Havi bowed his head, a hush falling over him before his voice emerged once more low, measured, yet resonant with truth.
“In essence…” he murmured, “Rofik and Teguh didn’t merely teach me how to navigate the gutters of life. They gifted me something far more enduring, the means to survive, the art of self-defence.”
He drew a long, weary breath, as though summoning ghosts from a shadowed past, “I came to them a blank slate, clueless in the ways of combat, defenceless against the world. Yet they took me in, trained me with patience, and asked for nothing in return. Not a coin. Not a word of praise.”
Every eye in the room now rested upon him, wide with astonishment, tinged with disbelief, and shaded by a quiet fear they dared not voice.
Could it truly be that these two young men, long dismissed as lost causes, had risen to such grace?
Indeed, what they had done seemed, in the eyes of all, more righteous than anything achieved by those who had always borne the name of virtue.
Havi drew a long, weary breath, as though each word he was about to utter demanded a toll from his very soul.
There was a pause, not merely of silence, but of weight, of memory pressing down like old dust from a forgotten shelf.
“The three of us,” he began, voice hushed and distant, “spent years entrenched in the underbelly of life. We stole, deceived, extorted, and we did it all with unnerving precision."
"Rarely did we falter. It was as though we moved through the world cloaked in shadows, untouched by consequence.”
His eyes, hollow and far-off, stared into a place no one else in the room could see.
A silence hung thick around him before he spoke again, more slowly this time, the heaviness of memory thick in his tone.
“But then, without warning, the tides shifted. I still can’t explain it. There was no epiphany, no tragedy, no divine intervention, and yet, both Rofik and Teguh, as if guided by the same invisible hand, turned away from it all. In the same breath of time, they repented. Truly, deeply.”
The room felt as though it had been drawn into stillness, even the air held its breath.
“They married,” Havi continued, the faintest ghost of a smile flickering at the corner of his lips.
“They built humble lives, planted roots. Small shops. Quiet homes. Children they adored. And one day, they came to me, not with pride, but with sorrow in their eyes. They asked for my forgiveness, for dragging me down that path with them.”
His voice cracked then, barely perceptible, but unmistakable. Yet he forged on.
“That night, I sat with myself in a silence I had long avoided. I wondered if it was time to stop. To let go. Perhaps I, too, could begin again.”
A long pause followed, and when he spoke once more, it was little more than a whisper, as if the truth itself pained him.
“But I couldn’t. I was too far gone. Too steeped in the comfort of chaos. There is something maddening about a life built on the edge."
"It consumes you, then convinces you it’s all you’ve ever had. And somehow, I found solace in the very thing that was breaking me.”
Grandfather Har, Mr Ridho, Mrs Saras, Diana, and Nuriana were struck dumb as though the very fabric of reality had shifted beneath their feet, leaving them suspended in the unfamiliar.
“They both repented?!” Mr Ridho gasped, his voice cracking with disbelief, eyes wide as if struggling to reconcile this new truth with the image he had long held.
Havi inclined his head slowly, a solemn nod that carried the weight of years.
His eyes, dimmed by something deeper than mere memory, searched the space before him as he spoke.
“Yes, Father,” he said quietly. “Rofik and Teguh truly repented. They turned their backs on everything we once were. They surrendered their lives to faith, to a cause greater than all our past misdeeds.”
He paused. His voice, when it came again, was softer, heavy with the kind of grief that comes not from loss, but from realisation.
“I felt as though the ground had been pulled from beneath me. As if a part of me had been left behind in a place I could never return to."
"The very people I had once followed, whom I revered in the dark… had chosen the light. And me? I stayed where the shadows clung, where they welcomed me still.”
A long breath passed through him, drawn not just from his lungs but from some buried corner of his soul.
“And from then on,” he murmured, “I walked the path alone. Alone in the filth. Alone in the crime. The entire city of Telaga knew my name, my face, my record, whispered like a warning among alleyways and shopfronts. I had become a fixture.”
He looked down, his voice growing taut, as if each word scraped against some raw wound.
“But despite all I had done, the people never turned savage. If I stole, they caught me. If I ran, they handed me in. The police would take me, lock me up, and a few months later, I was free again.”
His eyes darkened, not with rage, but something far more hollow, “Yet I never stopped. Never changed. Freedom meant nothing but a return. Back into the embrace of the life I knew that bitter, broken world. The truth is…” He hesitated, then added, “I was addicted. Not to wealth, or thrill, but to the very identity of a criminal. It was the only skin I knew how to wear.”
Havi turned to Nuriana, his eyes shadowed yet eloquent, as though burdened by truths too long unsaid.
“But everything began to shift,” he murmured, “the day I stole your handbag, Nuriana. That moment, it changed something. The town had tolerated much, but that day, something broke.”
He drew a long breath, as though dredging the memory from a place deep and cold within him.
“I was cornered in a narrow alley, a cul-de-sac of crumbling brick and rusted fences. Behind me surged the fury of the town, a crowd no longer afraid, no longer willing to forgive."
"They came at me with sticks, with stones, with lengths of twisted metal. I stood alone, a man against a tempest of rage.”
His voice grew quieter, roughened by the weight of remembrance.
“I could have escaped. There was a gap, a fleeting chance. But then, a blow to the back of my head. Heavy. Final. The world turned black.”
A long silence passed before he spoke again, his voice now distant, like someone recounting a dream slowly turning to nightmare.
“The last words I heard, were that I was being taken to Hadiyaksa Hospital. But by then, I was already slipping beyond reach.”
Havi lingered in silence, as though weighing the gravity of all he had spoken, before drawing his tale to its close.
His voice, when it came, was scarcely more than a whisper, yet it carried the resonance of something deep, something eternal.
“And when consciousness returned to me, I was no longer of this world. I had died. My soul drifted in a vast, desolate expanse, veiled in thick mist. A place without form, without end. Utterly silent.”
His eyes remained fixed upon Nuriana not merely looking, but searching as though he sought not just her gaze, but her very soul.
“I was bound by angels,” he said at length, each syllable slow and deliberate. “Iron chains wrapped around my body, cold and unrelenting."
"I could feel their weight pressing down on every part of me. And just as I was to be delivered to torment, another angel appeared and leaned in to whisper something to the one who held my fate.”
He paused, drawing a ragged breath, the memory clearly not distant.
“To my astonishment, the angel said there was a woman on Earth who, day and night, had been praying for me. Pleading that I be returned to life, though such a plea, they said, was near impossible.”
“I asked who was she?” His voice faltered, trembling with wonder. “And then, the angel showed me her face. It was Nuriana, the very woman whose handbag I had once stolen. She was the one whose prayers echoed into the realm beyond death.”
A faint, wistful smile touched his lips, and a glimmer of humour softened the solemnity, “I don’t quite know what moved her in that former life to do such a thing. Perhaps… perhaps she’d fallen in love with me.”
There were hushed chuckles in the room, gentle and unsure, but Havi’s tone soon grew steady and serious once more.
“What I do know is this, the Nuriana of that past life was a woman of formidable success. A businesswoman. Fiercely independent."
"Among the richest in all Telaga… and quite possibly, the nation. Yet, for reasons known only to her, she never married.”
Then, with a sly glance to the side, Havi turned toward Diana, mischief dancing briefly in his weary eyes.
“It seems,” he said with a crooked smile, “that I’ve somehow found myself entangled with not one, but two extraordinary ladies, both of whom, it appears, have managed to journey into their autumn years without once surrendering to the binds of matrimony.”