Golden light stretched across the pavement as Sruthi and Druve walked side by side. The setting sun had softened everything around them, painting the road in warm shades of amber while the evening moved quietly around them. His arm rested across her shoulders, familiar enough that neither of them had acknowledged when it had ended up there. Every now and then, his fingers brushed her skin, lingering slightly longer than necessary.
Sruthi stole a glance at him, a teasing smile already forming. "You know, for someone who doesn't like people, you sure keep me close."
His fingers twitched against her shoulder. For a moment, she thought he might actually pull away simply to prove her wrong, but he didn't. He continued walking as though her observation deserved no reaction at all.
"You think too much."
She laughed softly. "And you avoid too much."
The corner of his lips moved, and Sruthi's smile widened immediately. Druve could hide almost anything behind that unreadable expression of his, but she had spent enough time with him to notice the smallest cracks—a twitch at the corner of his mouth, a slight change in his eyes, the almost invisible tightening of his fingers. She had learned to read all of them.
"And you're annoying," he muttered.
Sruthi gasped dramatically, pressing one hand against her chest. "Excuse me? I'm a delight to be around."
His eyes flicked toward hers. They were dark and difficult to read as always, but there was a softness beneath them that made her wonder whether the warmth she saw came from him or merely from the dying sunlight.
"I don't recall asking for your company."
"But you never leave." Her victorious grin returned. "That's the interesting part. You always act like you don't want me around, but somehow you're still here."
"Maybe you just don't know when to quit."
"Or maybe…" Sruthi leaned closer, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "You don't want me to."
For once, Druve looked genuinely caught off guard. It lasted barely a second, but Sruthi saw it. His body stiffened slightly, and something unexpectedly vulnerable crossed his eyes before disappearing behind the familiar walls again. She had always been good at reading people, but Druve remained the one puzzle she never grew tired of solving.
"Admit it." She nudged his side. "You like having me around."
"I tolerate you."
"Tolerate?" She stared at him in mock outrage. "You literally walk me home every day."
Druve shrugged, keeping his gaze ahead. "You're hopeless at paying attention to your surroundings."
"Oh?" Sruthi slipped out from beneath his arm and stepped directly in front of him, forcing him to stop. "And why exactly does that concern you?"
His steps faltered. Barely. But she noticed.
"Come on, Druve. Just say it once." She walked backwards in front of him, refusing to let him escape the conversation. "Say you don't mind having me around."
He stared at her without answering.
Sruthi finally rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Fine. If admitting you like my company is too much for you, at least say we're friends."
Something changed in his expression.
"We were never friends."
The words hit harder than she expected. Sruthi's smile disappeared for the briefest moment before she forced it back. She knew what Druve was like. He was cold, distant and painfully direct when he wanted to be. None of that was new to her, so she couldn't understand why those four words suddenly felt like a knife pressed between her ribs.
She laughed lightly, hoping it sounded convincing. "Wow. You could've at least pretended to be a little disappointed."
Her voice remained steady, but her fingers curled into her palms. She wasn't going to cry over something so stupid, and she certainly wasn't going to let Druve see that he had hurt her.
"It's fine." She waved one hand dismissively as she turned away. "I can walk home by myself."
She managed two steps. Before she could take the third, a warm hand closed firmly around her wrist.
Sruthi stopped.
Druve didn't apologize or explain himself. He simply started walking again, pulling her along until she had no choice but to fall into step beside him. She stared at his back for a moment before lowering her eyes to the hand still wrapped around her wrist.
"Why are you so quiet?" he asked.
"Nothing. Just thinking."
"About what?"
Sruthi hesitated before giving him a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "About how you were right."
His brows drew together.
"We were never friends."
She tugged her wrist gently from his grasp and took another step.
"I don't mind."
Sruthi turned around. "What?"
Druve's gaze remained steady on hers. "I don't mind having you around."
