Chapter 25

Subhi

The afternoon breeze was light, but I felt none of its warmth. My mind was still tangled in the mess of unanswered questions—about Abhimanyu, about his past, about the pain in his eyes that he never spoke of. And yet, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure it out.

I wasn’t even sure why I cared so much.

I found myself sitting on the bench near the school garden, scrolling mindlessly through my phone when I heard two voices nearby. A casual conversation at first—until a familiar name made me freeze.

"Abhimanyu still doesn’t talk about her, does he?"

"How could he? She was his everything."

A shiver ran down my spine. They were talking about him. Instinctively, I turned my head slightly, just enough to see two boys—one of them was Rohit, a childhood friend of Abhimanyu. I recognized him from school events, though I had never spoken to him directly.

The other boy let out a sigh. "I still remember the day of the accident. He was right there when it happened. He saw everything."

"I don’t know how he even managed to survive after that," Rohit muttered, his voice dropping. "His sister... She died right in front of him. It broke him completely."

Everything around me blurred. The words hit me like a crashing wave, each one slicing deeper than the last. His sister. It wasn’t a girlfriend. It wasn’t some secret relationship. The girl in the picture—the one I had stupidly assumed was someone special to him—was his sister. And she was dead.

I couldn’t breathe.

My chest tightened as guilt flooded every inch of me. All this time, I had been so blind, drowning in my own assumptions, painting him as someone who had been toying with me when in reality, he had been carrying a grief so deep that he never let anyone touch it.

"Abhimanyu never talks about her. He doesn’t let himself. It’s his way of surviving," Rohit continued. "And his father... I don’t think he ever recovered either. He just distanced himself. That’s why Abhimanyu is the way he is now."

A lump formed in my throat. The missing pieces were finally falling into place. His distant behavior. The way he shut people out. The sadness in his eyes when he thought no one was looking.

I had misunderstood everything.

The conversation faded into the background as I sat there, frozen in place, my heartbeat deafening in my ears. A new weight settled inside me—guilt, regret, and an unbearable ache for the boy who had suffered more than I could have ever imagined.

And the worst part?

He had been going through it all alone.

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