Chapter 2: The Silent Scream

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.