The forest swallowed their footsteps as Sawerigading and Jantaka pressed on.
The air was heavy, not just with mist, but with silence. Each step away from Walakina felt like carving a wound deeper into Sawerigading's chest. He had wanted to say more, he had wanted to stay just a little longer, can't lie to his own feeling. But destiny is a cruel mastermind, it does not wait, and duty has no patience.
Jantaka, ever restless, broke the silence. "So… this is the conclusion huh, you left her behind?" he teased lightly, though his tone carried a hint of sympathy. Sawerigading didn't answer right away. He gazed at the horizon, his voice low. "Sometimes… to love someone is to walk away. Even if every part of you screams to stay."
Jantaka tilted his head. "That sounds painful." "It is," Sawerigading whispered, the words almost breaking. The forest trees bent in strange ways, their shadows almost weaving into lines. Jantaka suddenly chuckled and held one up with his finger. "Look. Like a thread."
Sawerigading turned, and for a heartbeat, he saw it too. A thin red string, faint, almost invisible, connecting him and Walakina even from afar. It trembled with each step he took, pulling gently, as if the universe itself refused to sever it.
He clenched his fist. "A thread that binds… but never lets us meet." Jantaka's laughter turned softer. "Red string theory, huh? Maybe it's true. Maybe souls are tied, no matter the time or place."
"Then why do I feel like mine will never find rest?" Sawerigading muttered.
Their path curved toward the unknown, deeper into the heart of Phinarbutan. Somewhere beyond, danger awaited. But in that moment, the real battle was inside Sawerigading's chest, a war between longing and letting go. All of these whole ordeal will be etched to his memories, a distant past, but at the very least he's trying all he could.
How has it been after those fateful event? Years? Centuries? Perhaps more?
Time dissolved like mist.
On a quiet evening, Jantaka sat by a river, his expression older yet unchanged by the weight of centuries. Beside him stood a boy, curious eyes wide as he listened to the trickster's tale.
"…and that was the day Sawerigading walked away," Jantaka said with a smirk, though a trace of melancholy lingered in his tone.
The boy tilted his head. "Did he ever see her again?"
Jantaka chuckled, shaking his head. "That… is the beauty of the story. Some answers are not meant to be given so easily."
The boy leaned closer. His eyes shimmered with something familiar, something ancient. Jantaka studied him, a slow grin spreading across his face. "You remind me of someone… someone who still has a thread to follow." The river rippled, reflecting two silhouettes.
One of a trickster. The other… of a boy whose name would one day shake Phinarbutan itself.
And the story, once again, began to turn.