Chapter 60 - A Home We Built Ourselves

Two weeks passed since that night on the porch, and slowly, the rhythm of their life together began finding its shape again.

The campaign video never resurfaced. Not because Surya had truly given up—Rimba knew his father well enough to know that a man like that never truly stops, only waits for a more advantageous moment. The last update to reach Rimba's ears was that his father's media team had their hands full managing the agenda ahead of next year's election season, and for the time being, neither Rimba's name nor Michi's was useful enough to bother with. The threat hadn't disappeared. It was only sleeping, waiting for a better time to wake up again.

What he knew for certain was that, for the first time in years, he was no longer carrying every anxiety that surfaced from his father's shadow alone. Every time that name crossed his mind, he told Michi about it, sometimes Bayu too, sometimes Kelana over the long phone calls they'd started making a regular habit every weekend.

Kelana had even started to feel brave enough to save the old phone number, the one she'd used back when she still lived with Papa, far away from the rest of her contacts—a small decision that, for their family, felt far bigger than it looked.

One thing Rimba didn't fully know: Bayu had never really stopped at that point. On his laptop sat a small folder with a neutral label, holding old news clippings, dated notes, and names he had never once mentioned to anyone—Rimba included. When one night Rimba casually asked whether he still kept that old article about his father, Bayu only answered briefly, "Still do. But that's not your fight to carry anymore, Swara. Let me handle it, another time." Rimba never fully understood what that sentence really meant—and Bayu had no intention of explaining it, not yet, not for now.

That afternoon, Rimba invited Michi to a place they'd never visited together before—a small hill on the outskirts of the city, where people usually came at dusk to watch Yogyakarta's sky shift from orange to deep purple. They sat side by side on a mat Rimba had brought, accompanied by a bag of simple snacks and a thermos full of warm tea.

"You know," Rimba said, gazing at the horizon slowly changing color, "this is the first time I've ever brought someone here."

Michi turned, smiling mischievously. "The mysterious composer's secret spot, is that it?"

"Something like that." Rimba chuckled softly, holding Michi's hand where it rested between them. "I used to come here alone a lot, back when I'd just moved to Jogja, when everything still felt foreign. I liked coming here whenever my head got too full. It felt like, from up here, every problem looked smaller."

"And now?" Michi asked gently.

Rimba looked at her for a long time, something warm spreading through his chest—a feeling far different from the fear he'd carried around all this time. "Now I don't need to come here alone to feel lighter."

Michi smiled, resting her head against Rimba's shoulder, letting the two of them fall quiet for a moment, savoring the slowly fading wash of color across the sky. The evening wind carried the smell of grass and damp earth, creating a silence that, for the first time in weeks, felt genuinely peaceful rather than tense.

"Rim," Michi finally whispered, lifting her face to look at him. "Thank you for coming back. Not just back to me. But back to being your honest self."

Rimba looked at Michi's face in the golden light of dusk, feeling his own heartbeat slow down, as though time itself were making room for that moment to last a little longer. Slowly, his hand rose to touch Michi's cheek, his thumb brushing gently, before finally leaning his body in closer.

"Can I?" he whispered quietly, his voice sounding rarer and more fragile than usual.

Michi only gave a small nod, her eyes slowly closing.

The kiss came gently, full of care, as though the two of them were carefully piecing back together something that had once cracked—not rushed, and not simply a release of emotion, but a wordless promise that from now on they would face whatever came together, with no more closed doors, no more walls quietly standing between them.

When they finally pulled apart, their foreheads still touching, their slightly uneven breaths mixing with a small laugh that slipped past Michi's lips.

"So," Michi said, her voice still trembling faintly, "is this also part of your 'secret spot'?"

"It's not a secret anymore." Rimba smiled widely, holding Michi's hand tighter, resting his temple against hers. "I'm tired of keeping the important things to myself, Chi. From now on, we share everything, together."

The sky above them grew darker, leaving only a thin streak of purple at the edge of the horizon, while the first stars began to appear shyly. And on that small hill, for the first time since the storm they had weathered these past few weeks, Rimba felt truly whole—not because all his fears had completely vanished, but because he had finally found someone willing to face that fear alongside him, step by step, note by note, with no need to pretend to be perfect.

They stayed up there long after the last color had drained from the sky, the city lights of Yogyakarta scattering into view below them one by one, tiny and distant and entirely unbothered by the two people sitting quietly above it all. Neither of them spoke of what still lay ahead—his father's patience, Bayu's quiet folder of names, the long unfinished business of a family neither of them had chosen. For tonight, that could all wait its turn. What mattered, sitting on that hilltop with her hand in his and the whole sky slowly filling with stars, was that whatever came next, it would come to both of them at once, and neither one would have to carry it alone.