The first day, he told himself it was nothing.
Maybe she was busy, maybe her warden had caught her phone, maybe she had fallen
asleep. He stared at the "last seen" on WhatsApp, noticing it was hours ago,
then minutes ago, then—his chest tightened—just now. Yet his messages remained
unread.
Maybe the
network's bad, he thought. Maybe she's
just tired.
So he waited.
But the waiting stretched into a long, unending night. His phone stayed
silent, glowing only with other people's updates—Rahul's memes, college group
spam, his mother's goodnight text. None of it mattered. He unlocked and locked
his phone a hundred times, each time hoping her name would appear.
It never did.
By the second day, unease grew claws.
He typed a message—
"Hey, how's your hand? Is it better now?"
—then deleted it.
He typed again—
"I'm missing our talks. Call me when you're
free."
—then erased that too.
Finally, he just wrote—
"Are you okay?"
The message turned blue. No reply.
His chest burned. He tried calling. The phone
rang and rang, until the mechanical voice said, "The person you are trying to reach is not answering."
He called again. And again. Until guilt gnawed
at him—was he pushing too much? Was he being desperate?
But how could he not be, when she had become
his every thought?
On the third day, Rahul noticed.
"Bhai, you look like you haven't slept," Rahul
said, sipping tea at their usual stall.
He forced a laugh. "Just… late nights."
Riya, more perceptive, raised an eyebrow.
"It's her, isn't it? She hasn't replied?"
He said nothing, only stirred the half-empty
cup of chai in front of him.
Rahul sighed. "Give her time, yaar. Maybe
something's going on."
Riya leaned forward gently. "But don't lose
yourself waiting. Okay?"
He nodded, but their
words fell flat. How could he explain that every minute without her voice felt
like an hour? That the silence was louder than any crowd?
That night, he wrote her a shayari, his fingers trembling as he typed:
"Teri
khamoshi bhi ek sawal hai,
Dil poochta hai, kya main ab bhi tera khayal hoon?
Woh baatein, woh muskaan, sab yaad hai mujhe,
Par teri yaadon mein ab sirf sannata saal hai."
("Your silence itself is a question,
My heart wonders, am I still your thought?
Those talks, that smile, I still remember,
But now only emptiness fills your memory.")
He sent it. He waited. He refreshed the chat
every few minutes. No reply.
His chest hollowed.
On the fourth day, desperation overtook him.
He stood outside her hostel gate, his eyes
fixed on the building, hoping she would appear like before—smiling shyly,
dupatta in hand. The guard gave him a suspicious look, but he stayed anyway,
pretending to check his phone.
Minutes became an hour. Still, no sign of her
Suddenly, his phone rang. Relief surged—maybe
it's her!
But it wasn't.
It was Sayan, his roommate.
"Where the hell are you?" Sayan's voice was
urgent, almost panicked. "Come to the room. Right now. It's important."
He hesitated, his eyes still fixed on the hostel windows. "I… I can't,
Sayan. I'm waiting here."
"No," Sayan cut him
off sharply. "Listen to me. Come back immediately. You need to hear this from
me first."
Something in his
friend's tone made his stomach drop. With heavy steps, he walked away from the
hostel and back to his room.
Sayan was pacing when he entered, his face grim.
"What happened?" He asked, his chest
tightening.
Sayan swallowed hard before speaking. "I… I
tried reaching out to her. I thought maybe I could understand why she's
avoiding you. But…" He hesitated, then forced the words out. "She told me
something. She said… she said you touched her wrongly."
For a moment, the world went silent.
He just stared, his
ears ringing, his breath caught in his throat. "What…?" The word escaped him as
a broken whisper.
Sayan's eyes were
full of pity. "I know you, Bhai. I know you'd never… but that's what she told
me."
It felt like a blade driven straight into his chest. His knees weakened, and
he sat heavily on the bed, his hands trembling.
His mind replayed every moment with her—her
shy smile, the rain-soaked chai, the way she picked out his specs, the softness
in her voice when she said she liked him. How could all of that turn into this?
"No…" he muttered, his voice cracking. "I never… I could never… She knows
that."
Sayan placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying
him. "I believe you, Bhai. But she's made up her mind about something. I don't
know why. I just… I thought you should know."
He buried his face in his palms. His chest heaved, but no tears came. It was
too big, too brutal for tears.
In that moment, something inside him shattered completely.
It wasn't just ghosting anymore. It wasn't silence. It was betrayal—sharp,
deep, and merciless.
The girl who once looked at him with those
magical eyes now looked at him as a stranger. Worse than a stranger.