First Love Never Ends

The road to Seraya had not changed.

Even after ten years away, Dela Hartono recognized every curve, every bend that dipped through the hills and passed the rusted signs of forgotten warungs. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she crossed the small, familiar bridge—the one painted turquoise, chipped by weather and time. Below it, the river still ran slow and brown.

It felt like driving into a memory.

She rolled the window down. The air was warmer than in Jakarta, tinged with the scent of burning wood and wet grass. Somewhere in the distance, a rooster crowed, even though the sun had already risen.

Dela sighed.

She hadn’t planned on coming back. Not really. The last time she left Seraya, she swore to herself it would be permanent. But promises made at eighteen were rarely honest ones. And now here she was again, a decade older, suitcase in the trunk, guilt in her chest.

Her grandmother had fallen last week — a minor accident, her cousin had said over the phone, but still enough to land her in the hospital overnight. Dela knew it was more than that. Grandma Ani had been forgetting names lately. And routines. And some days, even her own age.

“I’ll just visit for a few days,” Dela had told her fiancé, Malik, before boarding the train. “Maybe a week. I’ll be back before the wedding planner needs me.”

But now, seeing Seraya again, she wasn’t so sure.

The town looked almost frozen in time. As she passed the main street, she saw the old tailor shop still standing, though the name had faded. The small coffee house where she used to sneak afternoon dates was now a cell phone store. But the bakery still smelled the same — sweet bread and vanilla.

Everything had changed, and yet nothing had.

Her car pulled into her grandmother’s driveway. The white-painted gate creaked as she opened it, and she smiled faintly at the hydrangeas still blooming along the wall. She could hear the TV from inside — a soap opera, full of shouting and dramatic music.

“Mak?” she called, knocking softly on the open door. “It’s me. Dela.”

The old woman appeared in the hallway a moment later, thinner than she remembered, wrapped in a floral housecoat, but with the same mischievous spark in her eyes.

“Dela, ya Tuhan! You came all this way?” Grandma Ani opened her arms wide. “Still as skinny as a stick. Come here.”

Dela embraced her, breathing in the comforting scent of eucalyptus oil and jasmine powder.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

They spent the next hour talking on the old rattan chairs in the living room, sipping sweet black tea. Her grandmother insisted she wasn’t sick, just “a little dramatic,” and that the hospital had made a fuss over nothing.

But when Dela offered to help cook lunch, her grandmother hesitated.

“I forgot where I put the rice,” she admitted with a chuckle, then laughed it off too quickly. Dela didn’t push. She just smiled and said she’d cook instead.

By afternoon, the sun hung lazily over the hills. Dela stepped outside to the front porch, holding a glass of iced tea, letting the silence of Seraya settle into her bones. No honking, no sirens, no chaos. Just cicadas. The wind. And faraway laughter from children playing in the alley.

Then she heard his name.

“Rayhan is still here, you know,” said her grandmother from the doorway, as if she’d been waiting to say it. “Still teaches at the school.”

Dela’s heart skipped before she could stop it.

Rayhan Alfarizi.

A name she hadn’t spoken aloud in years, though it lived quietly in the corners of her mind.

“I didn’t ask,” Dela said quickly.

“I know. But you wondered.”

Her grandmother smiled knowingly and disappeared inside.

That night, Dela couldn’t sleep.

She lay in her childhood room, beneath the same ceiling fan that whirred too loudly, surrounded by dusty trophies and photos she hadn’t touched in years. In one frame, a much younger Dela smiled beside a boy in a white uniform — eyes bright, hair messy, hand tucked gently around hers.

Rayhan.

She closed her eyes.

They had been inseparable once. From the first day of tenth grade, when they’d been assigned to the same biology project, to the last night before she left — a night of promises they both broke.

He had wanted her to stay. She had begged him to follow.

But life wasn’t that simple. Not at seventeen. Not when her parents dreamed of Jakarta and scholarships, while his father needed help running a struggling shop. They had argued. Then cried. Then kissed like they could freeze time.

But it hadn’t worked.

And now, ten years later, they were strangers again. With different lives, different dreams, and — in her case — an engagement ring tucked into her suitcase.

Still, sleep refused to come.

And in the quiet hours past midnight, Dela found herself wondering — not just about the boy who once made her world spin, but the man he might have become.