The living room had settled into a murmur of voices, punctuated by the clink of porcelain.
Fahad rose from his armchair without ceremony. He adjusted his cuffs and looked toward the doorway. "I am going to the company."
The conversation didn't stop. No one seemed surprised. Fahad was always the first to leave,
Always the one who carried the — weight of the world on his shoulders before anyone else had finished breakfast.
He turned his head, just slightly. His gray eyes found Anik, who was seated beside Nahi, a cup of tea resting untouched in his hand.
"Are you coming?"
The room went quiet for half a heartbeat because Fahad Sunayana rarely asked anyone to come with him anywhere.
Anik looked up. His dark brown eyes met Fahad's gray ones and for a moment, something passed between them — an old understanding.
Anik set his cup down. "I'll come."
Fahad nodded once, then he turned and walked toward the entrance hall, his footsteps unhurried against the marble floor.
Anik followed a step behind. The space between them was comfortable . The space of two men who had known each other long enough to not need words.
The room exhaled. Conversations resumed. Fahan said something, Faha laughed, Fahim turned a page, Naya reached for her tea.
Maya lifted her eyes,just slightly. Her gaze moved to the tall grandfather clock near the window. The hands showed 08:47 AM.
She closed the book around one finger, marking her place. Then she closed it fully, set it down on the arm of the chair and rose.
She walked across the room without a sound,she passed the sofa where Nahi was scribbling in his notebook, passed the window where Ohi stood, phone in hand.
She reached the staircase and began to climb. One hand rested lightly on the polished banister.
Inside her mind, a voice curled through the silence, Running away so soon?
You didn't even say goodbye. That's rude, you know. They're your family.
Maya stopped before her door. Her hand rested on the handle. "Are they?"
She pushed the door open. The morning light fell through the windows in pale golden sheets, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
Her question hung in the air between them, 'Are they?'
For a moment, there was only silence. Then — Yama smiled. A devil's smile, slow, pleased and utterly terrifyingly satisfied.
I thought you had accepted them - I thought you had finally let them in.
That you had started to believe, just a little that you belonged somewhere. But seeing this…
Her voice dropped, intimate and sharp at the same time, a whisper with teeth. I'm glad. You have no one in your life but me.
Look at them, they can sit beside you. Call you family. Pretend they understand you. But when things become difficult, when the parts of you that you keep buried begin to surface…
Her voice softened. They won't know what to do with you.They never will.
Her expression remained unreadable. But I will.
No one who knows you. No one who has seen the things you have seen and stayed afterward.
No one who has looked at the darkest parts of you—the parts you hide from everyone else—and decided they weren't enough to make them leave.
A faint smile appeared again.
I'm the only one who already knows the worst of you — and doesn't need you to hide it. Only me. Just me.
Maya closed her eyes for exactly one second.
Then she opened them, crossed the room and walked to the wardrobe.
The wardrobe doors opened with a click. Inside, neatly arranged rows of school uniforms waited — freshly pressed by the household staff.
She reached for one. Her gloved fingers moved with quiet precision as she lifted the hanger free and laid the uniform carefully across the bed.
Then she turned and began to change out of her casual clothes. [FEW MINUTES LATER]
A crisp white shirt was tucked perfectly into a deep navy-blue skirt , bearing the school's embroidered crest on the left pocket.
A striped navy-and-silver tie was fastened with meticulous precision.White socks and polished black leather shoes completed the uniform.
She stood before the full-length mirror, her long dark hair was combed carefully and tied back neatly. For a moment, she simply stood there.
Then she lifted one gloved hand and touched the crest on her pocket. Her fingers traced its shape — the way someone might trace the outline of a word they had forgotten how to read.
The girl who looked back at her was not the girl who had climbed down a mansion wall. The girl in the mirror was — ordinary.
A student, just a girl in a uniform, waiting for the day to begin. She turned away from the mirror and walked to the desk and opened her school bag.
One by one, she placed her textbooks , pencil case and placed the book Fahish had given her inside it, beside her diary.
