Spearfishing and Royal Disruption

By midmorning, Jaka was in the back of the kitchen hut, aggressively jabbing a battered metal spoon into a sandbag full of rice hulls.

Spoon Warrior +10

[System Message: Still doing this?]

"Yes," he grunted. "Behold. The mighty spoon."

The sandbag barely reacted. The spoon bent slightly.

He sighed, sweat dripping into his eyes. "This is what my life has become. Grinding job stats for a class classified as a joke."

Spoon Warrior +5

[System Message: ...]

"You're quiet now?" he muttered.

Behind him, the village cook peered in, eyebrows raised. "You're either losing your mind or inventing a new recipe."

Jaka waved him off. "It's martial culinary arts. Very underground, sir."

The cook just blinked and left, muttering something about "Kids and their utensils."

Eventually, when the rice hulls offered no more resistance and the spoon had grown sentimental, Jaka wandered toward the river. With a bamboo spear in hand and the sun blazing above, he told himself it wasn't about the game, the system, or the looming metaphysical questions.

It was about fish—just fish; slippery aquatic protein, fresh air, and sanity, not Intellect, which had turned into a cruel joke.

As the system's architect, he hit a paradox: knowledge was meant to be earned, but knowing everything meant gaining nothing. The stat barely moved, and every formula rejected his input with passive-aggressive elegance.

[Intellect +0]

[System Message: Try not being omniscient?]

And so here he was—i

n a river, with a stick, trying to reclaim his sanity while everything he'd built seemed to turn against him; he waded in knee-deep, scanned the ripples, and jabbed.

Polearm +1

Fisherman +17

"See? Double stats rise, baby."

Two fish and one accidental self-stab later, he'd caught a trio of fat catfish and found an oddly comforting rhythm to the river's flow. Somewhere in the distance, a bird sang like it had auto-tune.

That was when he heard the splash—followed by a giggle, and a girl voice that curled through the air like mischief given form.

"Trying to summon dinner, are we?"

Jaka froze mid-skewer.

There she was.

Dyah Netarja, barefoot in the shallows, holding a crooked wooden spear like it was part of her royal regalia. Her long black hair was tied with twine, eyes sharp and curious, smile as devastating as he coded it to be.

He blinked. "Your Highness."

She tilted her head. "Do we… know each other? Who are you?"

He hesitated, then: "Not personally. Besides, who didn't know Dyah Netarja? I am but a humble spoon specialist, Your Highness."

Her smile widened. "Well, spoon specialist, you seem adept with sticks too. May I try?"

Jaka's brain short-circuited for a second.

Oh no. Oh no. Not now. Not like this.

He'd created Dyah Netarja years ago—meticulously crafting her personality, dialogue triggers, political arc, and even the small quirks in her speech.

Also his waifu.

Which sounds way less creepy when you're not stuck in her world and she's ten years old.

This is entrapment. I'm being honeytrapped by my own brainchild. The FBI is probably taking notes and watching me through a coconut.

"With the fish, I mean," she clarified, stepping closer. "Not the spoons."

"Oh, of course, Your Highness."

The fish swam lazily around her flailing strikes, her crooked spear stirring more mud and weeds than anything else. At one point, she nearly tumbled in, attempting to recover her dignity by loudly declaring war on a rock. Jaka, ever diplomatic, pretended not to notice as he quietly cleaned the fish.

Eventually, soaked and laughing, she gave up and dropped beside him at the riverside campfire.

"You're good at this," she said, watching him clean the fish.

"Thanks for years of stress," he replied. "And questionable game balancing and mechanics."

She gave him a look. "What?"

He cleared his throat. "I meant… practice."

She eyed the fire. "You didn't answer my question earlier."

He glanced up. "My name?"

She nodded as he stuck a stick through the first catfish, holding it over the flames.

"Jaka."

"Jaka... Jaka," she repeated softly, testing the name like a song lyric or poem. "Thank you. I've been wondering ever since I first glanced at you when I arrived in this village. You look like you know more than you should."

He tried not to flinch. Tried not to think about the dev terminal buried under mountains of broken code. Or the dozens of NPCs they handcrafted—her, most of all.

She wasn't just a character—she was the character. The one who threw the script out the window with her emergent behavior, hijacked her own cutscenes, and, during QA testing, even assassinated a background character to replace her with herself.

They even had a bug tracker called "Netarja Chaos", with thirteen open cases and no resolutions—her unofficial nickname as an unpredictable AI.