Her breath caught. There was nothing dramatic in the way he said it. No hesitation, no softness added to make the words sound sweeter than they were. It was simply Druve stating something as though it were an unquestionable fact.
Sruthi stared at him, suddenly unable to find one of the countless replies that usually came so easily around him. The ache in her chest hadn't completely disappeared, but something warmer had settled beside it.
Druve reached for her hand again.
This time, she didn't pull away.
His grip wasn't forceful. It was simply firm and warm, his thumb brushing unconsciously against the inside of her wrist while they resumed walking. Sruthi had always been the one crossing the distance between them, dragging reactions from a man who seemed determined to bury every emotion he possessed. Yet now Druve was the one holding on.
She looked down at their joined hands and wondered why something so simple felt so important.
The rain came suddenly. One moment the evening was calm, and the next a heavy downpour crashed over the street. Sruthi gasped as cold water soaked through her clothes almost immediately, but before she could react, Druve tightened his grip around her hand.
"Come."
He pulled her toward the narrow awning of a closed shop. The shelter barely protected them from the rain blowing sideways in the wind, and Sruthi was already drenched by the time they reached it. She rubbed her arms as a shiver ran through her.
Druve looked at her. "You're freezing."
"Excellent observation."
Before she could complain further, he stepped behind her. Sruthi barely had time to turn before his jacket came around them both and his arms followed, drawing her back against his chest.
She went completely still.
His warmth surrounded her almost instantly. His chest rested solidly against her back while his arms formed a shield around her, holding the jacket closed over them both. The cold should have been the only thing she noticed, but suddenly it was difficult to think about anything except how close he was.
"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice quieter than she intended.
"You're freezing."
"I know that, but…" She swallowed when his fingers brushed her arm while adjusting the jacket. "You could've just given it to me."
"You would've refused it."
Sruthi opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again. He was right.
"So this is just basic survival logic to you?"
"Obviously."
A slow smile appeared on her face. "Sharing body heat?"
"More effective."
"Of course." She tilted her head slightly. "So this has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to hold me?"
Druve's arms tensed for the smallest fraction of a second.
"No."
Sruthi's smile widened. "That answer came suspiciously fast."
"You should stop talking."
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You're shivering."
"That has nothing to do with talking."
Druve exhaled, and before she could continue tormenting him, his hand moved down to find hers. Her fingers were cold from the rain, and he enclosed them between his own before slowly rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand.
Sruthi forgot what she had been about to say.
"Better?" he asked.
She swallowed. "Y-Yeah."
He continued warming her hand as though the gesture meant absolutely nothing. To him, perhaps it really was that simple. She was cold, so he warmed her. She was shivering, so he held her.
But Sruthi could feel her heartbeat growing faster with every passing second.
The rain drummed against the pavement beyond the awning, and the familiar smell of wet earth filled the air. Druve's warmth seeped through her damp clothes while the steady rise and fall of his chest moved against her back. For once, Sruthi didn't feel the need to fill the silence between them.
She simply let herself stay there.
Her fingers slowly curled around his. Druve didn't pull away, and somewhere inside that quiet little space beneath the awning, with rain falling around them and Druve holding her as though keeping her warm was the most natural thing in the world, Sruthi finally understood something she had probably known for much longer than she wanted to admit.
She loved him.
The realization didn't frighten her. It didn't even feel new. It settled inside her with an almost ridiculous sense of familiarity, as though her heart had reached the conclusion long before her mind finally bothered to notice.
Sruthi closed her eyes and allowed herself to lean a little more comfortably against him. His arms adjusted around her without hesitation, making room for her rather than pulling away.
For that moment, she felt completely safe.
Back at the hospital, the steady electronic beeping of a heart monitor replaced the sound of rain.
Riya Rathore lay unconscious beneath the pale lights of the ICU, surrounded by machines that had spent the last several hours proving something none of the doctors could explain. Her heart continued to beat, her neurological responses remained present, and every examination performed since her impossible return had only confirmed that the changes were real.