She zipped the bag closed and slipped the strap over her shoulder. Then, she smoothed the front of her uniform one last time and walked toward the door.
The corridor beyond was filled with the glow of the morning sun.She walked toward the grand staircase with her usual calm, unhurried steps.
Yama leaned closer. Her red hair spilled over her shoulders in waves of liquid fire — each strand catching the dim light of Maya's mind and turning it into something that almost looked like embers.
Though...I have to admit.
Maya continued walking. "What?"
You know, you look beautiful. Very beautiful. Vrey beautiful. Really, stunning, ethereal. The kind of beautiful that makes people stop and stare, that makes them forget what they were saying.
She reached out—her fingers hovering just above Maya's cheek, not quite touching as though the space between them was sacred.
You have that kind of face. The kind that doesn't need to try. The kind that doesn't need to smile. The kind that just ..... exists and that's enough. That's more than enough.
She gestured vaguely toward the mirror — the one inside Maya's mind, the one that reflected nothing but the endless garden of spider lilies.
Of course, you can't see that. Your whole world is just black and white. No color, no light, nothing.
Everything is either useful or useless, necessary or unnecessary. Truth or lie.
You walk through life with your glasses and your gloves and your silence and you never once look at yourself, not really.
Her voice dropped,butI see you.I see everything, every shadow under your eyes, every thought you try to hide. I see it all, Maya.
Silence.
"Quantum mechanics and general relativity. How do you reconcile the two?"
Yama blinked. ...What?
"How do you reconcile them? They contradict each other — one describes the very small, the other the very large.
They cannot both be correct in their current form. So—how do you reconcile them?"
Yama went silent. Maya waited, one second, two. Three. I don't want to talk to you anymore.
She crossed her arms and turned her head away, her lips pressing into a pout. A theatrical , utterly deliberate display of wounded pride.
You're impossible. I try to give you a compliment and what do you do? You ask me about physics. Physics, Maya. I was being nice And you—
She gestured vaguely toward Maya with one hand as though the words had abandoned her entirely.
You just—you just ask questions. That's all you do. You ask questions and you never answer any.
Maya raised one eyebrow—just slightly, just enough to be infuriating. "Is that so?"
Yes. That's so.
"Then what do you do? What do you do? All day. Every day, you talk and you talk and you talk, you literally fry my brain. You exhaust my patience. "
Yama opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "That's—that's not—"
Maya's voice remained unhurried, yet utterly merciless. " You sit in my head and talk until I want to tear my own ears off. "
She looked up, her dark eyes met Yama's blue ones. Silence.
Yama's mouth opened. Closed. Opened. For once — for the first time in perhaps her entire existence—she had nothing to say.
Her cheeks flushed, just slightly, she turned her head away, crossed her arms and sat down — or rather, she settled into the air beside Maya like a sulking child. I'm not talking to you anymore.
"Good."
I mean it.
"I know."
I'm never talking to you again.
"Alright."
I'm serious.
"I know."
Yama let out a frustrated breath. Then another. Then she peeked at Maya from the corner of her eye.
Maya didn't react. Yama huffed. Finally — after a full minute of silence—she muttered, almost too quietly to hear: .....You're so mean to me.
Maya said nothing. But the corner of her lips—just barely twitched. Yama saw it, her blue eyes widened, her pout faltered. You smiled.
"I did not."
You did. I saw it.
"You saw nothing."
I saw everything. I always see everything. Yama leaned closer, You like me, don't you??
"I tolerate you."
Same thing.
"It's not."
It is.
"It's really not."
It is and you know it.
"So...Are you actually not going to talk to me?"
Yama muttered, ...Maybe.
"Thought so."
Don't sound so pleased with yourself.
"I wasn't."
You were, you absolutely were.
Maya sighed. "Come on." No answer, she waited.
"Yama."
Still nothing. Maya lowered her voice. "Don't make me explain quantum mechanics to you again."
You wouldn't.
Maya's expression became completely serious.
"I would."
