Chapter 161
"He's from the Ningsih family," Tegar said for what felt like the hundredth time, breaking the silence with a voice quieter than usual, his eyes shifting from Nirma to Arya and then back to the old man as though he himself still could not believe the words he had just spoken.
"We found him in a place where no one should have existed. He doesn't speak. He doesn't open his eyes. But he's still alive, Nirma. He's still breathing like someone waiting for something… or someone."
Arya, who had remained silent until now, stepped forward half a pace, his body instinctively positioning itself between Nirma and the strangers, even though he knew that if Ashita and Tegar had truly intended to attack, they would have done so from the very beginning.
"The Ningsih family," Arya repeated, his voice sounding like someone reciting a mantra he had heard too many times without ever truly understanding it.
"Sinta Melina Ningsih. A character from a novel written by someone who never even realized that the world they created inside their mind would one day become real. That's what you mean?"
Ashita nodded slowly, and for the first time since this meeting had begun, something crossed her face.
Not hostility, not superiority, but something far more complicated—something that might have been called the same exhaustion Nirma felt every time she looked at the bandages wrapped around her own hands.
"A novel that became reality," Ashita replied.
"Then that world merged with this one, and everyone forgot there had ever been a separation. Everyone except a handful of people whose memories never fully submitted to the assimilation. Including this old man. Including, perhaps, the two of you."
Her eyes fixed sharply on Nirma, not like an interrogator, but like someone offering an agreement that could not be refused because the answer had already been known before the question was ever asked.
Amid the silence hanging like mist reluctant to leave a valley, the old man's eyelids began to tremble.
Not the trembling of hesitation, but the trembling of a leaf waiting for the morning dew before finally releasing itself from a long sleep.
And when his eyes opened, Nirma felt something she had never expected to feel in front of a stranger.
Not threat, not warmth, but a light shining from those aged eyes—a clarity far too pure for eyes that should have long since grown cloudy with age, like the eyes of a child seeing the ocean for the first time, or like the eyes of someone who had dreamed for so long and had finally awakened into a world exactly the same as that dream.
"Forgive me," the old man said, his voice hoarse like dry wood scraping against stone, yet beneath that roughness was a tremor that unconsciously caused Arya, standing beside Nirma, to loosen his grip on the wooden staff he still carried.
"Forgive all of us, because Sinta… she vanished. Without news. Without a trace. Without any of us knowing where she went or why she left."
Those bright eyes looked at Nirma, then Arya, and then back to Nirma, as though searching for something invisible to ordinary sight—perhaps understanding, perhaps forgiveness, perhaps only the acknowledgment that the burden he had carried all this time was not his alone.
Ashita, standing behind him with her hands still ready to support the frail body if it collapsed, could only remain silent, while Tegar lowered his gaze to the sand between them, because in the face of regret this ancient, even agents of the Temporal Cross-Police did not know where they were supposed to look.
Nirma did not answer immediately, her lips locked behind the veil still covering most of her face, but Arya, standing right beside her, could see how Nirma's fingers—which had been tightly gripping the edge of her himation—were now slowly relaxing, as though a decision was being made in the quietest chamber of her mind.
"I have no right to forgive or refuse forgiveness," Arya finally said, taking half a step forward, his voice carrying an awkwardness he rarely revealed—because Arya was used to speaking through reports, data, and measurable facts, not through regret that had no form and could not be analyzed by any technology of the 23rd century.
"But if what you seek is someone who feels guilty for causing trouble… then the two of us, Nirma and I, also want to apologize."
He paused for a moment, his fingers brushing the bandages wrapped around his forearm beneath an extra layer of cloth, before continuing in a quieter voice, almost like a whisper that could only be heard by those truly listening.
"We didn't know there were still members of the Ningsih family left in this world. We didn't know that Sinta and her Society disappeared in a way that left wounds in the hearts of those who loved her. And we… we are only two people trying to preserve the foundation of time itself, a burden that never once asked whether we were willing to carry it on our shoulders."
The old man's eyes moved slowly from one person to another, like the hands of a clock that never rushed because time was no longer something he needed to chase at his age.
From Arya, still standing half-defensively in front, to Nirma, silent behind her thick veil with fingers still gripping the edge of her himation, then to Ashita, supporting his arm with an expression difficult to read, and finally to Tegar, who had kept staring down at the sand with shoulders slightly bent beneath an invisible burden.
The silence that followed was not empty silence, but the kind of silence that existed before a storm—dense, heavy, and filled with something unspoken yet already felt against the skin.
And then, from the old man's throat, came a sound none of them had expected.
A laugh.
Not a loud laugh, not a mocking laugh, but a soft chuckle emerging from his fragile chest like water finally finding a crack between rocks after being buried for far too long.
"Tegar," he said between those faint chuckles, his voice still hoarse but now carrying another tone hidden within it—something that might have been called ancient wonder, or perhaps irony matured over many years.
"Do you realize… that all of them—your comrades along with the two fugitives—are Abnormals?"
Hearing that, Tegar raised his head with a movement far too sudden for someone who moments ago had looked like a statue, his eyes widening in a way Arya had never seen before—not anger, not fear, but a confusion so complete that for several seconds he lost the ability to distinguish what was possible from what was impossible.
The wind that had been blowing softly seemed to stop as Tegar stared at the old man with an expression he could no longer hide—his brows furrowed, his lips slightly parted as though words were struggling to emerge without knowing where to begin, and his eyes darting rapidly from Ashita to Nirma to Arya and then back to the old man, like someone trying to solve a puzzle whose pieces he had never possessed from the very beginning.
To be continued…