The midday sun beat down mercilessly on the yard outside Danu's rundown shack, illuminating a scene of profound moral theater. Moments after Mbok Min and little Pak RT stepped away carrying heavy sacks of shallot seeds brimming with hope, the wooden front door edged open once again.

Danu stepped out onto the porch, standing tall with a serene gaze. Behind him, Pak Slamet accompanied him alongside Mbok Min and little Pak RT lingering near the doorway.

Spotting the door swinging open once more, the desperate villagers waiting in the yard immediately snapped their heads upward. The false hope they thought extinguished flared back to life in their chests. Kasim and Mardani, slumped in the front row, scrambled forward instantly, convinced Danu had finally softened toward them.

"Young Danu...! You're opening the door again! You're going to forgive us all, aren't you?!" Kasim wailed in a raw, hopeful voice, dragging himself closer to the porch.

Danu raised his right hand, signaling them to halt. His expression remained frosty, completely devoid of a smile.

"Do not expect me to alter my decision concerning any of you," Danu declared in a deep, absolute tone that instantly plunged Kasim and the rest of the crowd back into crushing despair.

Yet at the very tail end of the gathering, amid the weeping masses, something startling unfolded.

A ragged, agonizing sob cut through the crowd. A figure trembling violently, clad in filthy clothes caked in black, putrid mud and sporting tangled, matted hair, crawled laboriously through the gaps between the standing villagers' legs.

The locals catching sight of the approaching figure recoiled in shock, shuffling away with a mixture of revulsion and awe.

The figure dragged himself forward through ragged gasps, hauling his knees across the dusty earth until he finally collapsed right at the foot of Danu's front steps.

It was Pak Darma.

The former absolute dictator of Suka Makmur Village retained not a single shred of authority, luxury, or arrogance. His batik shirt was torn and caked in the muck of his rotting melon fields, the heavy gold chain was long gone, and his face was a pale, ghost-white mask adorned with eyes swollen and soaked in bottomless tears of regret.

Watching the man once feared and loathed by the entire village groveling in the dirt in such a wretched state, every resident held their breath. An eerie hush gripped the yard. Not a single sound dared escape the lips of the farmers.

Pak Darma forced his head upward with agonizing effort. His lips shook violently, and a mixture of tears and mud streamed down his wrinkled cheeks.

"Danu... young Danu..." Pak Darma whimpered in a raspy, dying whisper, weeping miserably before the youth he had once trampled and threatened without mercy.

Danu looked down, staring blankly at the middle-aged man prostrated helplessly at his boots.

Pak Darma reached out for the worn shoes Danu wore, then—with a heart-wrenching motion of absolute desperation—pressed his lips to the tips of Danu's boots over and over while sobbing uncontrollably.

"I'm begging you, Danu... forgive me... forgive all my sins and crimes against you and your family..." Pak Darma wailed hysterically, gripping Danu's footwear with filthy fingers. "My house has been seized by the bank... my wealth hauled away... I have nothing left, not a single penny to my name..."

Kasim and the surrounding villagers stared at the dramatic spectacle with jaws agape. The former petty king who had bled them dry was now reduced to a beggar at the feet of a farmhand's son.

Pak Darma arched his neck higher, locking a gaze of desperate, absolute supplication onto Danu.

"Young Danu... please..." Pak Darma sobbed for mercy. "Don't drive me out of this village... Give me work... even if it's just as a laborer... a field cleaner... or the lowest weed-puller on your shallot farm... let me work here just to keep this fading breath alive... I'm begging you..."

Hearing the pathetic plea of the cruel ex-loan shark, Pak Slamet behind Danu felt a twinge of sympathy. The middle-aged man stepped closer to the door, intending to say something to mediate.

"Dan... have mercy on him... regardless of everything, he used to be a powerful man in this village..." Pak Slamet whispered softly to his son.

Yet Danu didn't budge. He raised a single hand, signaling his father to let things unfold along the lines of true, unyielding justice.

Danu gazed down deeper, studying Pak Darma prostrated at his feet for several long, silent seconds. No triumphant grin tugged at Danu's lips. No mocking laughter of the sort Pak Darma had once unleashed down at the village hall. All that radiated from Danu's eyes was the absolute serenity of a man watching the wheels of karma spin to absolute perfection.

Slowly, without uttering a single insult, curse, or derogatory remark, Danu pulled his foot free from Pak Darma's grip, stepping back a single pace.

Pak Darma gasped in shock. He jerked his head up with wide, tear-soaked eyes, staring at Danu, whose gaze burned with an ice-cold intensity that froze the blood.

"Danu...? Young Danu... you won't take me in...?" Pak Darma whimpered in despair.

Danu lowered his frame slightly, locking eyes straight into the former tyrant's pupils, before dropping the final, devastating verdict that drove straight to Pak Darma's soul:

"Back then, when I first rented that land to save my family, you called that marginal cliffside plot a wasteland for fools," Danu said in a deep, calm, yet glacial tone.

Pak Darma swallowed hard, his entire body shaking violently at the words.

Danu finished with a razor-sharp stare:

"Now... enjoy that place in your own way."