Then she let out a long, deeply offended groan and leaned back dramatically.You're cruel.You know exactly what you're doing, don't you?
"Don't you know that." She descended the grand staircase. She looked like a student. A girl — in a uniform, waiting for the day to begin.
Nahi, who had been scribbling in his notebook, stopped mid-stroke. His pen hovered above the page, his eyes narrowed with recognition.
"Maya."
Maya paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Yes, Mr. Nahi?" He pointed at her with the pen. "You study at St. Helena's."
Across the room, Ohi looked up from his phone. Fahish's coffee cup paused halfway to his lips. Even Naya, who had been quietly reading near the window, lowered her book by an inch.
Maya inclined her head. "Yes, Mr. Nahi." Nahi set the pen down. A slow, disbelieving grin spread across his face.
"St. Helena's. The St. Helena's. That school has one of the hardest entrance exams in the entire empire.
Third hardest in the empire. No family name matters. Everyone gets in the same way — through the exam."
He leaned forward. "Good job, good job. Maya." It came out surprisingly genuine.
"Thank you, Mr. Nahi."
Ohi, who had been watching the exchange with quiet interest, set his phone down on the arm of the sofa. He crossed one leg over the other, his expression settling into something curious.
"What year are you in?"
"Class eleven, Mr. Ohi."
"Class eleven. That's — good, very good."
Fahish set his coffee down on the side table and rose from the window seat. "Leave her alone."
Nahi blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. Don't bother my sister."
"Your sister?"There was a faint, challenging smile pulling at the corner of Ohi's mouth. "She's not only your sister. She's mine too."
For a moment, Fahish simply stared at Ohi.
There was a long, almost painfully awkward silence between them.
He looked at him as though he were genuinely trying to understand how the conversation had somehow reached this point.
Then he let out a quiet sigh and finally raised both hands in surrender, "Fine, fine, Ohi. She is your sister too. I get it, honestly you don't have to keep reminding me."
He shook his head with a small chuckle, glancing briefly toward Maya before looking back at Ohi.
"Anyway, enough arguing." He reached for his car keys from the table and casually slipped — them into his pocket. "I'll take her to school.
I'm heading out anyway, so it's not a big deal. I'll drop her off at the school gate and then I'll head to wherever I need to be. "
Nahi's eyebrows rose. He leaned forward, his pen tapping once against the notebook on his knee. "You have an art exhibition today."
Fahish did not look at him. "It can wait."
"Can it? I thought — today was the opening day. Fahish. The exhibition you've been preparing for for months. The one you practically disappeared into your studio for.
And now, suddenly, the entire exhibition can apparently survive without its own artist?"
"It can wait."
"No, it isn't."
"It can wait."
"You keep saying that as if none of that matters."
"It matters. Of course it matters. But right now, something else matters more."
Naya let out a short, mocking laugh, leaning back as if the entire situation had suddenly become far more amusing than it had any right to be.
"Oh, so that's how it is now. You're the one who wants to drive her like a proper big brother. How touching."
Ohi leaned back against the sofa with a slow, unhurried ease,
"But isn't that funny? Because I remember what you said that morning. So....
Our magnificent author has decided to remind us of what happened that day? You know—the very same day Maya was supposed to come back?"
He folded his arms across his chest.
"Because if my memory serves me correctly—and trust me, my memory is perfectly fine.
You were not exactly standing at the door with flowers, waiting desperately for your beloved sister to return."
He paused deliberately as though giving everyone enough time to remember.
"No. Quite the opposite, actually. You were told that your sister was coming home. And what did you say?"
His smile widened.
"I've already told you, I have no sister. How many times do I have to say it before you people finally understand? I don't even know who that girl is. I don't know where she came from.
You keep looking at me as though I'm supposed to recognize her as though some old photograph or some story from the past is magically enough to make her my sister.
It isn't.
So tell me, who exactly are you bringing into this house? Because the girl you all want to brought is a stranger. I have no sister.
And I am not going to suddenly accept someone simply because everyone else has decided that I should.
