(POV Guruminda)
"If this land spoke honestly, Priangan would have been a courtroom long ago. And in this garden, I am the judge who refuses to retire."
The mist of Pasir Batang descended slowly, clinging to the greenhouse glass like the breath of an old man who no longer trusted the morning. The scent of damp soil mixed with a faint metallic tang from the irrigation pipes—a smell that had never disappeared since the days when the agrarian office still wrote people's fates with a red stamp.
My fingers, already losing their race against the cold air, traced the rim of a clay pot. There was a small crack along its edge. New. A sign that someone had dropped it yesterday, then put it back as if nothing had happened.
I turned the pot halfway around, facing the crack toward the wall. An old habit: hiding flaws from those who loved to judge.
On the table, a small scale creaked softly as I set down the measuring spoon. Aluminum sulfate—a dull white powder—settled like flour. I didn't smell it, but I knew the cold it left in the nose: the taste of "regulation," deliberately violated so that something could be kept alive.
I pressed the powder into the soil. Slowly. Deeply. Not much—just enough. Like years ago, when a name was quietly removed from a registry: no commotion, no blood, but consequences that could last a lifetime.
Hydrangeas in Pasir Batang were supposed to be pink. The soil was neutral. And yet, on the front rack of the greenhouse, every bloom was blue.
A disciplined blue. An orderly blue. A blue that was never "accidental."
I straightened the cloth covering the bottle, making sure the label stayed hidden. Not because my grandchildren shouldn't know chemistry. They did. They were schoolchildren now—able to memorize the periodic table, yet unable to memorize how a land policy could swallow an entire family.
My back throbbed. An old scar, surfacing only when the air grew too cold or the memories too warm. I rubbed it briefly—not to erase the pain, only to remind myself that this body had once been a place where others stored their power.
Outside the greenhouse, a rooster crowed too late. Like a district clerk who always arrived after the decision was made.
Then came the voice—the small voice that always carried more force than logic:
"Graaaandpa! Look! This one has the biggest petals!"
Small footsteps skidded across the wooden planks, quick and slippery. I moved on reflex—capping the bottle, sliding the measuring spoon into the drawer, pulling the rag across the table like covering a card on a chessboard.
My grandchild burst in, breath puffing white. The hydrangea stem in her hand was nearly as large as her face. The petals were dense, blooming far too perfectly to be called a coincidence.
I held my breath for half a second.
Her eyes.
That stubborn glint in her irises—neither mine nor my child's. They were the eyes that once stared straight at an old official, right beside his engagement ring, and froze the entire Resident's Hall without a single shout.
Purbasari.
The world loved to joke with genetics. Sometimes it didn't return the person—only the way they once looked at you.
"Good," I said.
My voice was rougher than usual. I tidied the hair falling into her eyes, then my fingers paused for a moment on her forehead.
Cold. Clean. Knowing nothing.
"Why are all the flowers blue, Grandpa?" she asked, as innocently as someone who had never seen ink become an instrument of punishment.
I looked at the rack of flowers—a neat row of blue pots, like archives that had never been burned. In the colonial world, archives could be censored. They could vanish. They could be "misfiled." But color… color was harder to bribe.
I exhaled slowly.
"Because… if you let it follow the soil, it would turn pink," I answered, straightening the stem in her hand, making sure the petals didn't break.
"And I don't like things that obey rules too easily."
She giggled. She thought it was an old man's joke. Good. Children should think it's just a joke.
At the greenhouse doorway, my child stood. A rattan basket hung from his arm, filled with small pots—ready to be distributed. His hair had grayed at the temples, but the way he looked at me… was still like the child who once watched his father come home with hands full of dirt and secrets.
"Dad," he said carefully, his voice low, like someone turning the volume down before speaking about something unpleasant.
"Don't stay here too long. The doctor said—"
I raised a hand—not to cut him off, just to delay him. I disliked sentences already packaged as "advice."
His eyes flicked to the bottle covered with cloth. He didn't ask. That eased me a little: in this family, we didn't always need words to understand what was being hidden.
"Let the kids hand out the seedlings," he continued, swallowing something before finishing.
"It's a tradition, Dad. A sweet tradition. Don't turn it into… an operation."
I almost smiled.
"Operations are sweet when you succeed," I replied flatly.
He closed his eyes for a moment. The expression of someone tired of arguing with history, yet knowing history would always win.
My grandchild had already turned away, running out while hugging the hydrangea stem like a trophy. Outside, I heard her calling to the others—loud, excited. I watched her small back disappear into the mist. Then I noticed the blue pots in the basket.
One house, one pot—that was the plan. They thought it was a celebration. I knew it was a distribution.
In my youth, we spread evidence through newspapers. Now the evidence was smarter: it grew, it bloomed, it spread without needing office permission.
I pulled a thin folder from beneath the table—not an official one. The paper bore no logo, no stamp. Only dense handwriting, legible to me because I was the one who wrote it.
On the front page: a list of names. Dates. Water debit figures. Prices of imported pesticides. Signatures that didn't match the owners' handwriting.
An audit trail.
Nowadays, people called it a log. Back then, we called it "notes that must be hidden before morning."
My grandchild popped back in for a moment, looking at me.
"Grandpa, can I go down to the lower village this afternoon?" she asked, holding a small pot.
I nodded.
"But don't put the pot somewhere hot," I said.
"And don't believe it if an adult tells you, 'It's just a plant.'"
"Why?" she wrinkled her nose.
I looked at her, then at the misted greenhouse, then at the blue racks. Because I didn't want her to grow into someone fooled by neat sentences.
"Because here," I answered softly,
"the most dangerous thing isn't poison. It's people who can make poison sound like vitamins."
She looked confused for a moment, then laughed—thinking her grandfather was just being pretentious. She ran out again.
My child stepped closer, his voice dropping.
"Are you still… waiting?" he asked carefully.
I didn't turn around, but my hand stopped above the folder.
"Waiting is a polite word," I said.
"I'm just making sure… that if one day someone tries to wipe history clean, they'll have to work twice as hard."
He looked at me for a long time. Then he sighed, like someone finally surrendering to their own blood.
"In that case," he said,
"at least… don't die yet. I'm not smart enough to replace you."
I looked at him, and for a split second, the greenhouse didn't feel cold.
"Relax," I replied.
"I've already almost died once because of a young official who was far too handsome to be honest."
He let out a small snort—laughter born of exhaustion, not humor.
Outside, the mist rolled in, swallowing the footpath. From afar, the sound of children carrying blue pots echoed like a small parade, unaware they were transporting evidence.
I closed the folder and put it back where truth was usually buried: right under the noses of those who held the most power.
I gazed at the blue hydrangea closest to the glass. On the surface, condensation formed thin lines, like writing struggling to appear.
This morning was not beginning.
This morning was auditing every unpaid sin.
—To be Continued—