Prarthana's pov

Some days begins normally and still manage to unsettle you.

The kind where nothing goes wrong, yet everything feels slightly off. Like a crack you can't see but keep stepping on. That was how the day unfolded. Quiet. Predictable. Uncomfortable in its calm.

I spent the morning buried in routine. Notes. Coffee gone cold. The familiar comfort of tasks that didn't demand emotion. Control was easier when my hands where busy.

Arjun's voice drifted in from the living room.

"Dii, you're going to be late."

"I know," I replied, not looking up.

He leaned against the doorway anyway. Eighteen and already convinced he understood the world better than everyone else. He studied me the way younger siblings do when they sense something unspoken.

"You've been distracted," he said.

I finally glanced at him. "You're imagining things."

He smiled, unconvinced. "You always say that when you're thinking too much."

I didn't answer. Some truths didn't deserve acknownledgement.

By the time I stepped outside, the sky had dulled into a pale grey. The city moved around me, indifferent, efficient. People passed by with places to be and reasons I couldn't see. I wondered if they carried unfinished stories too, or if they'd simply learned to close chapters better than I had.

My phone buzzed again.

Tanya.

"Coffee." "Evening." "No excuses."

I stared at the message longer than necessary before replying with a single Fine.

Tanya had always been relentless like that. She believed avoidance was a bad habit, not a survival mechanism. Sometimes I envied her certainty. Other times, it exhausted me.

The rest of the day slipped by quietly. Too quietly.

It wasn't until I was walking home that the unease sharpened. A familiar feeling. Not memory. Not fear. Recognition. As if something I'd left behind had shifted, moved closer without announcing itself.

I stopped at a crossing, waiting for the signal to change. Across the street, a group of people gathered outside a building, laughter cutting through the hum of traffic. For a brief second, I thought I saw him.

The thought was absurd.

I hadn't seen Kabir in years. And yet my chest tightened instinctively, like my body remembered before my mind could interfere.

The signal turned green.

I crossed the street, shaking the feeling away. coincidences existed. So did imagination. I refused to give either too much power.

Still, that night, sleep came reluctantly.

I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, replaying nothing and everything at once. Tanya's words echoed somewhere in the back of my mind. "Don't pretend it doesn't hurt."

I didn't know what hurt more.

The memory of what had been.

Or the quiet certainty that some distances never truly stay distant.

Elsewhere in the city, someone was learning the same lesson.

And whether I liked it or not, our silences were slowly moving toward e