Chapter 1
Nainika
Home.
A word that sounds warm until you live in one that burns you every day.
For me, home wasn’t peace — it was noise. Doors slamming, arguments echoing through the walls, and that same tight feeling in my chest every night. My mother’s anger was louder than thunder, and my father’s silence was heavier than any scream.
So I learned to disappear.
To exist quietly.
To cry quietly.
By the time I was fifteen, I’d mastered the art of pretending. Pretending I was fine. Pretending the words didn’t hurt. Pretending I was normal.
But inside, it always felt like my mind was on fire — endless thoughts, what-ifs, overthinking every breath I took.
And Rehan.
He made that fire worse.
He wasn’t just a boy to me — he was my first everything. First love, first heartbreak, first lie. Four months with him had felt like forever until I found out it wasn’t.
When I saw those screenshots — his name with another girl’s, the same words he once told me — my body froze. My eyes burned, but no tears came out at first. Just disbelief.
How could someone say they love you one day, and love someone else the next?
I wanted to scream at him, but I didn’t. I wanted to block him, but I didn’t.
I just stopped feeling.
Because after being yelled at every night at home, I didn’t have the strength to fight for love outside it.
So I deleted his number. Deleted our pictures.
But pain doesn’t delete that easily. It lingers — in songs, in memories, in small things like the time you catch your reflection smiling and suddenly remember why you don’t anymore.
Two months passed like that.
Every day felt the same — school, silence, fake smiles, overthinking till 3 a.m. I was surviving, not living.
Then one day, in English class, I saw him.
Aarav.
Not new, not dramatic. Just… there. Quiet, calm, different. The kind of boy who didn’t try to be noticed. I’d seen him a hundred times before, but that day something shifted.
He laughed at something his friend said — not loud, but real. And I noticed the way his eyes softened when he smiled. I didn’t even realize I was staring until he looked up and smiled back.
It wasn’t a movie moment. It wasn’t magic.
It was just a tiny flicker of warmth in a place that had been cold for too long.
But I knew better than to believe in flickers.
That afternoon, as I sat with my friends, Riya leaned over and said, “Hey, you know Aarav likes someone?”
My stomach dropped, but I pretended to sound casual. “Oh really? Who?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know, but he’s been crushing on her for months.”
I smiled — the kind of smile that hides more than it shows — and said, “Good for him.”
But inside, that tiny flicker faded.
I looked out the window, watching the sunlight spill over the school garden, kids laughing, teachers walking by, everything moving like normal life.
And in that moment, I just whispered to myself —
“Guess he’s not meant for me either.”
Then after a pause, quietly in my head —
“Maybe love just isn’t meant for me at all.”
