The Formula Beneath My Skin

By Fendy S. Tulodo

The glass on the kitchen window has a faint green tint, like old water. Every morning I stand there with my mug of instant coffee and count the buses passing the frozen field behind our building. None ever stop near our block, but I still count them. I tell myself it’s a small act of order, something to start the day before Kenji wakes up. He’s two now and full of sudden words, half real, half invented. When he sleeps, his breath comes soft, like he’s hearing a tune I’m not meant to hear.

Aiko says I should stop thinking too much. She says it kindly, from her hospital shift where she sees real problems: bones, fevers, tubes. I try. But sometimes the walls in this apartment feel like they hum. Maybe it’s the pipes. Maybe it’s me.

The confessions began in late February, though I didn’t call them that at first. I thought the radio was catching another frequency from the campus tower. Then they began completing my thoughts, echoing things I never spoke aloud. “I miss my mother,” one said, and I almost dropped the kettle. Not my voice. Deeper, slow, like it had no stake in being heard. Then it said again, softer: “You do too.”

I turned the volume off. The sound didn’t stop.

By March, I started recording. My phone filled with files named things like “2 a.m. balcony” and “under sink 4”. Aiko laughed when she saw them. “You’re becoming one of those guys,” she said, stirring noodles. “The ones who look for meaning in static.”

“I’m not,” I said. “It’s not static. It’s... something trying to say sorry.”

She looked at me the way nurses look at empty beds. Calm but distant. “You’re tired,” she said.

Maybe she was right. But the next night, I heard my name from the heater vent. Clear. Direct. “Hiroshi.” Then a pause, like it expected me to answer. So I did. “What do you want?”

The vent sighed. Then silence.

Around that time, Aiko brought home a small vial from the lab. “Test batch,” she said, showing me the label. Serotonin Inducer, Experimental Formula H-33. “We’re not supposed to take it,” she added with a grin, “but I wanted you to see the texture. Doesn’t it look odd?”

It held a cloudy blue fluid, glinting like grease. I asked her what it did.

“In theory, it’s happiness,” she said. “A fast one.”

“Does it work?”

“They don’t know yet.”

She placed it in the fridge beside Kenji’s milk. For weeks, it stayed there, glowing faintly under the bulb.

April brought longer light and fewer buses. I started hearing the confessions at random hours. Some sounded like prayers, some like arguments. Once, a woman said, “He shouldn’t have left the gate open,” and another replied, “You told him to.” I listened for names, for clues, but none came. Aiko said I was following echoes.

One night, after she went to work, I sat in the dark kitchen, window cracked. The air smelled like wet iron. The field outside shimmered in moonlight. The city hummed far away, but under that, a rhythm. Words again.

“Stop recording,” the voice said.

“Why?” I whispered.

“Because you’re one of us.”

I laughed. But when I looked at the screen, the voice app was already closed.

By May, Aiko stopped talking to me about the lab. She said the higher-ups were nervous, that someone had gone missing after testing the formula. I asked her who, and she said, “No one you know.” Then she changed the topic to Kenji’s new shoes. I didn’t push.

The thoughts got louder. I wrote them down, but every morning, the ink was gone. I switched pens, notebooks, even markers. Same result. When I told Aiko, she said, “You need sleep.”

Sleep, right. I stopped trying.

One afternoon, Kenji pushed toy cars across the kitchen floor. He looked up fast and said, “She’s crying.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The angel.”

I froze. “What angel?”

He pointed at the ceiling. “Her feathers hurt.”

I didn’t ask more. That night, a thin trail of white fluff appeared on the couch cushion, like someone had torn open a pillow. Aiko said it was from my jacket lining. But my jacket was in the closet.

By June, the apartment started feeling smaller. The heater vent stayed quiet, but the window reflection changed. When I stood at the sink, I saw my face, yes, but sometimes another face behind mine. It looked tired, pale, patient. Once, it smiled.

That week, Aiko came home with bruises on her arm. “What happened?” I asked.

“An accident,” she said. “A sample tube broke. Nothing big.”

But I saw the mark shimmer faintly, same blue as the vial. I touched it; she pulled away.

“Hiroshi,” she said softly, “you need to stop listening to the walls.”

“I’m not listening. I’m waiting.”

“For what?”

“The apology.”

She sighed. “You’re scaring me.”

I didn’t answer.

July’s heat pressed the city flat. The field behind our building turned yellow. Buses still didn’t stop. The vial in the fridge was almost empty. Aiko said she’d used some for testing, but I never saw her carry it out.

One night, I found Kenji sitting on the kitchen counter, looking into the open fridge light. He said, “The blue is talking.”

“What does it say?”

“Go home.”

“You are home,” I said.

He frowned. “No, not mine.”

My chest pulled tight, like something sinking, slow and heavy beneath the surface.

