It was a week after the truth came out.
The truth about the trial.
The truth about Aarav's choice.
Meera hadn't spoken much to Yuvi since Dharamshala. Not because she was angry. Not anymore. But because the silence now felt necessary. Like breath between two long-held notes of a song.
She needed to sit with everything: grief, betrayal, understanding, and strange forgiveness.
Each emotion had become its own visitor in her mind, knocking softly at her door, asking to be felt.
She was letting them in. One by one.
That morning, a courier arrived.
A slim brown envelope, marked with old ink and the handwriting she would know anywhere — even now, even through tears.
Aarav.
Inside, a note.
Meera,
If you're reading this, it means the doctors broke the rule and sent it anyway. Or maybe Yuvi did. Either way, you're probably angry. That's okay.
I asked them to send this only after enough time had passed — enough that your rage had cooled, your hurt had spoken, and your silence had softened.
I knew you'd find out about the trial.
And I knew you'd hate that I chose not to try.
But I need you to know why.
It wasn't because I gave up. It was because I had already been given everything I came here for.
You.
You were the miracle.
You gave me a life inside borrowed time.
You painted months with laughter, days with mischief, mornings with purpose.
You made every 'not enough' moment feel full.
And I didn't want to stay just to survive. I wanted to leave while my hands still remembered how your fingers felt. While my voice still carried jokes, not groans.
I didn't want to become someone who forgot joy just to extend pain.
You would've convinced me to stay. I know that.
And I would've said yes — because I loved you.
But that would've made you carry guilt later.
So I made the choice alone.
It wasn't fair. I know.
But love isn't always about fairness.
Sometimes it's about protecting each other… even from the truth.
I am sorry for the hurt.
I am not sorry for the love.
And if you are reading this…
I hope you are writing again.
Loving again.
Living — wildly, fully, breathlessly.
You owe me nothing.
But if there's someone beside you now who holds your silences as gently as your laughter — let them stay.
Don't lock the door because I once left through it.
Love again. Even if it's different.
Especially if it's different.
I love you.
I loved you.
I will always love you.
—Aarav
She cried for a long time.
Not the broken, howling grief of fresh loss.
This was different.
These were tears that softened the edges.
Not pain. Not peace.
Something in between.
Something human.
That night, she lit a candle.
And she wrote a letter back.
Dear Aarav,
You knew me better than I knew myself.
You knew I'd rage. That I'd search for reasons, claw at the quiet, demand answers from the air.
But you also knew I'd come back to you — not to rewrite the ending, but to remember the beginning.
You were my middle. My sky. My song.
You still are.
And here's what I've learned:
Death didn't take you.
It took your body. But you — your words, your laughter, your way of leaning into life — you stayed.
In every room I enter, you're the light.
In every letter I write, you're the ink.
In every silence I sit in, you're the breath.
I am learning to love again.
Not because I've stopped loving you — but because you taught me how.
And there is someone…
He doesn't walk in your shadow. He stands beside it.
He never tries to replace you.
He reads your letters like scripture and lets me cry without asking for explanations.
He's patient.
He's kind.
He's not you.
But somehow, he is everything I need now.
So tonight, I let you go a little.
Not because I'm forgetting.
But because I'm finally remembering how to stay alive.
Thank you.
For loving me when you did.
For leaving when you had to.
And for trusting I'd find my way back to the world.
I did.
I promise.
—Meera
She folded the letter gently and placed it inside Aarav's old camera box — the one he used to carry everywhere, long after the film inside had expired.
Then she opened her laptop.
Typed a title into a blank document:
"Two Days After You."
A novel.
The whole story. The real story.
Not the letters. Not the movement.
This would be their truth.
How they lived.
How he left.
How she stayed.
And how, somehow, she began again.
One year later...
The book hit shelves across the world.
Two Days After You climbed to the top of bestseller lists.
But that wasn't what mattered.
What mattered was the note on the first page.
For Aarav — Who showed me that goodbyes don't end stories. They just start new chapters.
Meera and Yuvi stood backstage at a literary festival in Kerala.
Hundreds of readers had gathered to hear her speak.
Before she went on, Yuvi handed her a small box.
Inside, a bracelet.
The same one Aarav had once bought for her in that Jaipur bazaar.
Repaired.
Restored.
Whole again.
"You found it?" she asked.
Yuvi smiled. "I kept it. I always meant to give it back. I think it's time."
She slipped it on.
It clicked shut like a promise.
Later, during the Q&A, someone asked:
"Was Aarav the love of your life?"
She smiled gently.
"He was the love of one life. The one I lived before the pain." "But life has more than one love in it." "And I've learned… loving again doesn't mean loving less." "It means loving differently."
"Aarav taught me how to love." "Yuvi taught me how to stay."
Yuvi reached for her hand under the table.
She let him hold it.
No fear.
No guilt.
Just grace.
That night, Meera stood on a beach at sunset.
The sky was bruised in oranges and golds.
Waves whispered things she didn't need to understand.
And she whispered into the wind:
"I lived, Aarav." "I really lived." "Thank you."
She let the wind carry it.
Then turned back toward Yuvi, who waited near the shore with two paper lanterns and a quiet smile.
She walked to him.
Took one lantern.
Lit it.
Let it rise.
Let it all go.
And let the rest begin.
THE END.