the keywords that she found—apart from the obvious wrath—would be ransack.

  Ransack…might as well meant ransack.

  How much percentage was there that her grandmother’s house was not the chosen victim of such crime, especially when the fake journalist and the bearer of the internet pseudonym were proven to be one and the same?

  Nadirah was more than certain that this house was in jeopardy, and since xyru had been ordered by his grandmother to ransack the house, then…

  She needed to smack some sense into that idiot’s head.

  It was a good thing that her glib tongue seemed to run loose whenever she conversed with the idiot. Summoning her evil side wasn’t as easy as it looked, not when the said evil side had been hibernating for years in the lowest pit of her soul.

  Although, it had been rattling lately…ever since she met him.

  More reasons to torture him, then.

  A butterfly flew by her nose, playfully playing along the breeze, and as Nadirah stared at the magnificent creation, her mind started to wander.

  For once, she was grateful that her Pandora box seemed to unconsciously open whenever she talked to him. How was she going to lash out verbally at Ikhwan for his desperately foolish plan, if she was severely handicapped like a wingless butterfly?

  Her wings were only slightly detached; she can still fly. Admittedly, it was supremely painful, but it worth every effort.

  “Aah!”

  Nadirah abruptly startled, her ears nearly deafened by a piercingly high-pitched voice, shrieking on the top of her lungs.

  “I,” apparently, the voice belonged to Widad, “Did not,” judging by her pale face, maybe the butterfly had sucked her blood, “Just saw,” but butterflies did not drink humans blood, “That fly!” Widad shrieked, flabbergasted beyond words.

  Nadirah flinched. “I-it’s a butterfly,” she was still shocked by the sudden loudness of her cousin’s voice, especially when the target of such aggravation was just a normal butterfly.

  “It’s a moth!”

  “It’s…” she blinked, scrutinizing the creature, “The same species?”

  Maybe it wasn’t just a normal butterfly after all.

  “It’s not a butterfly!”

  Since when did Widad become afraid of butterflies?

  “Since when did you become afraid of butterflies?”

  Nadirah clasped her mouth.

  It might due to her sudden confidence of confronting Ikhwan, or maybe it was just because she was highly flummoxed by Widad’s odd behavior, but somehow, she began to regain her freedom of speech.

  That was awesome.

  The box was rattling.

  Oh.

  “Since…” Widad staggered, gasping for air. “I’ll see you later.” She quickly fled the garden without another word, and after a few moments, Nadirah saw Widad’s car zooming on the road, bearing the sour-faced owner on the driver’s seat.

  Nadirah had no doubt that Widad was going to try recovering her breath with the soft smell of brand-new shoes and branded jackets at the mall.

  “Nadirah.”

  She swiveled around, only to find a glowing elder woman beaming at her with uncontainable light. “Grandmother Maznah is here, kindly do me a favor and greet the lady, will you?”

  “Ah,” she froze in front of her laptop, dreading the thought of greeting people with her inferior verbal skill.

  “Her grandchildren are also here,” her grandmother’s beam was blindingly bright, and it felt as if she was trying to inject some of her sunshine into her frozen granddaughter.

  It worked.

  Grandchildren.

  The word playfully floated in her mind, repeatedly repeating itself, and it took every ounce of self-control to maintain her nonchalance persona.

  Truthfully, she wasn’t quite ready to confront the fraud, but she might as well get it over with since the opportunity had pretty much landed in front of her very eyes.

  “Okay,” her voice sounded foreign to her ears, but that was not her main concern at the moment.

  “Good.” Her grandmother craned her neck left and right, ostensibly searching for something, “Where is Widad?”

  “Why?” Nadirah asked dubiously.

  “Grandmother Maznah is dying to meet her, I expect,” she beamed again.

  “Why?” once again, dubiously.

  “Because she likes her of course,” Grandmother Fatima stared at Nadirah as if she was a complete moron, and started to sound impatient, “Have you seen her?”

  Nadirah stood there comically, pondering for the right answer.

  If spending time with Widad for the last couple of days had taught her anything, it was the fact that Nadirah outranked her every time they touched the subject regarding Danial.

  If it meant anything, it very well meant that she was terribly afraid of Danial, and meeting him will certainly be on top of her list of unwanted things.

  Nadirah knew that she was truly a kind person at heart, so she answered, “No.”

  After all, honest was not she.

  She had not seen her…not unless you counted the previous minutes.

  “It’s okay,” her grandmother patted her back, literally dragging her toward the house, “I’ll find her myself.”

  Nadirah entered the house from the backdoor, glancing at her grandmother who was frantically asking the caretakers about the absence of Widad.

  She was brutally ashamed of her insensitive and dishonest act, but she had a bigger problem to take care for now.

  The fate of this house was in her hands!

  Now that was certainly a bigger problem.

  If anything, she had acknowledged herself as the vainest person alive. Thus, in her quest of avoiding unnecessarily embarrassing scene, she took the liberty of securing a spot in the house, all for the purpose of regularly prying the guest in order to reestablish her image.

  She couldn’t afford to lose her face and end up gasping for the correct words in front of those unexpected guests. Pleasing everyone was a lot of work, especially when that everyone didn’t have the same attributes and fondness.

  Therefore, she went upstairs, peeked at the little hole on the floor—which of course, was
the ceiling of the living room—and watched the free show.

  She could see a certain elderly lady pecking both of Arina's cheeks, and sure enough, there were two of her grandsons standing behind her like loyal puppies—

  Bodyguards. She meant bodyguards.

