Somewhere still

Chapter One — Then

Noor's pov

It started with voices, sharp ones. The kind that made the walls feel thinner.

Noor sat on the staircase, knees tucked under her chin, tracing circles on the wood with her finger. The house smelled like burnt toast and perfume, her mother’s scent, heavy and floral, floating through the tension.

Downstairs, the shouting rose and broke again.

Her father’s voice, cracked, angry, hurt in ways words couldn’t carry.

Her mother’s, pleading, shaking, not even sure what to defend anymore.

And somewhere in the noise, she heard another name.

“Elias’s father.”

Noor froze. The air went still.

She didn’t know what was worse, the sound of her father’s rage, or the silence that followed it.

When she crept closer, she caught fragments —

“…late-night calls…”

“…betrayal…”

“…the company, gone!”

“…you made me a fool!”

Her mother’s voice broke: “It wasn’t what you think!”

But her father wasn’t listening anymore.

He threw something, a glass, maybe? and it shattered.

Noor ran upstairs before the tears in her throat could escape.

She wanted to call Elias, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

She wanted to ask what was happening, if his house sounded like hers right now, if he could hear the same storm through his window.

But when she dialed, no one picked.

And when she looked through the rain that night, she saw his window dark.

---

The next morning, their gate was half open.

Men were loading boxes into a truck. Her father’s face looked like stone.

Her mother tried to say it was just business.

But then, whispers came.

The firm gone.

Elias’s father missing.

By evening, the news broke, an accident.

The car crushed at the corner of ridler Bridge.

Gone. Just gone.

Noor didn’t cry until she saw Elias in the rain that night, standing across the street with his mother.

His mother didn’t look at them, didn’t even blink.

But Elias did.

Their eyes met, and in that one look, Noor understood everything she wasn’t supposed to.

The anger.

The loss.

The kind of silence that turns love into something dangerous.

That was the last night she saw him, for years.

Because grief and shame don’t let children choose their goodbyes.

*~°~•*~°~•*

Elias pov

The rain had started early that evening, the kind that didn’t fall so much as linger soft, steady, endless.

Elias liked nights like this. His father would come home late, they’d eat together in the living room, the windows open, the air humming with the smell of wet dust.

But tonight, the house was loud.

Not with laughter. With his mother’s voice sharp, breaking, calling someone’s name over and over.

When Elias stepped out of his room, his father was standing by the door, keys in hand, eyes hollow.

He looked like he’d aged years in minutes.

“Dad?”

His father didn’t answer at first. He just stared at the floor, the way people do when they’ve run out of things to defend.

“Go back to your room,” he said finally, voice thick, heavy.

Elias hesitated. He heard his mother shouting from the kitchen

“You can’t just leave like this! You can’t—”

But he did.

The door slammed, and the sound shook the house.

Elias watched from the window as his father stepped into the rain. No umbrella. No coat. Just a man walking like the night was pulling him somewhere he didn’t want to go.

His mother collapsed onto the couch, whispering things he didn’t understand — words like “ruined”, “betrayal”, “her husband knows”.

Her.

Noor’s mother.

Something cold ran through him. He didn’t want to believe it.

Not them. Not the people who laughed together every Sunday. Not the woman who brought mangoes for his lunchbox and called him “my second son.”

He wanted to run out, chase his father, stop him, shout that none of this made sense. But his mother’s sobs pinned him in place.

And then the call came.

Sometime past midnight.

A stranger’s voice.

Metal twisting, glass breaking, a car at the bridge.

After that, everything blurred, lights, people, pity.

His mother’s eyes emptied.

The house filled with whispers about shame and ruin.

And through it all, Elias kept thinking of Noor, wondering if she knew, if she’d heard, if she still thought of him.

He wanted to hate her, to hate them, to make it easier.

But every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was the look she gave him in the rain the one that said she’d lost something too.

But he couldn't understand what she thought she lost