— Aara's POV
She hadn't spoken to anyone all day.
Not because she was sulking.Not because she was afraid.Not even because of Haru.
She just needed silence.
Real silence.
Not the kind you survive in — the kind you heal in.
The apartment was empty when she got home.
Her mother was either asleep or pretending to be dead.The lights were off.The fridge was humming, half-full of things Aara bought, never touched.
She dropped her bag by the door and walked straight to her room, locking the door behind her like muscle memory.
Her fingers trembled for a moment.
Then stopped.
She sat down on the floor, back against the bed, and pulled the bandages off her hands slowly, one layer at a time.
She didn't wince.
She'd stopped wincing a long time ago.
Her phone buzzed once.
Haru.
"You home?""I won't come up. I just wanted to know."
She stared at the screen.
Didn't answer.
Not yet.
She opened the small notebook she kept under her mattress — the one no one knew about. Not even Ayin. Not even Haru.
It wasn't a diary. She didn't write feelings in it.
She wrote truths.
Things she wanted to remember when the world tried to erase her again.
She flipped to a fresh page and wrote:
"I am not someone's reason to breathe."
"I do not exist to be needed."
"Love without respect is a leash."
She set the pen down and exhaled, long and slow.
Haru had said he didn't know who he was without her.
And part of her had wanted to fall into that — into the warmth of being important to someone so dangerous.
But she wasn't a puzzle to complete someone else's emptiness.
She was a person.
A girl.
A woman, maybe. Almost.
And she was starting to want something more than survival.
She was starting to want herself.
Later that night, she stood in front of the mirror and studied her reflection.
Her lip was still healing. Her cheek faintly bruised.Her eyes — always tired — now looked… different.
Sharper.Clearer.Like she was starting to recognize the girl staring back.
Not the good daughter.
Not the punching bag.
Not the shadow of Ayin.
Just Aara.
And that felt terrifying.
But also, just a little bit… freeing.
She picked up her phone again.
Typed a message.
Deleted it.
Typed it again.
"I'm okay. You don't have to wait outside."
Pause.
Then she added:
"But thank you."
She hit send.
The reply came instantly.
"I'll always wait. Even if you never ask me to."
She read it once.
Then put her phone down and turned off the light.
She didn't cry.
She didn't shake.
She just lay in the dark, hand resting over her chest, and for the first time in weeks…
She slept.
Not like she was escaping.
But like she was home.
Inside herself.