our school had its own way of making people into family.
some of those families were formed through official school programs. others came from traditions passed down within different groups, each with its own names, arrangements, and ways of deciding who belonged together.
in my platoon, we called ours code.
to anyone outside our school, it probably sounded unnecessarily complicated.
but to us, they really could become family.
my older brothers and sisters in the code were especially close to one another. they were kind to me too. they cared for me and genuinely treated me like their younger sister for real.
the boys who were my siblings from the same year were different.
for reasons i never completely understood, they did not seem to like me very much. sometimes, it felt like they would have preferred someone else in my place. there were moments when they made that feeling painfully clear.
i had told him what happened, and he had been one of the people who comforted me when the boys who were supposed to be my brothers made me feel unwanted.
maybe that was partly why i trusted him with my younger brothers in the code.
i had younger sisters too, but the ones i introduced to him were the boys. i wanted him to know who they were because i knew they would cross paths with him often, even more than they would with me.
i do not remember exactly how i asked him.
probably something simple.
do not be too hard on them. keep an eye on them when you see them.
i only wanted him to know which ones were my little brothers.
“iya, nanti gue jagain.”
i’ll look after them.
the sentence was short. simple. nothing about it was deliberately sweet. but i remember the way he said it.
somehow, there was a little concern in his voice. it was softer than usual, but steady and reassuring. as if he were saying,
don’t worry about it anymore. i’ll help look after them.
at least, that is how the moment stayed in my memory.
a few days later, like someone who had already started turning his promise into a plan, he began telling me what he was going to do.
“nanti mereka makan di meja gue.”
they should eat at my table.
“nanti gue panggil ke graha.”
i’ll call them over to my dorm.
i do not remember what i said when he told me that.
maybe i simply let him. maybe i laughed a little, because older students inviting juniors to eat with them or calling them over was not exactly unusual at our school.
maybe i did not realize that he was showing me he had meant what he said. but he really did mean it.
he met them. made room for them at his table. took them running and gave them extra training during his own free time.
i was never there when they met, so i cannot pretend to know every conversation they had.
but knowing the kind of person he was, i can imagine the way he looked after them.
he was not someone who needed other people to see that he was taking care of someone. he probably just said whatever they needed to hear, guided them what was necessary, and taught them how to take care of themselves a little better.
and maybe simply knowing that a cool older brother like him knew who they were gave my younger brothers a little more confidence too.
but honestly, i had never asked him for any of that.
i had only asked him to be kind if he happened to see them.
somehow, he answered that small request with something much bigger.
eventually, he became close enough to them that he started asking them for small favors that i found a little annoying.
i remember him once calling them over just to help iron his clothes.
which, to be fair, was something older students often asked younger ones to do. he also probably knew they would do it properly, because people from our platoon were expected to be especially disciplined about neatness, including the way our uniforms looked.
since when had they actually become your little brothers too?
what made it funnier was that he had once told me he did not like calling juniors over just to order them around. using seniority to make them do things for him was not his style.
so of course i teased him.
“katanya nggak suka manggil adek?”
i thought you didn’t like calling juniors over?
and he answered as if the explanation should have been obvious.
“kan itu mah adek lu.”
but those are your little brothers.
at the time, i probably only laughed and forgot about it.
maybe i thought his answer was a little ridiculous. as though his personal rule still applied to everyone else, just not to my brothers.
i don't think i understood how that sentence would sound to me years later.
he did not say they had become his little brothers too. he did not make a statement about taking care of the people i loved.
he only made a distinction.
they were not just any juniors.
they were my little brothers.
and apparently, that alone was enough to make them different in his eyes.
maybe he never thought about it that deeply. maybe he never consciously decided that taking care of them was also one of the ways he could take care of me. maybe, in his mind, it was much simpler.
i told him they mattered.
so he treated them as though they really did.
that was the strange sweetness of him.
his words almost never sounded sweet when he said them. there was no decoration around them. nothing designed to make a heart move.
it sounded like an ordinary sentence.
but he was not someone who said things simply because they were nice to hear. when he said he would do something, he actually did it.
he had a way of quietly giving people what they needed without making a performance out of it.
i think i was too young to understand how rare that could be.
back then, maybe i recognized sweetness more easily when it came as obvious attention, a little flirting, or words that immediately made my heart race.
his care was easier to miss because he carried it like something that simply needed to be done.
what he was actually doing was remembering the people who mattered to me. making room for them at his table. giving them part of his free time. listening to something that worried me, and thinking that my worries mattered enough. and i don't think anyone can do all of this to just anyone.
i do not know whether he ever realized that was what he was doing.
maybe that was simply how care lived between us then.
quietly. naturally. perhaps too naturally for either of us to stop and wonder what it meant.
i gave him one small part of my world.
and somehow, he began helping me carry it.
now, this memory touches me more than i know how to explain.
not only because he kept his word, but because his care did not stop with me. it reached the people i loved.
i believe i had only asked him to recognize them.
instead, he made space for them beside him.
and his answer to my question. yes.
looking back, it feels very meaningful as though the simple fact that they mattered to me had been enough for them to matter to someone.
if only things like this can be found in my world these days.