He'd written her motivations, conflicts, resentment, traits, and story—even as she faltered while her brother, Hayam Wuruk, marched toward historical greatness as the Fourth Maharaja.

She was meant to rebel gently, to disrupt—not feel this... alive. What the hell did I create?! And definitely not to show up now, ten years old, out of timeline, in my general vicinity.

She bit into the grilled catfish with all the elegance of someone who had never learned to eat anywhere but at a banquet table—yet here she was, cross-legged on the ground, cheeks puffed with hot fish, and laughing like a child on a picnic.

"This is not bad," she said, mouth still half-full. "You cook too?"

"I do what I have to."

She stared into the fire, the laughter fading, replaced by something distant. Her voice dropped, oddly pensive.

"Do you think the fish remember us?"

Jaka blinked. "The ones we catch?"

"No," she said. "The ones who escape."

Silence stretched between them, flickering with the firelight. He turned to look at her, but her eyes were far away—lost in ripples.

"I think they learn," Jaka said quietly, gaze settling into the flames. "And I think we forget what we taught them."

She didn't answer. Just chewed slower, as if the fish had suddenly become more than food.

"What the heck?!" Jaka screamed internally. "Is this one of those weird philosophical dialogue trees? Coding them was way easier than living through them—like all my years of accumulated embarrassment just slapped me in the face. Damn it, I have no idea what she's talking about. I just said something that sounded deep and hoped it would work."

The firewood crackled, giving off its final warmth. Shadows stretched long across the river like reaching fingers, and Dyah Netarja rose, silhouetted in gold and smoke.

"I'm glad I met you today, Jaka."

He nodded, trying not to read too much into it. "Likewise, Your Highness."

She paused mid-step, half-turned, eyes catching firelight.

"And if you ever feel like you're out of place… just know you're not the only one wondering if the world is wrong."

Then she turned and walked barefoot away into the dusk. Jaka didn't move for a while. He just sat there, chewing on grilled fish and half-digested thoughts.

He stared into the coals, like they might blink first.

"This is your fault," he muttered to the spoon still stuck in his belt. "You opened a door. Now we're all in a very weird anime game."

And honestly? He deserved it.

Because once upon a time, back when he still had a desk, a coffee addiction, and sanity, Jaka made a choice.

A very important, very stupid, and very emotionally compromising choice.

He declared—loudly, in the dev Discord—that Dyah Netarja was his waifu.

Like, not in a "She's cute" way. But in a "I will fight the rest of this department to preserve her character arc and aesthetic perfection" way.

And he did.

When the concept artists submitted the first drafts of her teenage and adult design, she already radiated regality.

Graceful. Pale skin. Dark, discerning eyes. Long jet-black hair with features inherited from the Queen—but eyes more cunning.

One sketch had her draped in a red veil, half her face obscured like a whispered secret.

Another showed her in ceremonial war armor, hair whipping in the wind like the opening shot of a K-drama.

The dev chat exploded.

"JAKA WHAT IS THIS?!"

"WHY IS SHE HOTTER THAN HER MOM?!"

"YOU MADE HER ROYALTY, NOT A FINAL FANTASY BOSS!"

But Jaka stood firm. He uploaded a voice memo titled "NETARJA_DEFENSE.mp3", where—very emotionally—he laid out his case:

"Listen. I gave her the face of rebellion, the voice of reason, and the legs of destiny—plus two perfectly rendered, lore-accurate, high-poly mountains. Of course she grew up beautiful. She's the perfect storm of intelligence, elegance, and historical fiction angst. If she's not top waifu-tier, what are we even doing here?"

He may have commissioned a private theme song for her—acoustic, with a lute solo and lyrics in old Javanese.

The team begged him to tone it down—one guy even swapped her character model with a talking capybara to make a point, only for Jaka to retaliate by scripting a ten-page, lore-consistent event where the capybara dies tragically and Dyah Netarja delivers the eulogy.

In the end, they gave up. To this day, her adult design is still filed in the asset library as:

"Netarja_FINAL_FINAL_DO_NOT_TOUCH_(seriously)_v13.psd"

So now, here, in this strange version of the world where code became soil, Jaka sat across from the ten-year-old prototype of his beloved waifu and tried very, very hard not to sound like he needed to be on a watchlist.

He groaned.

Regret +10

FBI Awareness +1

[System Message: Inner FBI Unit now tracking you emotionally]

"Damn..."

Still, watching her walk away barefoot, confident, cheeky and half-royal even in tatters, he couldn't help but feel proud.