The cost arrived without invoices.
No alerts.
No shortages.
No crisis meetings.
Just a slow accumulation of absence.
---
Aulia noticed it when a long-time partner didn't renew.
"They were polite," she said, scrolling through the message. "Grateful, even. But they said they needed 'momentum'."
Danindra nodded. "Momentum is addictive."
Another partner left the following week. Then another.
Not angry.
Not disappointed.
Just… gone.
---
In GarudaCity, the effects were subtle.
Fewer pop-up shops.
Less noise in public spaces.
Some buildings stayed dark a little longer at night.
Yet crime did not rise.
Happiness metrics did not fall.
The city felt… quieter.
"Heavier," Melindra said during an operations review. "Like we're carrying something others dropped."
Wirasmi listened, hands folded around a warm cup of tea.
"We are," she said. "We're carrying the cost they didn't want."
---
Ace felt it most acutely.
In LionCity Raya, doors that once opened automatically now required explanation. Invitations thinned. Conversations ended sooner.
"You're limiting your own leverage," an old associate told him. "Why choose to be smaller?"
Ace answered without hesitation. "Because I've seen what leverage demands in return."
The associate did not reply.
---
The first internal doubt surfaced that week.
Not rebellion.
Fatigue.
"What if we're wrong?" Danindra asked late one night, staring at the city map alone. "What if restraint only works because we're already strong?"
Wirasmi stood beside him, quiet.
"Then we make sure strength isn't mistaken for virtue," she said. "And we never claim this path is easy."
"That won't protect us."
"No," she agreed. "But honesty might."
---
The doubt reached the thread.
Not as instability—
As weight.
The system adjusted again, compensating not with expansion, but with depth. Local networks strengthened. Skills circulated. Mutual reliance increased.
GarudaCity began to feel… interdependent.
Which frightened some people.
---
A student collective released a manifesto that month.
They called it The Visible Cost.
It argued that restraint was not free—that it demanded time, slower returns, and the courage to be overlooked.
They credited GarudaCity without asking permission.
Public reaction split.
Some called it romantic nonsense.
Others felt seen for the first time.
---
One evening, Wirasmi returned to the listening hall alone.
She placed her hand on the wall and felt the thread respond—steady, burdened, unwavering.
"It hurts sometimes," she admitted softly.
The thread did not comfort her.
It did not reassure.
It simply remained.
And that, she realized, was the true cost—
To choose something that would not pretend the weight wasn't real.
And to carry it anyway.