Chapter 162
"He… he's probably just overthinking," Tegar finally muttered, his voice sounding more like someone trying to convince himself than anyone else. The hand that had been supporting the old man's arm shifted slightly—not letting go, merely moving away, as though he had suddenly become unsure whether he still had the right to touch someone who had just spoken words capable of shaking the very foundation of everything he had believed in until now.
"Maybe temporal travel is simply too exhausting for someone his age. Maybe—"
But Tegar's words were cut short when Ashita, standing on the old man's other side, suddenly let out a long sigh, a breath escaping his chest like someone finally releasing a burden he had carried alone for far too long. And when Ashita raised his head, there was something in his eyes Tegar had never seen before—not confession, not regret, but a strange calmness, the kind of calm found upon the surface of a lake so deep that no ripple could ever disturb it from below.
"He's not overthinking, Tegar," Ashita said softly, his voice flat, yet within that flatness was a tremor that made Tegar feel something he had never felt before in front of his companion—a realization that perhaps he had never truly known the person who had stood beside him all these years.
"What he said… is true. I am Abnormal. Nirma is Abnormal. Arya is Abnormal. We are all merely fragments of the ruins of a world that was never destined to merge with this one from the very beginning. Yet in the end, that world still fused together with this one, and we chose to hide that truth—clinging to reasons that, to us, seemed the most righteous."
Yet the old man seemed not to hear anything Tegar or Ashita had just said—or perhaps he did hear them, but his ears had chosen to store those voices in the furthest corner of his consciousness, because his bright eyes were now fixed once again upon Arya, staring at him not the way a grandfather looks at his grandson, but the way an archaeologist stares at an artifact after suddenly realizing that there are inscriptions upon the side that had always been facing downward.
One, two, three, four, five, six seconds passed in silence beneath the gently swaying palm leaves, and Arya, who was accustomed to the sharp gazes of enemies and the wary stares of allies, felt something for the first time that he had never expected.
He felt as though he were being read—not as an agent, not as a fugitive, not as an Abnormal, but as someone whose history he had never told to anyone, not even to Nirma herself.
"Is there something wrong with my face?" Arya finally asked, his voice sounding flatter than he intended—because he had learned that in front of people who looked too deeply, a flat tone was the only shield no question could penetrate.
The old man smiled faintly, a smile that did not stretch across his cheeks, merely lifting the corner of his wrinkled lips slightly. Then his eyes shifted—only briefly, like lightning without the thunder that follows—toward Nirma's left eye before returning to Arya, and within that brief movement there was something stirring in the air, something invisible yet palpable to those standing too close to a secret being unveiled.
"Your Abnormal bloodline," the old man said slowly, his voice like someone reading words written upon glass beginning to fog over, "is not as special as the bloodline of the Great Abnormals or the bloodline of the Ningsih family. But I suspect… you must have experienced conflict regarding your true identity as an Abnormal. Not because you do not know who you are—but because you know too much, and what you know no longer allows you to stand in the place you once called 'home.'"
Arya instinctively clenched his right hand—the same hand gripping the wooden staff from the slopes of the Mount of Olives—and for the first time since this meeting began, his voice rose.
Not enough to become a shout, but enough to make the wind blowing between them seem to stop abruptly.
"Enough," he said, his tone cold like the edge of a freshly sharpened blade.
"Shut your mouth, old man. You know nothing about me."
The old man was not offended.
He did not step back.
He did not even blink.
He merely smiled wider, a smile that now reached his bright eyes, a smile that suggested the harshness in Arya's voice was exactly the confirmation he had been searching for—that anger was the easiest mask to read for those who had lived long enough to watch thousands of masks fall from thousands of weary faces tired of pretending.
"You see," he whispered, more to himself than to Arya, "I was not wrong. Whatever reason drove you to leave—whether as a high-ranking figure or merely an ordinary member—it is the same reason that now places you here, beneath this palm tree, beside someone whose eyes resemble the craziest girl I have ever known."
His gaze shifted again, now with a different rhythm—slower, deeper, like water sinking into sand—studying Nirma's left eye, then her right eye wrapped in white bandages, then back again to the left, alternating without haste, as though he were calculating something whose formula only he understood.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve seconds passed within the growing silence, and during those seconds, his eyes also glanced toward Ashita—once, twice, three times—like someone comparing two paintings hanging in the same room without ever realizing their resemblance until today.
Nirma and Ashita exchanged glances, and for the first time since arriving in Madinah, something flowed between them.
Not sympathy.
Not hostility.
But the same confusion, the same sense of wonder toward the old man standing there with his frail body yet eyes burning like torches that could never be extinguished.
"What is it?" Ashita finally asked, his voice less stable than usual. There was a slight crack at the end of his sentence—like wood beginning to split before finally breaking apart.
Nirma gave a small nod, adding in a quieter voice.
"You're staring at us as if… as if we have something on our faces that we ourselves cannot see."
The old man let out a long sigh, a breath escaping his chest like a wandering wind that had traveled too far before finally finding a place to rest.
"Not something that can be seen with ordinary eyes," he replied, his gaze now fixed upon Nirma, staring into her uncovered left eye with such gentleness that Nirma felt something she had never received from anyone—not even Arya himself—the feeling of being recognized, not as an agent, not as a fugitive, but as someone whose face this old man had once seen within dreams that repeated themselves far too often.
"I sense the aura of Sinta Melina Ningsih whenever I look into your eyes, Ashita… and into your eyes as well, Nirma—especially your bandaged right eye. It is as though there are two points upon the same map, two different places inhabited by the very same person."
He paused for a moment, his eyes closing for two seconds before opening again with a brighter light than before—like someone who had finally solved a riddle he had unknowingly carried for years, never realizing the answer had always been right in front of him.
"But that aura… is stronger within you, Ashita. Much stronger. I do not know why. Perhaps because you possess something Nirma does not. Perhaps because the blood flowing through your body—which you yourself may never have known about—is the same blood that once flowed through my body decades ago."
To be continued…