He walked in and sat directly across from her. Instantly, Mritika’s fingers tightened around the seat handle. Her body stiffened, her limbs trembling as if the past had suddenly taken physical form. A voice echoed in her mind—cold, sharp, unforgiving: “My mother’s killer.” She forced herself to look away. In that instant, her mind travelled seven years back, to the last time she had seen Neel. The memory was etched into her nightmares: him being taken away in a white police jeep, handcuffed, surrounded by a crowd. That image still woke her in the middle of the night, gasping for air. Her uncle had been sitting on the steps outside their house, head in his hands, tears streaming down his face. Mritika had just returned from her math tuition, bag still slung over her shoulder, when she saw Neel being led away. Before she could make sense of it, a lady police officer and her uncle sat her down and delivered the truth that shattered her world: her mother was dead. And the one responsible was Neel—her boyfriend, the boy who had once defined love for her. A sudden jerk of the bus brought her back to the present. She stood immediately, stumbling toward the last seat—far away from him. Only there could she breathe again. “Hitec! Hitec! Hitec!” The conductor’s voice jolted her back to the present. Mritika gathered herself, stood, and walked slowly toward the exit. By the time she reached her office, the clock read 4:44 PM. “Late by fourteen minutes,” she murmured, grateful that Fridays were usually slow. But something felt off. The office buzzed with a strange energy—chaotic, distant, unreal. She tried to focus, but nothing her therapist had taught her seemed to work. Four cups of coffee in two hours. Still numb. She opened her diary to journal her feelings, as she’d been taught. But the words wouldn’t come. All she could see were those eyes—his eyes—the ones she had been running from for seven years. The ones that still haunted her. For a fleeting moment, she wished she had someone to talk to, like in her childhood. But then she was glad she didn’t. No explanations. No pity. Mritika had always been a loner. The only person who truly understood her was her father. He died of cancer when she was just eight—leaving her angry, confused, and unwilling to accept the sugar-coated lies adults told about death. Her father had been blunt, factual, honest. She preferred it that way. After his death, she stopped talking. Books became her refuge—the only world that made sense. Until one day, a new neighbour arrived—a boy who sat on the opposite terrace every evening and persistently called out just one word: “Hi!”. After her father's death, the terrace was her sanctuary, silent, sacred. But this boy was determined to invade it. For five months, he greeted her daily. And then, one day, she finally responded. “What’s your name?” “Neel. And I know you’re Mritika,” he said, grinning. “It means soil, right? I did my research. I’m water—and you’re soil.” He laughed, as if he’d said the funniest thing in the world. That day, she smiled—not at the joke, but at the innocence behind it. Neel was everything she claimed to dislike—lame, loud, ridiculous. He had a squirrel friend, for god’s sake. Who has a squirrel friend? Her name was Don. Yes, her. And she had only half a tail. Neel formally introduced her one day, and within minutes, Don was perched on Mritika’s shoulder, her tiny claws like ant bites. It was absurd, but oddly comforting. Bit by bit, Neel’s “stupidity” chipped away at the walls Mritika had built. She found herself feeding Don from her hand, dancing in the rain, watching cricket she didn’t understand, sharing chocolates in silence. It was all weird. And new. And she had grown to like it. September 9, 2002. She sat on the terrace at 5 PM, waiting. Neel was supposed to read Portia’s speech from The Merchant of Venice, just before Bassanio chose the casket. Reading together had become their thing. Neel didn’t care for books, but he loved seeing her eyes light up when she read. He said her eyes could speak—and he’d do anything to hear them. But that day, he didn’t show up. She told herself she didn’t care. But as the minutes passed, anxiety gnawed at her. Still, she sat, refusing to show weakness. After half an hour, she gave up and went inside — furious, though she wouldn’t admit why. Two more days passed. No Neel. On the third day, worry won. She walked to his house. His mother opened the door and told her he’d been sick with a fever. That day, Mritika discovered something new about herself: She could feel. In those two days, she had experienced everything she thought she was incapable of—anger, frustration, fear. And maybe something more. Her phone buzzed on the desk. “Transport.” It was midnight. Her shift was over. On the ride home, staring out the cab window, she tried to recall what she had done in the last seven hours. