The ceiling in Apartment 3B was weeping. It wasn't a dramatic flood—just a slow, rhythmic plink-plink-plink into a plastic bucket that sounded like a ticking clock Kabir couldn't turn off.
Kabir stared at the damp patch. It was shaped vaguely like the wing of an Airbus A350. He'd spent his shift at the warehouse dreaming of flight paths, and now he was home, staring at a water stain. He sighed, wiped the grease from his forehead with the back of his hand, and grabbed a wrench. He didn't know much about plumbing, but he knew about pressure.
He climbed the stairs to 4B.
He knocked—three short, sharp raps. He expected a grumpy uncle or a harried mother. He didn't expect a girl with kohl-smudged eyes and a streak of "Terra Cotta" house paint across her cheekbone.
"If you're here about the music, I was just about to turn it down," she said, not looking up from a massive drawing board propped against her sofa.
"I'm here about the rain," Kabir said, nodding toward her floor. "My ceiling is currently experiencing a localized monsoon."
The girl—Ishani—finally looked at him. She looked at his grease-stained shirt and the wrench in his hand, then back at the half-finished floor plan of a modern haveli on her desk. She didn't apologize immediately. Instead, she bit her lip, a look of genuine horror crossing her face.
"Oh no," she whispered. "The teakwood model. I left the humidifier on for the wood grain."
"The wood grain is currently dripping into my breakfast cereal," Kabir said, but the edge in his voice softened. He walked into the room, his eyes catching the sketches pinned to her wall. They weren't just buildings; they were stories.
"You're an architect," he noted, his voice dropping an octave.
"I'm a student who can't figure out drainage systems," she retorted, finally standing up and wiping her hands on her dupatta. "Clearly."
Kabir looked at the blueprints, then up at the ceiling, then back at her. For the first time in months, he wasn't thinking about generators or flight hours. He was thinking about how the light in her apartment was exactly the color of a sunset at thirty thousand feet.
"Move the bucket," Kabir said, pointing to a corner. "And let me see the pipes. I can't fly a plane, but I can damn sure stop a leak."
Kabir was already on his back, half-shoved into the dark, damp cavern under Ishani's kitchen sink. The smell of old copper and stagnant water was thick, but it was better than the silence of his own apartment downstairs.
"Hand me that flashlight? The one on your counter next to the mountain of textbooks," Kabir's voice echoed against the cabinet walls.
Ishani scrambled to find it, shifting a heavy stack of collage study guides and a half-eaten packet of Marie biscuits.
"Sorry. My life is currently a construction site. I'm preparing for my final project on Indian vernacular architecture and… well, clearly, I'm failing the practical application."
She handed him the light. Her fingers brushed his—his skin was cold and rough, hers were stained with charcoal and smelled faintly of sandalwood.
"You're not failing," Kabir said, his voice muffled by a grunt as he tightened a valve.
"You're just focusing on the soul of the building. The plumbing is the boring stuff. The veins. Nobody cares about the veins until they start leaking on their neighbor's head."
He slid out from under the sink, his hair a mess and a fresh smudge of grime on his chin. He looked at the drawing board again. It was a layout for a 5,000-square-foot haveli, but modernized. Large courtyards, jaali work that played with shadows, and a wing that looked like it belonged to a palace.
"This," he pointed a greasy finger at a specific corner of the blueprint. "The airflow here. It's aerodynamic. If you angled this wall three degrees further, you'd get a natural venturi effect. Like a wing."
Ishani stopped mid-pour as she prepared two cups of tea. "A wing? You talk about buildings like they're supposed to take off."
Kabir wiped his hands on a rag, a shy, crooked smile tugging at his mouth.
"I spent three years studying the curves of a Boeing 767. Private jets, mostly. I like things that are built to withstand pressure. I guess I just look for flight paths everywhere."
He sat on her mismatched stool, looking suddenly out of place in her creative, chaotic world. Ishani handed him a steel tumbler of chai. It was hot, over-sweet, and exactly what he needed.
"So, why aren't you flying them?" she asked softly, leaning against the counter.
Kabir took a sip, the steam fogging his vision for a second. "Life has a way of grounding you. Engines break, bills pile up, and suddenly you're fixing generators in Dehli instead of navigating the clouds. But hey," he gestured to the sink, "at least the 'monsoon' in 3B is officially over."
The silence that followed wasn't heavy anymore. It was comfortable. The distant whistle of a train from the Bhopal station drifted through the open window, a reminder of the world moving outside while they stayed suspended in this small, lit-up room.
"Stay for the tea," Ishani said, it wasn't a question. "I have some old blueprints of a palace in Rajasthan. I want to see if you can find the 'wings' in those, too."
Kabir looked at the tea, then at her, and for the first time in a long time, he didn't feel like he was just waiting for the day to end.
It popped the next morning at 8:00 AM with the aggressive, rhythmic jingle of a doorbell that didn't know when to quit. Ishani, still tangled in her dupatta and dreaming of load-bearing walls, stumbled to the door. She expected the milkman.
She found her mother, Mrs. Rao, standing there with three suitcases and a tiffin carrier that smelled strongly of homemade thepla and disappointment.
"Ma? You're supposed to be in Indore until Friday," Ishani stammered, trying to block the view of the living room, which was currently a graveyard of blueprints and half-empty chai cups.
