Halfway Home

The first time Gadis realized her ghost roommate could cry, the air smelled like rain.

It wasn’t the kind of crying you could hear — no sobbing, no trembling shoulders. Just the faintest shimmer in the air, like a mirror fogging up from sadness.

She looked up from her laptop.
“DewaBuku? Are you… leaking ectoplasm again?”

From the corner near the ceiling, his translucent head peeked out.
“No. I’m… emotional.”

Gadis arched an eyebrow. “You? Emotional? Please. The last time I saw you ‘emotional,’ it was because the Wi-Fi went down.”

He drifted closer, his form flickering like an old VHS tape.
“You ever think about what happens when people forget you?”

“Forget you?” she said, frowning. “You mean, like… stop talking about you?”

“Yeah. I think I’m disappearing.”

Gadis blinked. “You’re a ghost. That’s kind of the point.”

He gave a small, sad smile. “No, I mean really disappearing. Yesterday, I tried to open the fridge — and my hand went through it. It never used to. It’s like I’m fading out of the world.”

The Apartment Between Worlds

The apartment had once been Gadis’s worst decision.
Now, it was home.

There were faint scorch marks on the kitchen tiles, probably from the previous tenant’s “experimental cooking.” The bathroom pipes moaned like old men in pain. Yet somehow, the place had grown warm — maybe because laughter had found a way to echo through its cracked walls.

But that night, the laughter was gone.

DewaBuku floated over the couch, legs crossed like a meditating monk.
“You know what’s funny?” he said. “When I was alive, no one remembered me either. Now even death’s like, ‘yeah, we’re good without you.’”

“Don’t say that,” Gadis muttered, though her voice softened.

He looked at her with faintly glowing eyes. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

“I live with one. I just don’t believe in your drama.”

She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Because deep down, she did believe him. She had noticed things — the quiet hum of his presence growing weaker, his jokes coming slower, his laughter losing color.

He was fading.
And that scared her more than she wanted to admit.

The Search for the Living Past

The next morning, Gadis found herself scrolling through online obituaries.

“DewaBuku,” she muttered. “That’s not your real name, right? You had to have an actual one.”

He floated near the ceiling fan, upside down as usual. “It’s… complicated. Let’s just say I used to be a writer.”

Gadis turned, intrigued. “A writer? Like, published?”

“Almost,” he said with a sigh. “I….I suddenly disappeared before I could finish my first book.”

She set her phone down slowly.
“That’s it,” she whispered. “Maybe that’s why you’re stuck here — unfinished business!”

He gave her a flat look. “You’ve been watching too many horror movies.”

“No, seriously! What if all you need is closure? What if your story needs to be told?”

“Even if it’s terrible?”

“Especially if it’s terrible.”

He laughed — a soft, echoing sound that somehow filled the room again. “Alright, fine. But you’re the one typing. I’m not great with keyboards anymore.”

And so began their strange collaboration — a living girl and her dead roommate, rewriting fragments of a forgotten life.

Ghostwriting, Literally

The days turned into weeks.

Every evening after work, Gadis would open her laptop, and DewaBuku — or Rendra, as she later learned — would float beside her, dictating lines from memory.

“‘The sun never sets on broken promises,’” he said one night, eyes distant. “That was the first line I ever wrote.”

“That’s… kind of pretentious,” Gadis muttered.

He grinned. “I was a writer.”

They spent hours piecing together chapters, arguing about dialogue, debating metaphors, and laughing over plot holes. Gadis typed, DewaBuku narrated, and for the first time, the apartment felt alive in a different way.

But sometimes, she’d catch him staring at the city lights outside the window.
“You miss it, don’t you?” she asked.

He didn’t answer.

And sometimes, when she pretended to sleep, she could hear him whispering names into the dark — names she didn’t recognize, from a life that no longer existed.

The Neighbor Who Remembered

One afternoon, there was a knock at the door.

An elderly woman stood outside, holding a small potted plant.
“Excuse me, miss,” she said softly. “I used to live next door. Is this still Mr. Rendra’s apartment?”

Gadis froze. “Rendra?”

“Yes. Rendra Saputra. Lovely boy. He used to lend me books. Always said he’d be famous one day.”

Behind her, Rendra — or DewaBuku — went perfectly still. His glow dimmed, like a candle’s last breath.

“I… think he still lives here,” Gadis said finally. “In a way.”

The woman smiled faintly. “Then tell him I still have his book. The one he never finished.”

She placed the plant in Gadis’s hands and walked away.

The Vanishing

That night, Gadis placed the plant by the window.

Rendra hovered beside her, faint and transparent now — just a shimmer of blue light.

“You remembered me,” he said quietly.

“Of course I did.”

“No, I mean… you remembered me. That’s all I ever wanted.”

His outline flickered. The air around him pulsed faintly, like breath held too long.

She reached out, hand trembling. “Don’t go.”

He smiled, voice fading like wind through curtains. “You finished my story. Now it’s time for you to write yours.”

And then — silence.

The air went still. The city noise outside softened. The apartment felt bigger, quieter, emptier.

Gadis sat there, staring at the empty space he left behind, tears slowly finding their way down her cheeks.

On her laptop, the cursor blinked on the last line of their document:

Title: Halfway Home
By: Rendra Saputra & Gadis Pramesti

Epilogue: One Year Later

The book didn’t make her rich. It didn’t even hit the bestseller list.
But it did something more important — people read it. They talked about it. They remembered his name.

Sometimes, in interviews, Gadis would laugh and say,
“Oh, I had a ghostwriter.”

No one believed her, of course. But every time she said it, she felt the air shift — just a little.

And on certain nights, when the city rain whispered against the windows and the air smelled faintly like burnt toast, the lights would flicker — once, softly.

Like someone turning a page from the other side.

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