Prologue
November 2025
CDG, Paris, France
I stared at my phone.
Nothing.
No blue ticks. No ”typing...“. Just the same crushing silence that had been drowning me for the last thirty days.
A static voice crackled over the speakers. Flight delayed by two hours.
“Oh great, two more hours to land in Chennai, two more hours before I know the answer,” I thought.
I unlocked the phone. 8:25 PM CET. She would be asleep in Chennai.
I opened WhatsApp. My thumb hovered over the keyboard, trembling slightly. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to beg. I wanted to ask why she was doing this to me.
I typed: “Flight delayed.”
Sent. Double tick. Delivered, but not read.
I typed again, “Can you at least acknowledge that you have seen that message I sent yesterday? I have been texting you ever since we had that fight, but no response.”
Deleted. It felt harsh.
Stupid.
I looked again at the message I had sent her yesterday. The message I had hoped, no—needed—her to reply to,
14th Nov 2025, 11:48 pm: “I have booked a flight to Chennai tomorrow. I’ll arrive on Saturday at 3:30 pm.”
14th Nov 2025, 11:49 pm: “I can’t do this anymore, Abi. I can’t function here. I’m coming for you. Please... Could you come to the airport? I want your face to be the first thing I see when I land. I want to make things right, Abi.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
She hated airports. She hadn’t even come to drop me off when I first moved to Paris. To her, airports meant separation. I was asking her to drive all the way to Meenambakkam just to see a man who had insulted her intelligence thirty days ago.
Dumb. So dumb!
If she shows up at the airport, it would be worth it, this sudden, irrational plan, and the hell I went through over the last thirty days.
This one month made me realize I cannot live without her. We had survived long-distance for years, and maybe I had taken the distance too lightly.
The airline staff placed a small carton of apple juice on the table in front of me—compensation for the delay. I stared at it. My stomach churned. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday.
The thought of food made me nauseous. I took a sip of the juice just to wet my dry throat.
Too sweet. I pushed it away.
I went back to her profile picture. Even now, it sends bolts to my heart. My eyes traced her smile, then moved up to the faint line above her right eyebrow.
It’s so faint that most people would miss it, but I cannot. Because I was the one who gave her that scar.
Chennai, 2006
We were in the 3rd grade.
Abirami was the new girl—the Science teacher’s daughter. I, Ashwin, was the son of the maths teacher. That was our entire identity until the Quarterly Holidays.
While our mothers sat in the staff room grading exam papers, Abi and I had the entire school to ourselves. There is something ghostly about a school without students—the long, silent corridors, the smell of chalk, and a freedom to scribble anything on the board.
We were playing tag in classroom 5-B.
“I am going to catch you,” I yelled, my voice echoing off the classroom walls.
I was running too fast. I swung around a desk, wild with energy, and I did catch her, but I also slammed into her.
It happened in slow motion. She slipped. Her feet tangled in the metal legs of the bench. She went down, and her forehead cracked against the sharp wooden edge of the desk.
Thud.
Then, silence. Then, the blood. Then, she cried.
I stood there, frozen, terrified by the red line trickling down her face when our mothers found us. There was Dettol, cotton, and a lot of scolding. My mom banned me from playing at the school again.
I didn’t speak to her for months. The guilt was too much for me to handle.
It wasn’t until the Half-Yearly holidays that we ended up in the same empty school again. I was sitting on the steps outside the staff room, watching the birds, determined to stay out of trouble.
A shadow fell over me. It was Abi. The wound had healed, leaving a thin, pink line.
“Vilayada variya?” (Do you want to play?) she asked.
I looked at my shoes. “Sorry. Enga amma unkuda vilayada kudathunu sollitanga.” (My mom said I’m not allowed to play with you)
She didn’t leave. Instead, she smoothed out her skirt and sat down on the dusty step next to me.
“Seri vilayada vendam” (Okay, we don’t need to play), she said, shrugging. “Vaa pesalam” (Let’s talk.)
I looked up, surprised. She was smiling.
And just like that, the silence was broken. We sat there for hours, talking about our favourite shows—Power Rangers, Oswald, and Noddy. Even though she hadn’t watched my favourite show, Dragon Booster, she would listen to me going on and on about how the story is so epic.
For the rest of the year, that was us. I became comfortable around her. Even though we sat far apart in class, she would come to my bench during breaks to tell me what was going on in her tiny world. We soon shared lunches and played without our moms noticing. But it was a temporary world. Her mother wanted a transfer to a city school.
By the next academic year, she was gone. Eight-year-old me couldn’t comprehend what I was feeling.
I didn’t see her again for five years.
The memory faded as the call to board came over the speakers. Somehow, those five years felt less harsh than these last thirty days. Eventually, I saw her again after five years. But will I ever see her again now? Will she be waiting for me at the airport? Or did I lose her for the rest of my life?
~Illustration of Abi's profile picture~
