Havi chuckled softly, the sound curling at the edges with a deliberate irony, “Have you still not grasped it?” he asked, his gaze narrowing, piercing through the brittle armour of their wounded pride.
Rofik and Teguh looked at one another, a flicker of restlessness flashing between them.
Their composure, already threadbare, began to fray.
“Spit it out, Havi! What are you getting at?!” Teguh barked, his voice flaring like a struck match in the quiet room.
Havi drew in a long, deliberate breath before speaking, his words measured, like a slow unfolding of something long hidden.
“A moment ago, you both said you can ride motorbikes… and drive cars, didn’t you?”
“Yes, of course! And?” Rofik shot back, impatience brimming in his tone.
Leaning in ever so slightly, Havi’s eyes glinted with a deeper intent, “Then tell me! how many people in this village, do you think, can ride a motorbike? And how many can drive a car?”
The question hung in the air like a mist. Rofik and Teguh fell into silence, their features shifting from irritation to quiet contemplation.
They were counting now, not aloud, but inwardly. Weighing something they had never before considered worthy of weight.
“Motorbikes… perhaps only a few,” Rofik murmured at last. “And cars… I doubt anyone truly can.”
A slow, knowing nod was all Havi offered in return, his expression unreadable, save for a quiet certainty.
“And so,” he said, his voice tightening, like a string drawn taut, “armed with that knowledge! Do you still believe yourselves to be young men without a future?”
As though struck by lightning beneath a cloudless sky, Rofik and Teguh stood stunned, rooted to the earth by the weight of revelation.
Havi’s words had not merely grazed their ears, they had cleaved through the fabric of their long-held certainties, landing with the quiet violence of truth.
It was not their faces that had been struck, but the brittle scaffolding of their self-belief.
Somewhere, deep within the recesses of their hearts, a truth they had long buried began to stir.
Fragile, blinking in the light, but undeniable.
They were not simply outlaws drifting at the mercy of circumstance.
They were men of skill, rare skills, emerging at precisely the moment the world had begun to ask for them.
It was 1993, a time poised on the edge of transformation.
The need for private drivers, for men who could command a motorbike or handle the wheel of a car, was beginning to awaken like a distant thunder.
And while most villagers still gazed at a motorbike as one might gaze at a locked treasure chest, uncertain and unknowing, Rofik and Teguh had already ridden through the streets.
Reckless, yes, but capable.
Now, silence enveloped them, not awkward, but reverent.
The air between them was heavy with unspoken realisation. And for the first time in a long while, neither man had anything left to say.
Mrs Suharti inclined her head slowly, the corners of her lips curving into a faint, knowing smile like a gardener witnessing the first tremble of spring beneath long-frozen soil.
It was the smile of someone who had just seen doubt yield, at last, to the stirrings of belief.
“You see now, don’t you?” she said, her voice a murmur wrapped in velvet, yet with a firmness that turned the question into quiet affirmation.
Rofik dropped his gaze, staring at the ground as if it might offer him refuge or answers.
The earth beneath his feet felt suddenly close, as though it too had been listening.
Teguh leaned back in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped tight, not in defiance but in restraint as though holding in a truth that had long ached to be released.
“So what you’re saying…” Rofik began, voice hoarse with the scrape of long-held disbelief, “…is that we have worth?”
Havi inclined his head in solemn assent, “More than worth,” he said, his tone low and unwavering. “You have skill. You have lived through trials most wouldn’t survive. You have nerve. What you’ve lacked is not value but direction.”
Teguh’s eyes met Havi’s now with something new, not wariness, nor mockery, but the flicker of recognition.
As if a window long shuttered had creaked open and let in a sliver of dawn.
“You said this work requires overseers… and guardians,” he said, almost to himself. “But what is it, exactly, that we’re meant to guard?”
Havi drew in a breath, and when he spoke, his words were neither boast nor bargain, but something closer to an oath.
“Something far more precious than coin or goods,” he said quietly. “You will guard the unseen, the boundary between greed and need, between chaos and order.”
He paused, letting the silence breathe between them, before finishing with a calm certainty.
“You will guard trust. And trust, once broken, is not so easily mended. That is why I need men like you, not saints, but those who know what it costs to cross a line, and what it means to protect it.”
Silence unfurled once more, but this time it bore not the weight of confusion, but the hush of something newly understood like a forest after rain, quiet yet alive with possibility.
“Then explain it, Havi! What does it mean, truly?” demanded Rofik, his voice low but edged with urgency, as if trying to catch hold of something just out of reach.
Havi inclined his head, a spark of solemn determination dancing in his eyes, “I intend to establish a gutta-percha enterprise,” he declared, the words falling with quiet gravity.
Teguh frowned, as though tasting a term unfamiliar on the tongue, “Gutta-percha?”
“Yes,” Havi affirmed. “The sap of the Palaquium tree. It can be processed into a variety of products. Textile components, insulation for electrical cables, materials used in dentistry, coatings for golf balls, even the base for certain adhesives and varnishes. Its value is not merely local. It’s sought after in city markets, and beyond.”
He paused there, not for drama, but as if offering them space to catch up to the future already forming in his mind.
“In our village,” he continued softly, “there are scores of wild percha trees, remnants of a past most have forgotten, planted by my late grandfather."
"I’ve already been in talks with buyers from the city. They’re ready to take the product in bulk. The only condition? Quality, consistent, clean, and carefully handled.”
Rofik and Teguh exchanged a glance, wariness giving way to something quieter, more cautious, curiosity.
“Naturally, I’ll need labourers,” Havi said. “Many of them. But where there is sap, there is temptation. Theft, deceit, carelessness in the tapping process that could harm the very trees we depend upon.”
He took a step closer, his gaze sharpening like a blade honed not to threaten, but to reveal.
“And that,” he said, “is where you come in.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“I don’t just need bodies in the field,” he went on, voice rich with intent. “I need eyes. Minds. People who understand how theft begins, how dishonesty hides itself in plain sight."
"People who’ve been there. Who recognise a lie not when it’s spoken, but when it’s born in a glance.”
Rofik’s mouth tightened, as if his pride had been pricked but not insulted.
“And you believe we fit that role?” he asked, scepticism wrestling with something older, more fragile, hope, perhaps.
“I do,” Havi said simply. “Because you possess something no one else in this village has. You can ride. You can drive. You can reach corners of the forest others wouldn’t dare."
"And you carry a presence, not one of fear, but of understanding. You know what it means to be desperate. And more importantly, what it means to rise above it.”
Teguh let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, then leaned forward slightly, his voice low and tentative.
“So… what you’re offering… it isn’t just a job?”
“Yups,” Havi said, eyes fixed on him. “It’s trust. It’s responsibility. It’s a chance to be the line others don’t cross.”
And in that moment, neither Rofik nor Teguh could speak for something had shifted, not just in the air, but within them.
Not redemption perhaps but direction. And that, for now, was enough.