The rain in Chandannagar had a rhythm. It didn't fall — it spoke.
It whispered through the cracked tiles of the old house near the railway tracks. It drummed against the tin roof of the tea stall where Arjun Malhotra sat every evening, his college textbooks spread across a wooden bench still damp from the last downpour. It sang in the gutters that lined the narrow lanes where children played barefoot and old women hung their saris to dry between storms.
Arjun loved the rain. Not because it was beautiful — though it was — but because it was honest. It came when it wanted. It left when it was done. It never pretended to be something it wasn't.
He wished people were the same.
At twenty-two, Arjun Malhotra was the kind of man the world overlooked. Tall, lean, with sharp cheekbones and dark eyes that held the quiet intensity of a man who had grown up too fast. His clothes were always clean but never new. His shoes had been resoled twice. His watch — his father's — had stopped working three years ago, but he wore it every day like a prayer he refused to stop saying.
His father had died when Arjun was sixteen. Heart attack. No money for a better hospital. No connections. No miracle. Just a man gasping on a rusted cot in a government ward while his son held his hand and begged God for five more minutes.
God hadn't listened.
Since then, Arjun had carried the world on his shoulders — his mother's medical bills, his younger sister Priya's school fees, his own engineering degree that he pursued in the evenings after working twelve-hour shifts at a warehouse near the docks. He didn't complain. He didn't have time. Complaint was a luxury for people whose stomachs were full.
But he was not bitter. That was the remarkable thing about Arjun Malhotra. Despite everything life had stolen from him, he still believed. In hard work. In destiny. In the idea that somewhere, somehow, things would change.
He just didn't know that change would come in the shape of a girl standing in the rain, holding a broken umbrella, laughing like the sky was falling just for her amusement.
It was a Thursday.
Arjun remembered this because Thursdays were the worst days at the warehouse — double shipments from the port, crates stacked to the ceiling, his supervisor screaming orders like a man possessed. By the time Arjun reached Calcutta University for his evening engineering class, his arms ached, his back was stiff, and his mind was already half-asleep.
The rain had started at six. By seven, it was a curtain of silver.
He stood under the awning of the Arts Building, waiting for a break in the downpour so he could cross the courtyard to the Engineering Block. His notebook was tucked inside his shirt to keep it dry. His bag — held together with safety pins and stubbornness — hung from one shoulder.
That's when he saw her.
She was standing in the middle of the courtyard. In the rain. Not running from it. Not hiding. Just… standing. Her dupatta was soaked. Her kurta clung to her shoulders. Her hair — long, black, impossibly wild — was plastered to her face. And in her right hand, she held an umbrella that had clearly surrendered to the wind. Its ribs were bent in three directions. Its fabric hung limp like a defeated flag.
And she was laughing.
Not a polite laugh. Not a giggle. A full, unrestrained, head-thrown-back laugh that echoed across the empty courtyard like temple bells at dawn.
Arjun stared.
He couldn't help it. In a world that had taught him to keep his head down, to work, to survive, to endure — this girl was doing the one thing he had forgotten how to do.
She was enjoying being alive.
"You'll catch pneumonia," he called out, surprising himself.
She turned. Her eyes found his through the silver veil of rain, and Arjun Malhotra felt something shift inside his chest. Not dramatically. Not like the movies. It was quieter than that. Like a key turning in a lock he didn't know existed. Like a door opening to a room he'd never been allowed to enter.
Her eyes were brown. Not ordinary brown. The kind of brown that held gold when the light hit right. The kind that looked like autumn in a country that didn't have autumn.
"Pneumonia needs a host with low immunity," she called back, grinning. "I had amla juice this morning. I'm invincible."
He blinked. Then, against every instinct he'd trained into himself, he smiled.
"That's not how immunity works."
"Are you a doctor?"
"Engineer. Almost."
"Then stay in your lane, Engineer Almost." She held up the broken umbrella and examined it with mock seriousness. "Do you know how to fix this? Because this is an engineering problem."
He looked at the umbrella. It was beyond saving. The frame was bent at angles that defied geometry. One of the ribs had snapped clean off.
"That's not an engineering problem," he said. "That's a funeral."
She laughed again. That sound — untamed, unafraid, impossibly warm — hit him somewhere deep.
"I'm Meera," she said, walking toward him. The rain ran down her face like the sky was crying on her behalf, but she didn't seem to notice. Or care. "Meera Sharma. Final year. Literature."
"Arjun," he said. "Arjun Malhotra. Evening batch. Engineering."
"Evening batch." She tilted her head, studying him with an openness that made him uncomfortable. People didn't look at him like that — like they were actually seeing him. "So you work during the day?"
"Warehouse. Near the docks."
He said it plainly. No shame. No pride. Just fact.
Most people would have looked away at that point. A flicker of pity, a change of subject, a quick oh, that's nice before finding an excuse to leave. Arjun had seen it a hundred times. Poverty made people uncomfortable, as if it were contagious.
But Meera didn't flinch. She didn't look away. She looked closer.
"My father was a truck driver," she said quietly. "Before he saved enough to open a small bookshop in Shantiniketan. Took him fourteen years." She paused. "He still smells like diesel sometimes. I love it."
Something cracked inside Arjun's chest. A wall he hadn't realized he'd built.
"Your umbrella is dead," he said, because he didn't know what else to say. Because if he said what he was actually feeling, the words would come out wrong, and this strange, rain-soaked girl with autumn eyes would walk away and become just another face in a city of millions.
"Then I'll walk without it," Meera said simply.
She stepped back into the rain.
"Coming, Engineer Almost?"
He looked at the rain. At his notebook tucked inside his shirt. At his bag held together with pins. At his shoes that had been resoled twice.
Then he looked at her. Standing in the storm like she belonged there. Like the rain was hers.
He stepped off the ledge.
The water hit him immediately — cold, sharp, alive. It soaked through his shirt in seconds. His notebook would be ruined. His shoes would take two days to dry. His mother would scold him.
He didn't care.
For the first time in six years, Arjun Malhotra didn't care.
They walked across the courtyard together, the rain erasing the world around them until it was just two figures moving through silver — a boy who had forgotten how to live, and a girl who made living look effortless.
"You're smiling," Meera observed.
"No, I'm not."
"You are. I can see it."
"It's rain on my face."
"Rain doesn't curve upward, Engineer Almost. Even a literature student knows that."
He turned his face away so she wouldn't see that the smile had grown.
He failed.
She saw.
That night, Arjun lay on his thin mattress in the small room he shared with his mother and sister. The rain had softened to a murmur. His notebook was damp. His shoes were drying by the window. His mother had scolded him — "Are you a child? Walking in the rain like a madman!" — and Priya had laughed, sensing something her brother wouldn't say.
He stared at the ceiling.
The fan rotated with a slow, uneven creak. A gecko clung to the wall near the light switch, frozen, watching him with tiny black eyes.
Meera Sharma. Final year. Literature.
He closed his eyes.
And for the first time in six years, Arjun Malhotra fell asleep with a name on his lips that wasn't a prayer for survival.
It was something far more dangerous.
It was hope.
He didn't know — couldn't have known — that twelve thousand kilometers away, in a glass tower in London, a man was staring at a photograph of the same girl. His fingers traced the edge of the print. His jaw was set. His eyes were the color of money — cold, green, empty.
The man's name was Vikram Singh Rathore.
And he had already decided that Meera Sharma would be his.
No matter what it cost.
No matter who it cost.