Aarav held the draft in his hands like it was breathing. Like it had lungs. Like it had pain inside it that only he knew how to exhale. The pages were slightly curled from being folded too long, the ink on the dedication page faintly smudged by sweat. He'd rewritten it twice. Removed whole paragraphs. Added none.
This was the version he almost left in the train.
This was the story he had wanted to give her.
This was the story she would never read.
He sat alone that night in his old room, where the ceiling fan trembled every time it spun. He'd closed the door but opened the window, and from there came the sounds of the old city again — cycle bells, faint traffic, a dog barking at something unseen. The smell of rain on concrete lingered like a ghost who forgot its way back.
On the desk lay a small box wrapped in crumpled brown paper — a sundial watch. Ancient-looking, bronze, a gift once intended to mark a shared memory. A memory that now belonged to only one side.
He hadn't told her he was leaving. Not because he didn't want to — but because he couldn't. Her parents knew. His parents knew. Everyone did.
Everyone but her.
It wasn't an act of cruelty. At least, that's what he told himself. It was silence born from cowardice. And silence, unlike lies, never needs remembering. It just grows.
His fingers curled around the paper stack. He stood. Walked over to the kitchen. Lit a match. Watched it flare to life.
And paused.
The flame reached the edge of his grip. He blinked.
There was nothing poetic about burning something that had already failed.
And yet.
He moved to hold the draft to it—and stopped again. Why? What was he burning, really?
Her memory? His mistake?
Or the only proof that he had felt something real?
He let the match burn out between his fingers. Dropped it into the sink.
Returned to the room. Laid the draft on the desk.
Flipped it open. Began to read.
His voice was silent, but the words were loud in his head.
\_"He stood outside the gates, watching her laugh. Not at him. Never at him. Just laughter given to the air, the wind, the world.
He waved.
She didn't see.
And that was how the story ended."\_
Except it didn't end.
Aarav turned to the last page. Picked up a pen. Added a single line.
*"But she smiled. And that was enough."*
Then he closed the file. Pressed his hand on it like sealing something back into the earth.
He didn't need her to read it.
He just needed to finish it.
He placed the sundial watch beside it — not as a gift, not as a symbol, but as something that once mattered. Then he lay down on the bed, eyes to the ceiling, listening to the fan rattle like an old heartbeat.
Somewhere in that quiet, he found a kind of ending.
Not the kind that closes everything.
But the kind that lets you sleep.