The atmosphere in the room shifted from chaotic banter to a sudden, piercing stillness. Maki stood up, her usual defensive posture replaced by a maternal grace that felt strange yet undeniably real. She walked toward the hallway and returned leading a small girl who looked like a miniature, softer version of herself—crimson hair tucked neatly behind her ears, but with eyes that held a familiar, searching gaze.
"You are indeed a ghost, Agung," Maki said, her voice unusually quiet. "To them, you've been a photograph and a name I mentioned when I was too tired to make up another story."
She squeezed the little girl's hand gently. "Agung, meet **Hime**. She's six years old this year. She was just a toddler when the 'other' you vanished."
Maki knelt down to the girl's level. "Hime-chan, look. Do you recognize him?"
Hime, dressed in strawberry-patterned pajamas, took a shy step forward. She tilted her head to the side, her eyes scanning Agung from his flour-dusted apron up to his messy "Panda" hair. The room held its breath. Agung felt his "infinite stamina" falter; his heart was drumming a rhythm no magic could steady.
"No," Hime said softly, her voice small but certain. She pointed a tiny finger at him. "He's not my papa. Even if they have the same face."
Agung felt like he'd been doused in ice water. "Hime-chan..."
"My papa was... thinner," Hime explained, squinting at Agung's rounder, "Panda-like" physique. "And Papa always looked like he was thinking about somewhere else. This man... he looks like he's actually here."
She turned back to Maki, her expression puzzled. "Mama, is he a 're-re-incornation' like in your books?"
Maki let out a shaky, half-breath of a laugh, looking up at Agung with a complicated expression. "Something like that, Hime-chan. Something like that."
Agung slowly lowered himself until he was sitting cross-legged on the tatami, trying to make himself look as small and non-threatening as a man his size could. He reached into his pocket—not for the phone, and not for the credit card.
"You're right, Hime-chan," Agung said, his voice thick with an emotion he hadn't felt back in Pekalongan. "I'm not the man who left. I'm a different version. A version who spent a long time sweeping streets and dreaming about a family I didn't know I had."
He manifested a small, palm-sized butterfly made of shimmering Swiss chocolate and held it out on his open hand.
"I might not be the Papa you remember," he whispered, "but I'm the Panda who's staying. And I've got a lot of catching up to do on six years of birthdays."
Hime's eyes widened at the chocolate butterfly. She looked at Maki for permission, and when Maki nodded, she took a cautious step toward the man who looked like a ghost but smelled like miso soup and home.