I'm sorry, but I don't work that way. Maybe all of you have already accepted her without asking yourselves what I think.
But I haven't and I refuse to pretend. So don't ask me to call this girl my sister. "
He gave a soft, humorless chuckle. "Ah, yes. Yes. Those were your exact words, weren't they? And now, suddenly, we are discussing how much you supposedly cared about your sister all along?"
Naya's eyes narrowed with amusement. "Please. Let's not rewrite history just because the story has become emotional."
Ohi laughed under his breath. "You didn't even ask what she looked like after all those years.So forgive me if I find this sudden transformation a little difficult to believe."
Fahish's face had gone very still. But his neck — his neck had turned red. A deep flush climbed up from his collar and spread across his jaw and into his cheeks.
Nahi, who had been watching in silence, finally let out a low whistle under his breath. "Ohi. That was—"
"Honest, I'm just being honest. He did say it. In front of all of us. I didn't make it up."
"No, you didn't."
Yama's voice curled through the back of her mind — slow, almost purring. Oh, this is beautiful. Look at the quiet one. The artist, his face is on fire and he can't say a single word. Not one.
She paused, savoring it.
Because he knows it's true. He knows exactly what he said. And he knows he meant it.
Do you feel anything Maya?Anything at all? Because I do. I feel — I feel warm. This is the warmest I've felt all morning.
"Enough," Maya said — but only inside her own mind. Her face gave away nothing.
Fahish finally moved, he did not turn around to face Ohi, he did not defend himself.
He straightened his back and spoke fast, almost rushed, the words tumbling out of him before he could lose his nerve. "Maya. Come on. I'll start the car."
"...Alright, Mr. Fahish."
He walked almost too fast.
The kind of walk that belonged to someone who needed to be somewhere else — anywhere else as quickly as possible.
His footsteps echoed across the marble floor.
Ohi watched him go. He simply watched, with an expression that was impossible to read.
Nahi glanced from Ohi to the doorway, then back again. "Ohi. That was cruel."
Ohi met her eyes without flinching. "I know." And for once, he did not sound proud of it.
Maya turned away from them all. She stepped through the entrance hall, following the sound of Fahish's hurried footsteps toward the front doors.
Maya was gone. Fahish was gone.
Nahi sat with his notebook open on his knee, his pen rested against the page without moving."You didn't have to humiliate him like that."
The room turned toward him.
"Yes, I did."
Nahi's pen tapped once against the notebook — a small, impatient sound.
"No. You didn't. You could have said it differently. You could have said it later. You could have said it privately. You could have — I don't know — given him a chance to explain himself first."
"There was nothing to explain."
"There was plenty to explain."
Ohi turned his head. For the first time since the confrontation, he looked at Nahi properly — and his expression was not the polished, amused one he usually wore. It was flat. Serious. Almost tired.
"He said he didn't have a sister," Ohi said quietly. "He said it in front of the entire family. He said it in front of Mother. He said it in front of Father."
He paused.
"Do you remember her face that night, Nahi? When she walked into that reception hall? When she stood there in her plain clothes with her schoolbag and her gloves, and every single one of us stared at her like she was a stranger who had wandered into the wrong house?"
Nahi said nothing.
"She didn't react. Not once. Not to anything. She just stood there and said 'good evening' and let us look at her. Like she was used to it. Like being looked at that way — like being measured, and doubted, and not believed — was something she had already learned to survive."
His jaw tightened.
"So yes. I humiliated him. Because for one morning — just one — he needed to feel a fraction of what she has been feeling since the day she was brought in."
The room went very still.
Nahi's pen had stopped tapping. He was staring at Ohi now — not with anger, but with something closer to surprise. Not because he disagreed. But because Ohi had said it plainly. Without the smile. Without the polish. Without the performance.
Naya, who had been silent since the confrontation, closed her book slowly. She set it down on the side table beside her teacup — carefully, precisely, the way she did everything.
Then she spoke.
"He's right."
Nahi turned toward her.
