Lestari was lying on a cotton mattress that was rough by modern standards, but very soft by the standards of this era. She let her body sink into the silence of her room, scented with sandalwood incense. She wasn't alone, a woman with slender fingers was working meticulously.
Lestari narrowed her eyes, observing the figure serving her. The woman had light yellow skin, a beautiful face, and exuded an aura of elegance uncommon for a maid.
It was the same voice and face Lestari had heard and seen in her first reincarnation-the maid who had brought her a cup of water.
Kuning.
Lestari recently finally found out the maid's name.
Maiden Kuning's fingers pressure on her sore calves was just right. As she enjoyed the massage, Lestari's mind wandered, comparing her two lives in the folktale world of Prambanan.
It had been a week since Lestari had been trapped back in that folktale. Although that was still a short time, she could note several differences between her first and second reincarnations.
The first was the shifting timeline. In Lestari's first reincarnation, she arrived at the very end of the story, when Rara Jonggrang ordered her maids to burn straw in the east to make it look like the sun had risen. In her second reincarnation, she arrived at the very beginning of the story.
The second was her understanding of Old Javanese. In her first reincarnation, Lestari needed Rara Jonggrang's spirit to translate every word of Old Javanese. However, now the words flowed naturally as if she had devoured hundreds of stone inscriptions and palm-leaf manuscripts.
The third was her control over Rara Jonggrang's body. In Lestari's first reincarnation, before Rara Jonggrang's spirit reentered her body, she had complete control of it. However, after Rara Jonggrang reentered, her spirit still remained within, observing through Rara Jonggrang's perspective. In her second reincarnation, so far, Rara Jonggrang's spirit had not yet reentered, and unlike before, she lacked complete control. She could control those feet to walk around the women's quarters and order the servants to find a gray cat to accompany her, but sometimes that body moved on its own, as if she only had complete authority over matters that were not relevant to the main plot of the story.
The fourth was the plot of the Prambanan folktale itself. According to Lestari's recollection of the tale, Rara Jonggrang was raped midway through the story after Bandung Bandawasa was discovered as the missing Crown Prince of the Pengging Kingdom and before forced Rara Jonggrang to marry him. However, in her first reincarnation, Rara Jonggrang's purity remained intact at the end of the story, before being raped by Bandung Bandawasa, who was furious after realizing that he had been deceived again, with the trick of false dawn. Furthermore, Rara Jonggrang did not end up becoming a thousandth eternal, cold statue, but died by a dagger stabbing her heart, drowning in her blood.
In that deep relaxation, Lestari's mind wandered back to the same question she had been asking herself for the past seven days:
'Why?
Why had fate dragged me back into the Prambanan folktale?
Was my ultimate mission to change Rara Jonggrang's fate so she wouldn't be killed by Bandung Bandawasa?
But how could I do that when every time I tried to do something drastic, Rara Jonggrang's body seemed to reject it. I had tried to say no when King Baka offered Bandung Bandawasa as her guardian, but this mouth had instead thanked him. I had tried to run as far away as possible from the palace, but these feet had instead walked calmly toward the pavilion in the women's quarters.'
Lestari closed her eyes. The fear that she would die again and wake up in the same fictional world for the third time began to haunt her.
Throughout those seven days, Lestari had also hoped for guidance through her dreams, such as the arrival of Rara Jonggrang's spirit to tell her something, or the appearance of the goddess Durga to provide an answer to that strange occurrence. However, those six dreams were filled with memories of her real world. She dreamed of her room and herself lying on the bed watching ancient Javanese-themed dramas, which was, of course, for entertainment, not to be lived out in real life as it was now.
Although she hadn't—hopefully not yet—received any guidance, Lestari was still very grateful that those dreams kept her from going completely insane,
but those also tormented her with longing for life as a normal, modern 24-year-old woman ....
"Cukup, alungaa."
[Translation: Enough, go.].
Maiden Kuning stopped her massage and replied, "Ya, Rahadyan sanghulun." She bowed her head before rising from her knees.
[Translation: Yes, my Master.].
Jeglek
By the way, that room was the same one she had been in Lestari's first reincarnation.
After the heavy wooden door closed, Lestari rose from her bed and walked to the blurry bronze mirror, staring at the reflection of a face that still felt foreign to her and had transfixed her for seven days.
Her face was perfectly oval with a touch of full cheeks, giving a youthful yet graceful impression. Her nose was small, but had a slightly defined bridge, quite aquiline for a Southeast Asian woman. Her lips were thin and naturally pink. When Lestari smiled, none of her teeth appeared to be crooked. However, unfortunately, those were blackened by the painstaking tradition of chewing betel nuts.
Lestari's gaze rose to her eyes. Those wide, Southeast Asian eyes stared back with deep intensity. Although her eyelashes weren't particularly dense, they were offset by her thin, beautifully arched eyebrows. As a finishing touch, a bindi made of rice grains was placed in the center of her forehead.
Lestari let out a long sigh, filled with a suffocating sense of burden. In her real world, that face wouldn't have had to struggle to become famous, Rara Jonggrang would easily make the list of the Top 10 Most Beautiful Indonesian Actresses. However, in that cruel folktale universe, upon further reflection, that beauty was nothing more than a curse wrapped in gold.
Bandung Bandawasa's insane obsession grew because of that beautiful face.
Anger began to ignite in Lestari's chest. She refused to call Bandung Bandawasa's feelings love. For her, the term was too sacred to be associated with a twisted man.
'What man with love would so heartlessly force his beloved because he couldn't accept the word 'no'? What man with love would so heartlessly hurt his beloved? Most importantly, what man with love would KILL his beloved?!'
Lestari closed her eyes tightly, but the memories of her first reincarnation resurfaced like a nightmare that refused to go away. Although she had only arrived at the end of the story, the scene she witnessed was more than enough to prove how distorted Bandung Bandawasa's soul was.