The Adopted Son: Revenge

5

**Chapter 5**  

**The Weight of Ordinary Days**

The delivery truck smelled of rice sacks and damp cardboard. Raka arrived at Toko Endah before the sun fully cleared the rooftops. Bu Endah handed him a clipboard without ceremony.

“Three stops this morning. Don’t rush the hills. The brakes are older than some of the customers.”

He nodded and climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine coughed twice before settling into a rough idle. It was nothing like the quiet, air-conditioned cars that used to wait outside the Wiratama compound, yet the simplicity felt cleaner.

The first stop was a small warung near the market. The owner, an elderly woman with a permanent squint, squinted harder when she saw him.

“You’re new.”

“Helping Bu Endah,” Raka answered, unloading the sacks with steady movements.

She watched him for a moment, then muttered, “At least you don’t look like you’ll drop the sugar.”

By the third stop the sun had climbed high enough to press against the back of his neck. A dull ache settled under his ribs—the same quiet pressure he had been ignoring for days. He finished the unloading, returned the truck, and walked back to the orphanage without mentioning it to anyone.

---

At the orphanage the roof repair had already begun. Mbah Darmo stood on a borrowed ladder, trying to hammer a sheet of corrugated metal into place while one of the younger boys held it from below. Raka changed into an old shirt and climbed up beside him.

“You don’t have to,” Mbah Darmo said.

“I know.”

They worked in companionable silence for nearly an hour. Sweat ran down Raka’s back. The ache under his ribs sharpened once when he twisted to reach a loose nail, then settled into a steady throb. He kept his breathing even and said nothing.

Ajeng appeared below with a plastic jug of water and two glasses. She did not look up as she set them on the low wall.

“Drink before you both fall off,” she said, then turned away to hang laundry.

Later, when Mbah Darmo went inside to rest, Raka found her in the side yard pinning shirts to the line.

“The debt is settled,” he said.

Ajeng’s hands paused on a clothespin. “I heard. Jayus sent a message to Mbah’s phone this morning. He sounded annoyed.”

“Good.”

She clipped the last shirt and finally looked at him. “You used your own money.”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re working deliveries like some ordinary person.”

“I am an ordinary person.”

Ajeng studied his face as if searching for the lie. When she found none, she only said, “Don’t expect me to say thank you every five minutes.”

“I won’t.”

A small, almost reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she turned back to the laundry.

---

In the late afternoon Pak Hasan called again. Raka answered while sitting on the porch steps, watching the younger children play with a half-deflated ball.

“The logistics discount is gone,” Pak Hasan said without greeting. His voice sounded thinner than before. “One of the regional distributors refused to renew unless they speak to you directly. Mbak Wulan tried. They hung up.”

Raka watched a boy miss the ball and fall into the dust, laughing.

“They’re starting to ask about the financing channel too,” Pak Hasan continued. “The alternative one. The bank contacted us this morning. They said the preferential rate was tied to a personal guarantee. Yours.”

“I know.”

“Pak Raka… people are beginning to talk. Quietly, but they’re talking. Bimo asked me yesterday whether you were ever officially employed. I didn’t know what to say.”

Raka was silent for a moment. The ball rolled toward the porch. He stopped it with his foot and gently pushed it back toward the children.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “Just do your job.”

“Are you really not coming back?”

“No.”

Pak Hasan exhaled, the sound heavy with things left unspoken. “If you change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

After the call ended, Raka remained on the steps. The ache under his ribs had become a constant companion, mild enough to ignore during work, sharp enough to notice in stillness. He had not opened the brown envelope again, but the numbers inside lived in the back of his mind like a clock that only he could hear.

---

That night the orphanage gathered for a simple dinner of fried tofu and clear soup. Conversation drifted around school assignments and a leaking faucet in the bathroom. No one mentioned the Wiratama family. No one asked Raka about his former life. The absence of those questions felt like a kindness he had not known he needed.

After the children had gone to bed, Nek Sum pressed a small packet of traditional herbal medicine into his hand.

“For the cough,” she said. “I heard you last night.”

Raka closed his fingers around the packet. “Thank you.”

She studied his face the way only old women who have raised many children can. “You’re allowed to rest, child. This house won’t collapse if you sleep past dawn once in a while.”

He nodded, though he already knew he would be at the truck by five-thirty the next morning.

Later, alone in his narrow room, Raka opened his laptop. The remaining draft emails still waited. He did not cancel another one. Not yet. Instead he wrote a short list on a scrap of paper:

1. Finish the roof.  

2. Check the electricity meter.  

3. Find a clinic that will not ask too many questions.  

The third item sat heavier than the others. He folded the paper and placed it inside the brown envelope, then turned off the light.

Outside, the mango tree moved gently in the night wind. Somewhere in the city, the Wiratama offices were still lit, people still talking in low voices about contracts that had quietly disappeared. Raka closed his eyes and let the ordinary sounds of the orphanage—the distant clink of a glass, the soft creak of old wood—settle around him like a blanket he had not realized he missed.

The days ahead would not be easy. The body he lived in was already keeping its own quiet schedule. But for the first time in fifteen years, the problems in front of him belonged only to him, and the people who might be hurt by his choices were no longer the ones who had decided he was disposable.

He slept.