Naya's voice was quiet. She did not look at Ohi. She looked at the space in front of her — the low table, the teacups, the small plate of biscuits that no one had touched.
"I understand why Fahish was angry," she said. "I do. I've known him since we were children. He is not a cruel person. He is not a cold person. He is the opposite. He feels things more than he shows, and when he feels too much — he retreats. He hides. He writes. He draws. He pretends he doesn't care because caring is too heavy."
She paused.
"When Maya came home, he was not ready. None of us were. It was sudden, and it was strange, and it opened a wound that this family has been carrying for fourteen years. So he said what he said. He lashed out. He denied her."
Her eyes lifted — and settled on the doorway through which Fahish had disappeared.
"But that does not mean it was right."
Nahi leaned forward slightly. "Then what do you call it?"
"I call it what it is," Naya said calmly. "An injustice. He denied his own sister in front of the entire family. He rejected her before he had even given himself a chance to know her. And then, this morning — this morning, he stood up and told Ohi to leave her alone and tried to drive her to school like none of it had happened."
She looked at Nahi.
"You don't get to skip the apology."
Nahi opened his mouth — then closed it.
Ohi, for his part, had gone very quiet again. He was looking at Naya now, his expression unreadable. Not defensive. Not grateful. Simply — listening.
Naya continued, her voice still soft, still measured.
"I'm not saying he should be punished forever. I'm not saying we should hold it over him for the rest of his life. But he needed to be reminded. He needed to hear it out loud. He needed to remember what he said — because a person who forgets what they said is a person who will say it again."
She reached for her teacup and took a slow sip.
"Ohi reminded him."
She set the cup down.
"Good."
Silence.
Nahi stared at her for a long moment. Then he let out a slow breath — half sigh, half laugh, entirely without humor.
"You two," he said. "You two are terrifying when you agree."
"We're not agreeing," Ohi said. "We're being honest."
"Same thing," Nahi muttered. Then he picked up his pen and, for lack of anything better to do, tapped it twice against the page.
He was quiet for another moment. Then he spoke again — softer this time, almost to himself.
"I still think you could have been gentler."
"Probably," Ohi admitted.
"You didn't have to bring up the exact words."
"Probably not."
"You could have just — pulled him aside. Talked to him alone."
"I could have."
"Then why didn't you?"
Ohi did not answer immediately.
He looked down at his hands — his long, elegant fingers resting loosely against his knee. Then he looked up, and his eyes found the doorway again. The doorway where Fahish had walked out. The doorway where Maya had stood in silence and listened to every word.
"Because he would have brushed it off," Ohi said quietly. "He would have said 'I know, I know, I'll apologize later.' And then he wouldn't. He would have gone back to his sketchbook and his coffee and his quiet corner and he would have convinced himself that it didn't matter. That she didn't notice. That she didn't care."
He paused.
"But she does notice. She notices everything. She notices more than any of us realize. And if we keep pretending that what he said that morning was just — a moment, a slip, something to move past — then one day she'll believe it. She'll believe she isn't wanted. And she'll leave."
His voice dropped.
"And I don't think she would come back."
The room went silent.
Nahi stopped tapping his pen. Naya's hand, resting on the arm of her chair, went still.
Even the servant near the far doorway had stopped pretending to work.
Ohi looked at Nahi.
"So yes. I embarrassed him. I made him feel small. And I would do it again — because he needed to remember. Because she needed to see that someone in this house was willing to say it out loud. Because if we don't hold each other accountable for the things we say, then what are we?"
He paused.
"We're just a family that looks good on paper."
Nahi held his gaze for a long time.
Then — slowly — he nodded.
"Okay," he said. Quietly. Not conceding. Not agreeing. Just — accepting.
"Okay."
He looked down at his notebook. Then he closed it.
"I still think you're terrifying."
Ohi's lips curved — just slightly. The first trace of his usual self, returning to his face.
"Good," he said.
Naya, watching them both, allowed herself a small, quiet smile. Then she picked up her book again and opened it to where she had left off.
The grandfather clock ticked on.
09:02 AM.