The room within Havi’s home remained steeped in solemn silence.
Diana and Nuriana sat still, their expressions pensive, as though the weight of Havi’s words had carved their way into the deepest chambers of their hearts.
Mr Ridho and Mrs Saras, too, lingered in quiet contemplation.
Each adrift in a tide of thought, retracing the contours of Havi’s tale, balancing belief and doubt like a fragile equation.
Grandfather Har, meanwhile, stood unmoving.
His eyes stared through the walls, as though searching beyond the visible world, peering into a future yet to be drawn upon the parchment of time.
“Perhaps… perhaps that boy is right,” he murmured, voice hushed, scarcely more than breath. “It is time I brought my craftwork here.”
Slowly, he turned to Ridho, his gaze now layered with memory and muted yearning.
“Ridho…” he called, voice frayed by age but still bearing an undercurrent of command. “Will you help me? These old hands no longer carry the strength they once did.”
Ridho rose at once, his reply quick, unwavering, “Of course, Uncle. It would be an honour.”
“Then let us be off… to my house,” said the old man, and something in his tone hinted at release as though long-clenched burdens were beginning to dissolve into the air.
“Yes, let’s,” Ridho responded, stepping forward with quiet purpose, following the elder’s steady stride, unaware that their journey marked not an end, but the quiet prologue to something far greater still.
Saras cast a thoughtful glance their way but chose to say nothing. With quiet grace, she lowered herself to sit beside Diana and Nuriana.
“Do you…” she began, her voice trailing into a pause heavy with contemplation, “believe what Havi said?” The question slipped out, gentle yet laced with a quiet urgency.
Diana and Nuriana turned towards her almost in perfect synchrony.
Diana, without a flicker of doubt, replied in a steady tone, “I do. I believe him.”
Nuriana nodded slowly, her gaze briefly unfocused as though peering through the veil of memory.
“So do I… based on many little things I’ve observed over time,” she said softly.
Saras exhaled a long breath, the weight of wonder and disbelief mingling in the silence that followed.
“If it is true that Havi has been granted another life…” she murmured, almost to herself, “then surely… his existence is touched by grace.”
Diana and Nuriana exchanged a look and nodded, their silence deep and eloquent, a quiet pact forged in shared conviction.
Elsewhere, Havi wandered a fair distance from home, drawn by memories that whispered like ghosts through the narrow lanes.
His feet led him, almost instinctively, to a modest coffee stall tucked beneath the shade of an old flame tree.
A quiet haunt that, to most, seemed unremarkable, but to him, carried the weight of darker recollections.
It was there, in that unassuming corner of the village, that Rofik and Teguh had often lingered, not merely for the bitter comfort of black coffee, but to hatch schemes whose echoes had once shaken the fabric of Havi’s former life.
To the casual eye, the stall was nothing more than a place of idle chatter and cigarette smoke.
But to Havi, it had been and perhaps still was.
A nameless den, a covert theatre where mischief and malice were plotted with ease beneath the illusion of normalcy.
The stall’s owner, Mrs Suharti, had long been acquainted with the murk that swirled around her regulars.
Her presence was gentle yet grounded, and she had, on countless occasions, offered Rofik and Teguh words of warning, not with anger, but with the quiet compassion of a mother who refuses to give up on wayward sons.
They had never truly listened. And yet, they had never dared to raise their voices to her either.
For though they were men known to snap and lash out, to treat the world with fists and fury, something in Mrs Suharti disarmed them.
It was not fear she instilled. No, it was something rarer, a sliver of respect born from an ache they could neither name nor bury.
An echo of a mother’s touch, long lost, and briefly remembered.
Havi’s lips curled into a faint, enigmatic smile as his gaze settled upon the familiar figures of Rofik and Teguh in the distance.
His intuition had not failed him. They were indeed there, seated in the same corner of the modest coffee stall where so many murky episodes of their past had played out like scenes from an unwritten novel.
As ever, they lounged bare-chested, their wiry torsos bronzed and leathered by long exposure to the sun, marked by scars that bore testimony to a life lived on the edge of law and violence.
To a stranger, they might have appeared frail, but Havi knew better. Beneath that sinewy exterior lay a volatile strength, raw and unpredictable.
He recalled, vividly, an incident from a previous life.
A mob of furious villagers had once cornered the pair, intent on justice or vengeance.
But Rofik and Teguh had exploded into motion like wild animals unchained, scattering the crowd in a frenzy of limbs and terror, vanishing into the shadows before anyone could comprehend what had occurred.
Now, as Havi approached, his steps slow and deliberate, the two men noticed him.
Though only a few years his senior, they carried with them a weight of infamy that had long lingered in the village air, a presence that unsettled even the boldest of men.
“Oi, that’s Havi, isn’t it?” Rofik muttered, squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun.
Teguh turned to look, and nodded with a smirk that barely concealed his scorn, “It is. The prodigy himself. Son of Mr Ridho. The one everyone fawns over like he’s some sort of saint.”
Rofik chuckled under his breath, “What’s he doing here, I wonder? Slumming it for fun? Or maybe he fancies himself one of us now?”
Teguh shrugged, nonchalant, “Doesn’t matter. We’ll soon find out what he wants,” he said, eyes narrowing with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.
Havi drew closer, each step measured, the corners of his mouth still curled in that calm, inscrutable smile.
When he finally stood before them, the smile lingered, not mocking, not forced, but deliberate and disarming.
The two men exchanged glances, their expressions tight with confusion.
“Havi? What’s with that smile? You see something funny, mate?” Teguh asked, lifting a brow in challenge.
Havi said nothing. Instead, he reached into the pocket of his trousers and produced a packet of cigarettes, Gudang Garam, the very brand beloved by youths hungry for rebellion.
He held it out towards them with effortless composure, “Fancy a smoke?” he offered, his tone quiet, unbothered.
Rofik and Teguh stared at him, momentarily stunned, as if unsure whether to laugh or frown.
Still calm, Havi drew a cigarette for himself, placed it between his lips, and struck a match.
The flame danced briefly before he drew in a long breath, then exhaled, a ribbon of smoke curling upwards like a whisper from a forgotten tale.
“I smoke too,” he murmured, before lowering himself onto the bench between them, as if the past had never happened.
His left hand still extended the packet.
With visible hesitation, Rofik and Teguh each reached out and plucked a cigarette.
Their fingers brushing the edge of something they couldn’t yet name.
Nostalgia, perhaps, or the faint scent of change.
They lit their cigarettes in silence. Smoke drifted upwards and mingled with the afternoon light that filtered through the warped rafters of the warung.
What had begun in tension slowly gave way to something else. A quiet truce, tentative and unsaid.
That first cigarette did not merely mark a moment shared. It built a fragile bridge between lifetimes, strung together with ash and silence.