Andini didn't immediately answer Baskoro's words that morning. She only nodded slowly, letting the silence hang between them until Baskoro finally said goodbye and went home, his face still holding on to something left unsaid.
Three days later, Andini returned to the dance studio—but this time, not to meet Branjangan.
Pak Marto was already waiting there, along with Sekar, who sat in the corner of the room, her face still somewhat awkward after what had happened that night.
"I want to learn," Andini said without preamble as soon as she walked in. "That doesn't mean I've decided anything yet. But if someday I really do have to choose, I don't want to choose empty-handed, knowing nothing about this dance."
Pak Marto studied her for a long moment, then nodded in agreement. "The basic jathilan dance movements are very different from the Gambyong dance you usually perform, Nduk. Gambyong is gentle and flowing, all about grace. Jathilan is firm, bold, sometimes rough—because this dance was originally a war dance, not a palace dance."
Sekar stood and approached with a small smile that still seemed hesitant. "I can help teach you the basics, if you don't mind learning from me."
Andini looked at her cousin, and for the first time since what happened at the village hall, she saw something sincere in Sekar's eyes—not awkward guilt, but a genuine desire to help.
"I'd actually feel relieved if you were the one teaching me," Andini answered honestly.
That first practice was far from perfect. Andini tripped over her own bamboo horse twice, her hand movements were too stiff, and her horse steps looked more like an ordinary person's walk than a jathilan dancer's. Sekar laughed softly a few times, but never mocked her—she only corrected her patiently, holding Andini's hands to show her the proper angles.
"It's not about how good your movements are right now," Pak Marto said from the edge of the room as he watched them. "This is only the first step. What matters is that you begin to recognize your own body in these movements, so that later—if you do go into a trance—you won't be using a body that's completely unfamiliar."
During a break in the practice, while Sekar was getting something to drink, Andini approached Pak Marto, who was sitting on the wooden daybed.
"Pak Marto," she said quietly, "your family was the one that originally designed the Movement Bond, right? The one Mbah Kartareja told me about that night."
Pak Marto's expression shifted slightly, like someone who had been waiting a long time for that question. "That's right. My great-grandfather was one of the people who designed that agreement with Branjangan himself, eighty years ago."
"Why did it have to involve such an intense trance? Why wasn't there another way?"
Pak Marto let out a long sigh. "Because things were desperate back then, Nduk. The plague had already killed too many people. Branjangan offered himself, and my great-grandfather—in a panic, searching for a way to bind such tremendous power so it wouldn't run out of control—designed an agreement that, I admit, was too much for anyone to carry out alone."
"Do you regret it?"
"Every day," Pak Marto answered honestly. "My family was the one that designed the agreement, but your family was the one that had to bear its burden for generations. It wasn't fair, and I know that."
Andini fell silent at his confession. The anger she'd felt simmering beneath the surface toward this tradition slowly mingled with something else—the understanding that no one here was truly evil, only human beings who had once desperately searched for a way out of a disaster greater than all of them.
"Then," Andini said softly, "help me, Pak. Not so I can become like my grandmother, who ran away. But so that if I choose, I can choose a better way than anything that's ever been done before."
Pak Marto gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes growing slightly misty. "That's what I've wanted to hear most ever since my great-grandfather designed that terrible agreement, Nduk."
That night, after returning from the dance studio with her body aching from her first practice, Andini found Branjangan waiting for her in the backyard—a thing that had never happened before. Usually, he only appeared at the dance studio.
"You can come here too?" Andini asked in surprise.
"My anchor is at the dance studio," Branjangan replied, "but my bond with you lets me go a little farther than usual. I heard you started practicing today."
"How did you know?"
"I felt it," he said with a faint smile. "Every jathilan movement you learn feels like a small echo reaching my place. Like someone knocking on a door that hasn't been knocked on in a long time."
Andini sat on a wooden bench in the backyard, her body still aching. "I never said I'd decided anything."
"I know." Branjangan sat beside her, close enough that Andini could feel something strange—warmth, even though a spirit shouldn't have any body temperature at all. "But thank you. For being willing to learn, even though you haven't decided anything yet."
They sat in silence for a while, with only the sound of night crickets filling the quiet.
"Tell me," Andini said at last, "about your life back then. Before all this. Before you became the legendary Ki Branjangan."
For the first time, Andini saw something on Branjangan's face that truly looked like simple happiness—not relief, not the loneliness usually hidden behind it, but the happiness of an ordinary young man who finally had someone curious about who he was before he became a legend.
"My name was simply Branjangan, and I was the son of an ordinary gamelan player," he began, his voice lighter than usual. "I loved dancing from the time I was little, even though my father always said it was better for a man to learn to play gamelan than to dance..."
That night, for the first time since what happened at the village hall, Andini laughed freely—truly laughed, not the awkward laughter caused by the strange situation that had befallen her, but laughter brought on by the story of a young man who, eighty years ago, had only wanted to dance.