By late August, Aiko moved into the hospital room. She said she needed quiet. She said the apartment made her dizzy. I stayed with Kenji, playing cartoons to fill the air. But even the cartoons started saying strange things when I turned the volume low.

One night, I replayed one episode and heard my own name inside the soundtrack. Not spoken, but formed from sound. I opened my laptop and typed it out, translating the waveform into letters. It spelled H-33. The formula code.

I called Aiko. No answer.

I drove to the hospital the next morning. The receptionist said Aiko had taken leave two days ago. No one knew where she went. Her locker was empty.

That evening, I opened the fridge. The vial was gone.

September smelled of rain. I began writing to Aiko, though I had no address, no way to send anything. I kept the letters folded under Kenji’s pillow. Each one began the same way: You said the formula was happiness, but you didn’t say for whom.

The confessions had changed again. They came from the mirror now. When I shaved, I heard voices behind my reflection. “It’s not her fault,” one said. “She believed she could fix him.” Another added, “He believed she should.”

I shouted at the mirror to stop. Kenji cried from the next room. I went to him, shaking. His hands were blue up to the wrists, as if he’d been playing in ink. I scrubbed them clean. He didn’t cry, didn’t resist. He looked calm, too calm.

“Where’s Mama?” I asked.

“She’s above the ceiling,” he said.

“Sleeping?”

“She’s measuring the feathers.”

October now. The leaves outside turned to paper colors, dull and dry. The landlord sent a notice about repainting the hall. The heater stopped working, though the vent still whispered sometimes.

I started seeing notes under the door. Folded printer paper, blank at first, then with single lines. Drink it. Then: She’s waiting.

The next one said: Finish the formula.

I didn’t know what that meant until I found the syringe in Aiko’s old drawer. Empty. Still faintly blue.

I sat at the kitchen table all night, thinking. The fridge buzzed. The field exhaled. Kenji’s quiet breathing came through the wall. I cracked the window. Cold air slipped in. Past the field, city lights smeared in the mist. For a moment, I thought I saw Aiko standing by the fence, her hand lifted like she was counting the buses too.

I called her name. The air shimmered. Then the lights blinked out.

The next morning, Kenji was gone.

His shoes sat by the door. His blanket rested folded on the bed. On the wall above his pillow, someone had drawn a single blue circle, like the mark from the vial. I searched the whole building, the field, the streets. No one saw him.

When I called the police, they asked for the last time I’d seen him. I said, “Yesterday, maybe. Or the day before.”

They wrote something down, looked at me like I was part of the problem.

The officer asked if anyone else lived here.

“My wife,” I said. “She works at the hospital.”

He checked his tablet. “There’s no one by that name in their system.”

I laughed. “That’s impossible.”

He didn’t answer.

Nights became heavier. The confessions filled every corner now. Some were mine. Some weren’t. The vent, the window, even the cups in the sink carried the sound. I stopped recording. There was no point.

One evening, I opened the fridge. Light blinked, then held. There it was… the vial, half full, giving off that soft glow like always. I knew it had been empty before. I didn’t question it.

On the counter, the syringe waited.

I drew the liquid carefully, holding my breath. It shimmered in the barrel, beautiful and wrong.

Before I pressed it against my skin, I thought of Kenji’s voice saying go home.

I whispered back, “Where?”

No answer.

I pushed the plunger.

When I woke, the apartment was clean, silent. The field behind the building was white again, snow covering everything. I felt light, like my body had been edited. I walked to the window. Outside, a single bus waited by the road, door open, engine running.

Inside, Aiko sat with Kenji on her lap. Both looked toward me. She smiled, faint, patient, like in the mirror.

I pulled the door open to reach them, but the hall took a different turn. A bright room followed… fluorescent glow, sterile walls, the steady beep and hiss of medical machines. My reflection showed in a glass panel: ghostly, still, eyelids low. Tubes in my arm.

A voice behind me said, “He’s stabilizing.” Another replied, “Formula H-33 effective. Emotional output neutralized.”

Someone laughed softly.

Then everything folded inward, and the voices began again, softer this time, repeating something I couldn’t catch.

Now I count the buses again.

Sometimes they stop. Sometimes they vanish from the manifest the next day.

And sometimes I think the blue inside me is still working, adjusting the levels, balancing the silence.

I keep the confessions to myself now.

The angel doesn’t shed anymore. She waits by the fence, calm, measuring the sky.
​
When the buses pass, I wave. One of them always waves back.

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​Fendy S. Tulodo stays in Malang, Indonesia. He makes art from words and sound, looking at how time moves slow for some, fast for others, and why certain bonds don’t break even when they should. By day he sells bikes. At night he writes songs, records them as Nep Kid. His work sits in the silent gap between what’s spoken and what’s really meant. Find him on Instagram at @fendysatria_