Riyan
The night stretched endless, each hour scraping across his nerves like glass.
Riyan sat on the edge of his narrow bed, elbows on his knees, hands tangled in his hair. The paper scraps on the floor—the failed drafts of his note—stared back like ghosts. Only one had survived, stitched into the kurta's hem, sent across enemy lines by the boy who carried folded clothes without question.
Did she find it? Or had it been ripped out, discovered, burned?
The thought of her cousin's smug face holding that note twisted his stomach. He shot to his feet, pacing the length of the room. The ribbon still lay on his desk, a talisman of her defiance. He clenched it in his fist, whispering to the dark, "You'll tell me, Ananya. You'll find a way."
Kabir stirred from the mattress in the corner, groaning. "If you don't stop pacing, the floorboards are going to collapse."
"I can't just sit here," Riyan muttered.
"You'll have to." Kabir rubbed his eyes. "The boy did his job. Now it's her turn. She's smart—you said so yourself. She'll know what to do."
Riyan stopped, staring out the window where the first blush of dawn softened the horizon. "I need to see her signal. Even the smallest one."
"And you will," Kabir said, though his voice carried its own thread of doubt.
The silence between them pressed heavy. Riyan gripped the window frame, eyes burning. "If they caught her…"
Kabir cut him off firmly. "Then we'd already know. Stop imagining worst cases and wait for her sign. That's all we can do."
But waiting was its own kind of torture.
Ananya
The first light of morning crawled across her floorboards, illuminating the locked door, the barred window, the textbooks lined in obedient rows.
Ananya sat at her desk, pretending to read while her mother moved around the room, straightening the bed, checking the drawers. Every motion made her pulse jump—would she find the note hidden inside the hollow spine of the thick history book?
But her mother didn't linger. She swept out with a sharp look and the soft click of the bolt sliding home.
Alone again.
Ananya let out the breath she'd been holding, her hand pressing lightly against the spine of the book where the note rested safe.
He reached me. He's still there.
But one truth burned brighter: she couldn't just receive. She had to answer. She had to let him know she was fighting too.
Her mind spun with possibilities. Letters were dangerous—too obvious if found. Whispers risked betrayal. She needed something subtle, invisible to suspicious eyes but loud enough for him.
Her gaze fell on the margins of her notebook, where the teachers always scolded her for doodling.
A tiny pattern. A mark. Something meaningless to anyone else.
Her cousin checked her pages, but he never looked closely at the scrawls. If one of these notebooks passed back through the laundry boy, carrying an extra mark—one only Riyan would recognize—it might just work.
Her fingers traced the edge of the pencil. A simple shape formed in her mind: a small star drawn beside the word hope. She'd told him once, in a careless moment under the banyan tree, that if she ever felt trapped, she'd wish on the first star she saw.
If he saw that mark, he'd know.
Her hand shook as she drew the first tiny star in the margin. Then another, in the corner of the next page. Hidden, but present. Her heart thudded with every stroke.
By evening, her cousin collected the notebooks, muttering about assignments and responsibility. She kept her face carefully blank as he stacked them into the bundle that would, eventually, pass through the house staff, into the laundry boy's hands, and—if fate allowed—into Riyan's.
When the door shut again, Ananya pressed her palms together, whispering into the silence, "Find it, Riyan. See me."
Riyan
The next two days scraped across him like knives.
Riyan haunted the streets near the laundry shop, pacing, eyes scanning every bundle that passed through. Kabir hissed warnings in his ear—"Stop drawing attention"—but Riyan couldn't help it.
Then, finally, the boy appeared. Thin arms hugged a stack of folded clothes and notebooks, his eyes darting nervously until they landed on Riyan waiting in the alley.
Riyan stepped forward, snatching one of the books with trembling hands. He flipped it open, pages rustling under his fingertips.
And there—so faint it might have been missed by anyone else—a small star inked into the corner of the page.
His chest clenched. His breath left him in a rush.
A star.
His Ananya.
She had answered.
Kabir leaned over his shoulder, spotting the mark. "Subtle. Clever. No one else would notice."
Riyan traced the star with his thumb, fire sparking in his veins. "She's still fighting. She's telling me she's here."
Relief and hunger mingled in his chest. Relief that she was unbroken. Hunger to see her, touch her, tell her how fiercely she burned in him.
Kabir's eyes narrowed. "Careful, Riyan. A mark like that is just the beginning. Don't rush into something reckless."
Riyan closed the book, clutching it tight. His eyes blazed toward the horizon. "This isn't enough. If she's risking everything to send me this… then I'll give her more than stars."
Ananya
That night, she curled under her blanket, heart thudding. Somewhere beyond these walls, he would see it. He would know.
And in the silence, she whispered again, as though the stars themselves might carry it to him:
"Come to me."
Riyan stood at his window, the notebook pressed to his chest, her star blazing in his mind like fire. He whispered into the night, his vow renewed:
"I'm coming, Ananya. No matter the risk. I'm coming."