Born between goodbye

Chapter 4 — The Prettiest Girl in the Village

By the age of ten, nearly everyone in the village knew her name.

Not because she caused trouble.

But because she was impossible not to notice.

Some children in the village grew wild from hardship — loud, rough, always fighting near the riverbanks or running barefoot through muddy roads. But she was different.

Quiet.

Calm.

Too mature for her age.

She spoke softly to older people, helped her grandmother carry groceries without being asked, and spent afternoons sitting near the wooden window reading borrowed schoolbooks while rain tapped gently outside.

Her grandmother also owned a small paddy field behind their house. Every day after school, she would change into old clothes, tie her hair neatly, and follow her grandmother to the paddy field.

The paddy field stretched wide beneath the hot afternoon sun, filled with shallow muddy water that reflected the sky like a mirror. The air smelled of wet soil and fresh grass, while frogs croaked loudly between the rice plants.

Her grandmother taught her everything about rice farming from a young age.

First, they prepared the paddy field by flooding it with water and softening the soil using simple farming tools. Sometimes her grandfather used a small hand tractor, but often they still relied on traditional methods.

After that came the process of sowing rice seeds carefully in a smaller nursery plot. She loved watching the tiny green shoots appear after several days.

When the seedlings grew tall enough, they moved to the hardest part: planting the young rice stalks.

Standing ankle-deep in thick mud beneath the burning sun, she pressed each fragile stalk into the earth beside her grandmother, row after row disappearing into the shimmering water. Sweat gathered along her temples and slid down her neck, but whenever she slowed, her grandmother simply adjusted her straw hat and continued forward without complaint.

“Rice farming teaches people discipline,” her grandmother often said.

As the weeks passed, they returned almost every evening to take care of the field. Sometimes she helped pull out weeds growing between the rice plants. Other days she carried fertilizer in small buckets while her grandmother spread it carefully across the field.

During dry days, they checked the water channels to make sure enough water flowed into the field. During rainy season, they worried about floods destroying the crops.

There was always something to do at the sawah.

Sometimes she chased away birds using old tin cans tied with strings because the birds loved eating young rice grains. Sometimes she caught small fish trapped in the shallow water or searched for snails near the muddy edges.

On quieter afternoons, she sat beneath a coconut tree beside the field while helping her grandmother prepare food for the workers — simple meals of rice, salted fish, sambal, and sweet tea.

Harvest season was her favorite time.

The entire village became lively and noisy. Men and women worked together cutting golden rice stalks using small sickles while children ran around carrying bundles of harvested rice.

She loved the sight of endless golden fields moving gently with the wind.

Even though the work was exhausting, those afternoons in the sawah became some of the warmest memories of her childhood.

And she was beautiful.

The kind of beauty villagers discussed carefully when they thought she could not hear.

“She looks nothing like a village girl.”

“Maybe she inherited her mother’s face.”

“Poor child… such beauty usually brings difficult fate.”

At first, she did not understand why people stared.

Then she grew older.

And she began noticing the difference herself.

Teachers treated her gently. Women in the market touched her cheeks affectionately whenever she passed. Boys suddenly became awkward around her, lowering their voices or pretending not to look whenever she walked by after school.

Even adults remembered her.

“The abandoned girl,” they whispered sometimes.

“But so pretty.”

The words always hurt more than she admitted.

At school, she became the brightest student in her class almost effortlessly.

Numbers came naturally to her. Reading fascinated her. She memorized entire lessons after hearing them only once. Teachers started asking her to help weaker students during class.

Her grandfather would smile proudly whenever teachers visited the house.

“She will leave this village one day,” he told everyone.

And secretly, she hoped so too.

Not because she hated the village.

But because every corner of it reminded her she had been left behind.

Some nights, after finishing homework beneath dim yellow light, she sat quietly near the river behind the house imagining another life somewhere beyond Indonesia.

A city perhaps.

Tall buildings.

Universities.

Crowded streets where nobody knew her history.

Sometimes she imagined her parents there too.

Living happily with their new families while forgetting she existed at all.

Those thoughts should have made her angry.

Instead, she would sit until the mosquitoes gathered around her ankles and the river turned black beneath the moonlight, listening to distant motorcycles fade down the road.

Then one afternoon, during a school sports event, she noticed someone staring at her from across the field.

A boy.

Older than her.

Not from her class.

He looked away immediately when their eyes met.

But it would not be the last time she saw him.