Her mother remained beside the bed with one hand wrapped around Riya's fingers. Rana sat near the window, exhaustion finally visible beneath the control he had maintained through the night, while Vikram stood near the foot of the bed staring at the monitor. None of them had slept. Every few minutes, one of them looked at Riya's chest or at the numbers glowing on the screen, silently checking that nothing had disappeared.
A doctor entered carrying the latest results, and Rana was on his feet before the man had fully crossed the room. "Well?"
"She's stable."
Vikram gave a humourless laugh. "You declared her dead a few hours ago. You're going to have to give us more than stable."
"I understand."
"No, I don't think you do."
"Vikram," Rana warned quietly.
He fell silent, but his attention never left the doctor.
The physician approached Riya's bed and checked her pupils before looking at the monitors. "Her neurological responses remain present. Her cardiac rhythm has stabilised, and she's continuing to initiate some breaths independently. At the moment, none of the changes we saw earlier have reversed."
Riya's mother looked up at him. "Will she wake up?"
The doctor hesitated, and the small pause was enough to make some of the hope disappear from her face.
"We don't know yet."
"But she can?"
"I can't give you a reliable prognosis after what happened tonight. What I can tell you is that her condition now is completely different from what we documented before her cardiac arrest."
Rana's expression hardened. "Why?"
"I don't have that answer."
"Then find it."
"We're trying."
"Try harder."
The doctor gave a tired nod before leaving the family alone again.
Vikram remained silent until the door closed. Then he dragged a chair closer to his sister's bed and sat beside her, taking her hand from where it rested over the sheet.
"You heard him, right? You're stable." His thumb moved slowly over her fingers. "Which means you're going to wake up, irritate me, steal my things and pretend you didn't. And I'm going to remind you about this every single time you become unbearable."
A faint, exhausted smile appeared through their mother's tears.
Vikram looked at Riya's face. "I'm going to make your life miserable for this."
His voice was lighter, but his fingers tightened around hers. Riya didn't move, and the smile he had tried to maintain slowly disappeared. He lowered his gaze to their joined hands, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles as though the familiar gesture could somehow reach wherever she was.
"You always have something to say," he murmured. "So say something."
Their mother turned her face away as tears filled her eyes again. Rana remained where he was, but his gaze shifted toward his son. No one told Vikram to stop talking. Perhaps all three of them were waiting for the same impossible thing—a twitch of her fingers, a change in her expression, anything that would tell them Riya could hear them.
Nothing came.
Still, the monitor continued its steady rhythm beside her.
Vikram leaned back in the chair without releasing her hand. The sound that had terrified him only hours earlier had become the one sound he couldn't stop listening to. Every beep meant she was still there. For now, that had to be enough.
His mother's gaze eventually drifted toward the edge of Riya's hospital gown. The strange scar beneath her collarbone was mostly hidden now, but knowing it was there made it impossible to forget. She had watched Riya grow from the moment she was born; she knew every childhood scrape, every mark and every scar her daughter carried. That one belonged to none of them.
She reached toward it instinctively, then stopped before touching it.
"Mom?" Vikram asked.
She shook her head. "Nothing."
But her eyes remained there for another moment before returning to Riya's face.
Outside the hospital windows, the storm had finally begun to weaken. Rain still traced uneven paths down the glass, but the violent thunder had moved farther away, leaving behind a strange quiet after the chaos of the night.
Inside the ICU, no one had an explanation for Riya's heartbeat, the return of neurological activity or the scar that had appeared on skin where no scar had existed before. For her family, however, explanations could wait. They had already lost her once that night.
None of them were willing to look away long enough to risk losing her again.
Riya remained unconscious between them, breathing quietly beneath the watch of the machines, while the unfamiliar scar rested unseen beneath her gown—a silent mark from a story no one in that room knew had already ended.