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It had been three weeks since Mritika’s unexpected encounter with Neel. She had almost begun to feel relieved. No sightings. No whispers. No shadows. Just silence. She had imagined their reunion a thousand times—how she would confront him, demand answers, scream the questions that had haunted her for years. Why did you take her away? Why did you teach me to smile only to leave me drowning in silence? Why did you make me incapable of trusting anyone again? Why am I still breathing when everything inside me is dead? But that day on the bus had shattered every imagined scenario. She hadn’t confronted him. She had fled. Living alone in a quiet apartment gave her too much time to think. Too much space for ghosts. She called her uncle occasionally—her Mamu—to check on his health. But she hadn’t spoken a word about Neel. Not about the bus. Not about the voice in her head that had whispered his name like a curse. She couldn’t. Her uncle had lost his sister that day—his only family besides her. He had been just a college freshman when his parents died, and her mother, barely out of her teens, had raised him like her own child. He had lived with them ever since. Seven years ago, he told her Neel had been sentenced to three years in a juvenile reform facility. Rehabilitation support would follow. That was the last time they ever spoke of him. The police had taken Mritika’s statement after her mother’s death, but she hadn’t known what to say. She was never summoned to court. Maybe they thought she was too broken to testify. That morning, she sat at her breakfast table, chewing muesli like it was cardboard. Her mind drifted again—fragments of memory flashing like scenes from a film where she was neither the hero nor the villain. She shook herself out of it. “I have to get out of this. This isn’t healthy. I need to do something. Get busy. Come on, Mritika. Figure it out. Fast. Before you go crazy.” She stood up, pacing. “Let’s go out. A meal? No. The library? No. Books. Yes. Let’s buy books. Sunday Book Bazaar. Perfect.” She threw on her blue polka-dotted Kurti and denims, grabbed her bag, and headed out. The Sunday Book Bazaar at Abids was her kind of chaos—rows of stalls overflowing with everything from Robin Sharma to tattered Reader’s Digests. If the pages were intact, the story was still alive. That’s all that mattered. Life in Hyderabad wasn’t easy. A mid-level analyst, living alone, surviving paycheck to paycheck. But she loved her solitude. It was her escape—from the house that haunted her, the lanes where she had walked with Neel, the café of their first kiss, the library where he had whispered under the desk: “You know I love you, right?” Her studio apartment on the third floor was her fortress. She barely spoke to neighbours. A word or two with the watchman, only when necessary. Determined to break the cycle, she reached the bus stop, climbed aboard, and closed her eyes. The route was familiar. Abids was far from Tolichowki, but she didn’t care. She dove into the stalls the moment she arrived. The bazaar stretched from Chermas to the GPO. She planned to explore every inch. She was hunting for Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso. “Amor condusse noi ad una morte — Love led us to one death,” she whispered. By noon, most stalls were half-empty. She had walked for hours. No Dante. No luck. “Maybe people don’t care about fourteenth-century poets anymore,” she muttered. “Or maybe he’s too good to be found here.” She pressed on. Only a few stalls remained. At the third one, she felt it—a presence, no — his presence. She turned and then froze. That voice. He was there, hiding in a cap and sunglasses—talking to a street vendor, asking for an English version of the Mahabharata. Her mind went blank, then instinct took over. She turned and ran. At the bus stop, she collapsed onto the bench, breath shallow, heart pounding. A few minutes later, she saw him. Walking toward her. Her blood felt like it was draining from her veins. The stop was deserted. No escape. Neel sat beside her. Quietly. “Hi,” he said, voice low, fragile. Before she could think, her hand moved. She slapped him. Hard. Seven years of rage, grief, betrayal—all in one motion. She stared at him, eyes burning, then turned and walked away—fast, almost blindly. After a few steps, she looked back. He was still sitting there. Staring at the empty road.