Angkara arrived earlier than scheduled.
Trucks hauling heavy equipment began arriving at the foot of Bukit Kemuning that morning, long before the “next month” he had promised at the village hall. Andini heard the news from Sekar, who came running to her house, gasping for breath.
“They’ve already started clearing the road up the hill,” Sekar said, still breathing hard. “Apparently they moved up the schedule because an investor wants to see the progress next month.”
Andini’s heart sank. She immediately ran to the dance studio, with Sekar following behind her, and found Pak Marto already standing there with several other villagers, staring down the hill at the place where the trucks had begun lining up.
“They’re not allowed to touch the dance studio yet,” Pak Marto said, his jaw tightening. “They’re only clearing the footpath for now. But if they keep moving this fast, the dance studio could be next in two weeks, not a month.”
Two weeks.
The time that had once seemed so generous suddenly shrank drastically before Andini’s eyes.
That night, she found Branjangan in the dance studio wearing an expression she had never seen before—tense, restless, far from the calm that was usually his defining trait.
“You heard?” Andini asked as soon as she entered.
“I’ve felt it since morning,” Branjangan replied, his voice heavier than usual. “Every tree they cut down along that footpath—I can feel as if they’re tearing something out of my own body, little by little.”
“Does that mean your anchor has already started—”
“It hasn’t broken yet,” he cut in quickly, though his tone was not entirely convincing. “But every part of this hill they damage makes this already-loosened bond weaker. I can feel something else, too—something that’s been asleep all this time is beginning to stir.”
Andini felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. “The plague spirit?”
Branjangan nodded slowly. “It hasn’t fully awakened. But it’s starting to dream again, after eighty years of deep sleep.”
Silence hung between them, heavy with something still unspoken. Andini sat on the wooden daybed, trying to steady her own breathing, which had suddenly grown labored.
“I talked to Mom,” she said at last. “She found Grandma’s diary. It turns out Grandma didn’t run away because she was a coward. She ran because she was forced to, without anyone truly listening to what she wanted.”
Something in Branjangan’s face softened at that—a complicated mixture of relief and sadness. “I knew that. I was there that night, waiting in the dance studio, not knowing she was struggling alone against pressure she never should have had to bear by herself.”
“Were you angry with her?”
“Never,” Branjangan replied quickly, his eyes fixed on Andini. “I only wished someone back then could have been what your mother is to you now. Someone who truly listened instead of pressuring her.”
Andini looked at the figure before her—a figure who had carried eighty years of loneliness because of a single decision that had not been entirely anyone’s fault.
“I’m scared, Branjangan,” she said honestly, speaking his name directly for the first time without the “Ki” attached to it. “I’m not just scared of the trance. I’m afraid that if I fail, and Angkara destroys this hill before I can act, everyone I love will suffer the consequences.”
“I’m scared, too,” Branjangan admitted softly. “I’m afraid the time we have left will force you to choose before you’re truly ready. I’m afraid I’ll be the reason you end up like the dancer before your grandmother.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
Branjangan let out a long breath and looked toward the open door of the dance studio, toward the hill beginning to bleed in the distance.
“We’ll find a way to slow Angkara down,” he said at last. “Give you the time you should have had. In the meantime—” He turned to look at Andini again, his eyes filled with a new determination. “I’ll start teaching you myself. Not just the basic movements from Pak Marto, but what it feels like to dance with me, little by little, until you truly understand what you’re facing before you have to make any decision.”
For the first time, Andini felt something close to hope amid all the fear that had piled up lately.
“When do we start?”
Branjangan gave a faint smile and held out his hand—the hand that, strangely enough, felt real when Andini touched it, warm like an ordinary human hand, not like the cold, intangible shadow of a spirit.
“Now,” he replied. “If you’re ready.”
Andini looked at that hand for a moment, then clasped it tightly.
“I’m ready,” she replied, and for the first time since the night Sekar went into a trance, she truly felt certain of her own words.