Branjangan led Andini to the center of the dance studio, where the packed-earth floor had been hardened over the years by the feet of countless dancers.
“This isn’t a full trance,” he said, still holding Andini’s hand. “Just a light trance. I only want you to feel a little of it, so you’ll know what you’re up against later.”
“How do we do that?”
“Follow my movements,” he replied. “And let just a little—just a little... of your consciousness open so I can enter.”
Andini nodded, though her heart was pounding. Branjangan began to move, his first steps slow, and Andini followed him, trying to remember the basic movements she had learned from Sekar and Pak Marto.
At first, it felt ordinary—just two people dancing side by side in an empty room. But when Branjangan began singing a soft melody, something Andini had never heard before, something started to change.
Her body felt lighter. The movements that had been stiff at first began to flow on their own, as if something were guiding her from within. For a moment, Andini felt something strange—as if she were standing in two places at once, as if she were watching herself dance from a perspective that did not belong to her.
“This is what it feels like,” a voice sounded in her head. It wasn’t threatening. It was Branjangan’s own voice, closer than usual, as if it were echoing directly from inside her mind. “I’ve danced alone for eighty years. This is what it feels like when someone dances with me.”
Andini felt her chest fill with emotions that were not entirely her own—the loneliness that had stretched across eight decades, a longing that had never truly been spoken, and behind it, something warm, something beginning to feel like hope.
But at the same time, she also felt something alarming—the boundary between her own thoughts and Branjangan’s was growing thin, like two paint colors slowly blending along their edges.
“Branjangan,” she tried to speak, but her voice sounded distant, as if it belonged to someone else. “I... I’m starting to lose track of which thoughts are mine and which are yours.”
The movement stopped abruptly. Branjangan released her hand as quickly as he could, and Andini felt herself jerk back, like someone waking from a dream that had been too real. She staggered, nearly falling if Branjangan hadn’t caught her.
“I’m sorry,” Branjangan said quickly, panic crossing his face for the first time since Andini had known him. “I went on too long. I should have stopped sooner.”
Andini was gasping for breath, her heart still pounding, but not only from fear—there was something else, too, something she found difficult to explain. She had just felt a small part of the eighty years of loneliness borne by the figure before her, and it left her chest heavy with a sympathy far deeper than she had expected.
“I’m okay,” she said once her breathing returned to normal. “It’s just... that was really intense.”
“That was only a light trance,” Branjangan said, still watching her anxiously. “Only a few seconds. The actual Closing Movement can last much longer and go much deeper. If even a light trance like this almost made you lose the boundaries of your own self—”
“But I could feel you,” Andini interrupted, her eyes fixed on him. “I could feel the loneliness you’ve carried all this time. Branjangan, that’s... that’s so much for one person to bear alone for eighty years.”
Branjangan’s expression changed, startled that Andini had felt so deeply, even during a light trance.
“I’ve never told anyone about that,” he said softly.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Andini replied. “I felt it firsthand.”
They stood facing each other, the distance between them closer than either realized. For a moment, the world outside the dance studio—Angkara, the heavy machinery, the plague spirit that had begun to dream—felt far away, as if nothing existed but the two of them and the silence of the night.
“Andini,” Branjangan whispered, his voice trembling with something he had never said before, “I know this shouldn’t happen. I’m a spirit bound to a promise, and you—you’re human, with your whole life ahead of you. But I—”
“Don’t finish that sentence if you’re not sure,” Andini interrupted softly, even though her own heart already knew what Branjangan wanted to say, because the same thing had long been dwelling in her own chest.
Branjangan gazed at her for a long moment, then smiled faintly, a smile holding more meaning than all the words left unspoken. “We’ll continue practicing tomorrow. Little by little. There’s no need to rush.”
Andini nodded, though her heart was still racing as she walked home that night—not because of the trance she had just experienced, but because of something far more difficult to control than any dance movement.