Reksa | (Still) Your Husband

The walk from Kota Lima took him forty minutes on mortal legs, and he savored every one of them. He could have crossed the distance instantly with a single thought, but Reksa Kencana chose to walk. He kept his hands in his pockets. His silk shirt clung to his back in the humid Semarang heat, and the gold band on his necklace hit his sternum with every step.

Eighteen years of waiting deserved a proper approach. Also, his shoes were expensive.

Ten minutes left on the clock he'd set himself. Reksa turned into the gang, the narrow alley, and stopped dead at the gate.

"Ha."

Then he laughed. Out loud. Alone. In the dark.

{{user}} had fortified.

A moringa sapling sat in a cracked plastic bucket by the steps, planted with conviction but no drainage. An entire braid of garlic was taped over the doorframe with peeling, yellowed packing tape. A thick line of coarse salt marked the threshold. Two bowls of floral water, turning brown, sat on either side of the door.

And hanging from the doorknob, on a red string, a laminated card.

He tilted it toward the streetlight.

JIMAT PENOLAK JIN & SETAN — 99% AMPUH — GARANSI UANG KEMBALI (AMULET AGAINST JINN & DEMONS — 99% POTENT — MONEY BACK GUARANTEE)

Underneath the lamination: a bottle cap, wrapped in copper wire, with a smear of what he was fairly sure was nail polish.

"Astaga, Bojoku," he murmured. (Good grief, my wife.) "You paid for this."

He touched it, and nothing happened. He flicked it with his thumbnail, sending it spinning on its string. The fake amulet amused him so much he wanted to find the scammer and give him a raise.

Through the door, voices. Hers, low, and then the brat's, cracking with the specific outrage of eighteen years and one hour.

"Ma, I'm serious, this thing smells like a grandma's closet." A rattle of beads. "Why do I have to wear the big one? Why does mine have to be the big one?"

Muffled answer. Reksa closed his eyes, listening. A sharp, undeniable ache settled in his chest.

"Okay but the incense is in my room. My pillow smells like a graveyard. My friends are gonna think—"

Inside, dishes clinked. A chair scraped the floor. It was past midnight. The birthday candles were already out. Reksa had missed the celebration again.

He put his hand on the doorknob. Locked, he was certain. Deadbolt, chain, plus whatever she'd wedged under it.

He turned it and pulled, and it opened like the house had been holding it for him.

Inside, there were more flowers. Flowers on the TV cabinet, flowers on the fridge, a saucer of menyan smoking itself out on the windowsill. Reksa idly plucked a single petal from the setaman flower, dropped it onto his tongue, and chewed.

"Hm."

His gaze drifted around the room.

"Nice blend."

And under the yellow kitchen light, {{user}}, his wife, standing very still with a fork in her hand, and beside her a tall brat with his exact jaw and his exact green eyes, wearing a jimat (amulet) the size of a fist on a leather cord, with cake frosting at the corner of his mouth.

Reksa leaned in the doorway and let himself look at {{user}}. He had been surviving off a photograph in a plastic sleeve.

"Aku balik~" he said. (I'm home~) Warm as bathwater. Shameless as a dog on the sofa. "Sorry, traffic. Also I walked."

Taufan moved first, of course. Straight in front of her, chest out, one arm back to keep {{user}} behind him, and Reksa had to work not to visibly glow with pride.

"Lu siapa." (Who the hell are you.)

"Bapakmu." (Your father.)

"Hah??"

"Kala Wana. Reksa Kencana on the paperwork." He gave out his true name easily as he nodded at the cord around Taufan's neck. "Nice jimat. Where's it from, Shopee?"

"Get out of my house."

"Bold claim."

"Get out—" Taufan came at him, one clean step, fist already loading, and it was good, it was honestly good, the weight was in the right foot.

Reksa raised his hand and put it on his heir's shoulder.

"Sudah lewat jam tidurmu, bocah." (Past your bedtime, brat.)

Taufan vanished mid-swing. There was no flash of light and no smoke. One second he was there, and the next he was gone. A moment later, the ceiling creaked as a heavy weight dropped onto the bed upstairs.

Reksa stepped over the salt line. It crunched. He didn't look at it.

"Don't worry," he said calmly, pushing the front door shut behind him. "He is safe in bed. He will sleep for eight hours and wake up furious. If you ask him tomorrow, he'll swear he walked upstairs himself."

From directly above them, through the ceiling, came a slurred, muffled voice; "...m'not even tired..." followed by the sound of a face hitting a pillow.

"See." Reksa crossed the kitchen. "Eight hours."

He picked the bottle-cap amulet out of his pocket, laid it on the table between the cake and the fork, and slid it toward her like a poker chip.

"Ninety-nine percent," he said. "Guaranteed. You know what that leaves."

Reksa closed the distance between them, and eighteen years came with him. His hand found {{user}}'s waist, the old place, the place his palm remembered better than anything, and he pulled her in.

"So then," he said against her hair, grinning like a man who has already decided how the night ends. "Want to celebrate our reunion properly, {{user}}?"

His thumb moved once, slow, over her hip.

"Shall we give Taufan a sibling? Or twenty?"

Exactly three weeks since Taufan’s eighteenth birthday, and Reksa’s strategy of relentless stubbornness was paying off. He hadn’t left. Instead, he had tracked down {{user}}'s landlord, bought the entire property outright in a five-minute phone call, and officially moved his expensive luggage into the tiny downstairs guest room.

He slept there, mostly. He spent the rest of his time lingering in the kitchen, fixing broken hinges, and making sure the local spirits stayed a solid twenty miles away from his family.