"The heat was unbearable, and your brother's house is a zoo," Mrs. Rao said, brushing past Ishani with the practiced grace of a woman who owned every room she walked into. She stopped dead in the center of the room. Her eyes swept over the mess, landing finally on a pair of heavy, grease-stained work gloves sitting on the kitchen counter.
Kabir's gloves. He'd forgotten them after fixing the leak.
"Ishani," her mother said, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm register. "Why is there a man's industrial equipment next to my mother's silver chai set?"
Before Ishani could invent a lie about a local municipal inspector, the floorboards creaked. Not in her room—downstairs. The plink-plink of the leak was gone, replaced by the heavy, muffled sound of Kabir's voice through the vents. He was on the phone, and he sounded excited.
Downstairs in 3B, Kabir was pacing. His small apartment felt even smaller because for the first time in two years, he had a choice to make.
"It's a Gulfstream G650, Kabir," the voice on the other end crackled. It was an old contact from his days at the flight academy. "Private hanger in Bangalore. They need a lead mechanic who actually knows the airframe, not just someone who can read a manual. Six-month contract, tax-free, and it gets you back on the tarmac. You leave Monday."
Kabir looked up at the ceiling. He thought about the girl upstairs with the charcoal-stained fingers and the way she looked at a building like it was a living, breathing thing. He thought about the way she didn't look down at his grease-stained hands.
"I'll… I'll need to think about it, Vikram," Kabir said, his heart doing a slow roll in his chest.
"Think about it? Kabir, you're fixing generators for chump change. This is the exit ramp. Don't be a fool."
Back upstairs, the tension was thick enough to choke on.
"It was just a leak, Ma," Ishani said, her voice trembling slightly. "The neighbor helped. He's… he's a mechanic. A pilot, actually."
"A pilot who lives in a one-room set in this part of Delhi?" Mrs. Rao let out a sharp, cynical laugh. "He's a laborer, Ishani. You are three months away from a degree that cost us your father's savings. You don't have time for 'neighbors' who leave their filth on your counters. You have your college submissions, and you have the proposal from the Sharma family to consider."
"The Sharmas? Ma, I haven't even met him!"
"He's an engineer in Dubai. Stable. Clean.
He doesn't carry a wrench." Her mother began clearing the table, sweeping Ishani's sketches into a pile like they were trash.
"I'm staying here until your exams are over. To make sure you stay… focused."
Ishani looked at the wall she shared with Kabir. She could hear the faint murmur of his voice. She felt like a bird that had just found a thermal, only to have the cage door slammed shut.
In the silence of the apartment, the only sound was the distant whistle of the 9:15 Express pulling into the Delhi station, screaming about all the places it was going—and all the people it was leaving behind.
The air in the apartment felt like it had been replaced with lead. Mrs. Rao was asleep on the sofa, the rhythmic, soft whistle of her breathing sounding like a sentry on guard.
The smell of sandalwood incense—her mother's favorite—clung to the curtains, suffocating the usual scent of Ishani's charcoal and pencil shavings.
Ishani didn't put on shoes. She carried her sandals in one hand, her breath held so tight her chest ached. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like a gunshot in the midnight silence of the delhi apartment block.
She slipped out the door, the cool air of the stairwell hitting her face like a glass of cold water. She didn't go down to the street. She went exactly one flight down and stopped at the door of 3B.
She didn't knock. She just leaned her forehead against the wood.
A second later, the door swung open. Kabir was standing there, still in his work trousers, his shirt unbuttoned over a white vest. He looked like a man who hadn't even tried to sleep.
"I thought I heard a ghost," he whispered, his voice raspy. He pulled her inside, closing the door with a click that felt like a secret.
The Stolen Hour
The apartment was dark, lit only by the amber glow of a streetlamp filtering through the dusty window. It cast long, sharp shadows across Kabir's half-packed duffel bag on the floor.
Ishani's heart sank. "You're leaving."
"I got an offer. Bangalore," Kabir said. He didn't sound happy about it. He sounded like he was reading a weather report. "Private hangar. It's the dream, Ishani. Or it was, two weeks ago."
"Monday?" she asked, her voice small.
Ishani sat on the edge of his scarred wooden table. She felt the weight of her mother's expectations, the upcoming exams, and the "Dubai engineer" pressing down on her.
"My mother is here. She's already started rearranging my life like it's a furniture showroom. I feel like I'm being erased, Kabir."
Kabir stepped closer, the smell of grease and cheap soap reaching her. He didn't do something cinematic like sweep her into his arms. Instead, he just rested his hand on the table next to hers, his pinky finger barely touching her skin.
"When I was training," Kabir said softly, "there was this thing called 'the point of no return.' It's the moment on the runway where you've used up too much strip to stop. You either take off, or you crash."
He looked at her, his eyes searching hers in the dark. "I feel like I'm at that point. But for the first time, I don't want to take off alone."
"I can't just leave, Kabir. I have a semester left. I have a family that—"
"I know," he interrupted, a sad, crooked smile touching his lips. "That's the 'human' part of it, right? We aren't paper planes. We have strings attached to us."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, heavy object. He placed it in her palm. It was a brass compass, old and slightly tarnished.
"Keep it," he said. "In case you ever decide to rewrite your own map. My number is etched inside the lid. I'm not saying 'come with me' tonight. I'm saying... don't let them finish the drawing for you."