  Anyway, everyone was there, excluding Widad, excluding herself, and of course, excluding her grandmother.

  Nadirah startled as Najwan looked up, suddenly grinning at her.

  It was customary to expect Nadirah somewhere up on the ceiling whenever a guest had arrived—she was usually fashionably late in providing her simple greeting—so each of the cousins knew exactly where to look at if her grand appearance was amiss.

  Najwan mouthed the words, “Get down.”

  Nadirah shook her head, “Wait.”

  Najwan grinned wickedly, pretending nudging Ikhwan to look up, but suddenly, his cell phone rang.

  I said WAIT!

  Najwan snorted, subsequently replied,

  Fine.

  “All of Fatima’s grandchildren have grown up! I couldn’t believe my eyes. It felt like yesterday when I saw all of you prattling around, now each of you is taller than me!”

  “Of course Grandmother Maznah,” Zahari smiled earnestly. “It’s been a while.”

  And when he meant a while, he really meant a couple of months. They’d probably met the grandmother on every single occasion, but she never seemed to remember their identities.

  And neither did Nadirah. She never knew that this grandmother was the Grandmother Maznah. She supposed that was forgivable, considering the grandmother made the mistake herself.

  But the grandmother, admittedly, was older than her parents. She, on the other hand, was as old as her grandson.

  Oh well.

  “It has,” she nodded. “I am constantly reminded on how time flies like butterflies.”

  This grandmother definitely had an unhealthy obsession with butterflies, Nadirah thought.

  Exactly the opposite of Widad, then. But supposedly, they got along?

  Her cell phone abruptly rung, stopping her mind from unnecessary dwelling. As she flipped it open, a message from Najwan reflected on her eyes.

  Okay, time’s up. Get down now, or I’ll tell Zahari.

  She grunted, and through the hole, she can see that Najwan was still grinning at her.

  Fine. But do me a favor. Or I’ll tell Zahari about our clandestine endeavor, and you being my accomplice.

  His eyebrows raised, his finger stabbing the keypad furiously.

  Accomplice, huh? Fine, what is it?

  Nadirah grinned as she typed…

  Ask about the sparkling butterfly.

  He looked up, staring at her quizzically.

  “Just ask,” she mouthed.

  He nodded, and gave the elder lady his full attention. “So, Grandmother Maznah,” he said lightly, “Have you retrieved your sparkling butterfly yet?”

  Grandmother Maznah didn’t look the least comfortable, but she hid it well with a gentle laugh. “No, I’m afraid not,” she swallowed. “I believe I have yet to found it.”

  “Such a pity,” he let out a heartfelt sigh. His phone beeped yet again, and as he read it, he said, “My grandmother said that it’s filled with memories.”

  “Ah, yes,” she nodded reluctantly. “A memento from my uncle, but I,” she hesitated, and then asked in a high-pitched voice, “I’ll say, where is the rest of your cousins?”

  Najwan typed furiously on his keypad, and after finished pressing the last button, Nadirah’s cell phone began to ring.

  Get down. NOW.

  It was inevitable. She needed to flee from the scene, now. Or else everyone will know about her nosy nose peeking from the hole on the ceiling.

  And the fake journalist will know that there would be a hole in his yet to be published story.

  She quickly exited the room, and upon entering the living room, she was there just in time to hear Zahari asked, “Have you seen her, Danial?”

  Nadirah had no doubt that they were talking about Widad.

  “I’m a guest, so naturally, I haven’t.” He said smoothly, but when his eyes fell on Nadirah, he added amusedly, “I’ve seen the other cousin, however.”

  Nadirah grinned, walking forward to shake the elder lady’s hand. Grandmother Maznah tugged Nadirah’s hand further and pecked both of her cheeks. “My, have you grown! Nadirah, isn’t it?”

  Nadirah smiled, nodding politely.

  “Have you seen Widad?” she asked, curiously searching for a clue on Nadirah’s face. “I’m dying to meet her.”

  “Uh…” she glanced at Najwan, of which he replied suavely, “Nadirah was searching for her just now.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I-I’ll go…” she licked her lips, “Find her again.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary—”

  “Oh, it is,” said Najwan seriously. “Widad only listens to Nadirah’s words.”

  Every pair of eyes began to land on her.

  “Is that so?” asked Danial curiously.

  “Uh…” she smiled sheepishly.

  “Let’s go find her,” said Najwan, indicating her to follow him.

  She smiled at the audience, and followed Najwan out from the living room.

  “Too…much…pressure,” she panted, “I…am…dying…”

  “Would you like a cup of tea, madam?” asked Najwan amusedly.

  “No thanks,” she gasped.

  “Fresh air?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Widad?”

  “Don’t care.”

  He snorted, and said, “Well, you’ve given me a reason to excuse myself.” He led her toward the kitchen, opening the backdoor, “Run along and pretend that you’re searching for Widad.”

  She scrunched her face.

  “Come on now,” he grinned, “Go.”

  She exited the door, and indulged in the brisk air.

  Strangers were one thing, attention was another problem. Combined, and it’d be a lethal disaster.

  She might be able to have a better hold of herself if the entire eyes in the room didn’t shoot their full attention on her at once.

  Now that she thought about it, she didn’t think she saw Ikhwan.

  She was certain that he was there during her secret stalking, but when she entered the room, he miraculously disappeared.

  She ran around the house, searching for the person in question, but suddenly, her steps halted as she saw a certain figure pacing back and forth at the front lawn, heavily indulged in a deep thought.

  No, it was not Widad.

  chapter 4