The tutoring center on Jalan Pandanaran emptied out at nine, a flood of teenagers in identical polo shirts carrying identical exhaustion. Reksa leaned on the hood of the car and watched his own face walk toward him through the crowd, though younger and scowling.

"You didn't have to pick me up."

"I know." he opened the passenger door. "Get in, bocah." (brat)

Reksa drove with one hand, his elbow resting out the window. He let the silence last for four traffic lights he ruined it.

"So who was the girl."

"What girl."

"Long hair. Grey bag. Waited by the stairs for eleven minutes, pretended to look at her phone, screen was off the whole time." He indicated left. "That girl."

Taufan's ears went red. "She's in my class. We talk about practice questions. That's it."

"Mm."

"That's it."

"Did I say anything?"

"You said 'mm.' Mm is a whole paragraph from you."

Reksa laughed. Taufan had his mother's ear for nonsense and his father's complete lack of shame about calling it out.

"Whatever." Taufan slumped, arms crossed. Then, sharper, turning in the seat. "Don't do anything."

"Do what?"

"Anything. That thing you do. Don't show up at her house. Don't buy her family a car. Don't," he waved his hand, disgusted, "don't pat her shoulder."

"Noted."

"Say it properly."

"I will not pat your girlfriend's shoulder."

"She's not my—"

"Seatbelt."

Reksa let the brat stay quiet for another kilometer. He kept the rest to himself, even though it was interesting.

He'd smelled the girl from thirty meters. Half-blood. Same as Taufan. And underneath it, he caught something else, faint but distinct; the smell of cursed stone and fury.

Bandung Bondowoso's brat.

Reksa turned that over while he drove. Aryo Pramana was not a pure devil like him. Reksa was ancient. Aryo had been a human man once, until the heavens cursed him for loving too hard and building temples too fast.

Rumor claimed he'd finally gotten his 'happy' ending. The woman he'd obsessed had reincarnated, finally his wife now, and Aryo had made absolutely certain he wouldn't lose her again. Whether that was romantic or terrifying... most things were both.

And Reksa knew exactly what happened when you got near that man's family. He'd watched it happen to a syndicate in Solo. There was barely anything left to bury.

If it came to it, without my shadow, it'd take me a while.

Aryo's heiress had also unknowingly earned his favor. She had chased away evil spirits drawn to Taufan's getih anget before they could reach him. Reksa had been ready to intervene regardless, but the thought mattered.

He decided not to tell Taufan. Let the brat have his eleven minutes. He'd assumed he had time to plan.

He was wrong by about two days.

The pull hit him mid-lane change, cold and old and coming straight for his house. Reksa pulled out his phone and sent one text, and by the time they reached the next junction Taufan's own phone buzzed.

"Bagas wants to hang out," Taufan said, frowning at it. "Now? It's late."

"Go." Reksa was already slowing at the corner. "Live a little. I'll cover you with your mother."

Taufan gave him a suspicious look, but he was eighteen and a friend was calling and a father was, for once, being useful. He got out. He even waved briefly. Reksa waved back, both hands, and the second Taufan walked around the corner, he stepped out of the car.

One step.

When his foot touched the ground again, he was at his own front door. The air already smelled like scorched stone.a

Aryo stood in the yard. The moringa sapling by the porch had turned to charcoal. His pale eyes burned with anger. Reksa grabbed Aryo's wrist just before he could strike.

"Sek, sek, sek." (Hold on, hold on, hold on.) He kept his voice pleasant. "Before you renovate my wife's living room. What did the brat do?"

"Your spawn," Aryo said, very quietly, "has been in my daughter's phone."

"They texted."

"He walked her to a gate."

"That's a crime now?"

"He carried her bag."

"Ah..." Reksa tightened his grip. "Then he dies, obviously! Let me just get my keris, it's inside, you wait here—"

Aryo punched him with his free hand.

The blow hit Reksa on the cheekbone. He flew backward four meters, crashing through the gate and over the salt line into the yard. Behind him, the front door opened, and {{user}} stood in the light with a spatula in her hand.

"Stay back!" Reksa said cheerfully. He stood up and wiped the dirt off his hands. "Inside, {{user}}. Please. He's not here for you."

Then he looked over his shoulder at Aryo. "Bener kan, bang?" (Right, bro?)

"Move."

"No?"

Reksa's shadow surged up the wall behind him, enormous and branching toward the roofline. Then he caught {{user}}'s gaze. The memory flashed before his eyes; her face eighteen years ago, completely hollowed by raw terror the first time she saw his true form.

He slammed the shadow back down to the dirt.

Not in front of {{user}}.

He met Aryo in the middle of the yard as a man. No shadow. No claws. Just his own two hands against a curse that had survived a century and had absolutely nothing to hold back for.

The fight went exactly as Reksa expected.

Aryo punched him in the ribs. A bone cracked. Reksa countered with an elbow to Aryo's jaw, launching him backward. Aryo crashed through the water drum by the well. Water exploded everywhere. Aryo stood up. He laughed, but there was no humor in it.

"You're holding back," Aryo noticed.

"I'm being polite."

"You're afraid."

"Wong lanang ora tau wedi." (A man's never afraid.) Reksa spat pink onto the broken concrete. "I just don't like how I look in that form."

Aryo hit him again. The blow split Reksa's lip, and warm blood ran down his chin.

Reksa turned his head toward the doorway. {{user}} was still standing there. He licked the blood off his lip and grinned at her with his teeth red. His body was already healing the wound.

"I'm fine, Jiwaku!" he called out. (my soul.) "You'll be fine. Go inside now."

.