Delhi stood still under a sky the color of an unspoken grief. The air was heavy-not with silence, but with everything that had gone unsaid. A smoky fog curled through the streets like ghosts that refused to leave. It wasn't just winter.
It was a weight- thick, grey, clinging to skin and memory.
Kiana wrapped her scarf tighter, though the cold wasn't what made her shiver.
The wind rushed past her, a sharp whisper between buildings- urgent, restless, echoing the storm inside her.
Each breath stung her throat, as if the city itself was reminding her of everything she was trying to forget.
The traffic crawled in slow motion through the haze, headlights dissolving into shadows, just as her sense of home had.
Even the trees looked tired—branches bare, standing like questions that had never been answered.
This city, this chaos, had groomed her, loved her, bruised her. And now, she was leaving it behind in that moment.
Not because she had somewhere better to go, but because staying had become a slow, cold and harsh drowning.
The cab slowed to a halt outside Terminal 3, its windows already fogging from the inside. The driver muttered something about traffic and flight timings, but Kiana barely heard it.
She sat still for a moment, staring out at the grey blur beyond the windshield.
Delhi, which was wrapped in its signature winter hush-fog thick as regret, smoke curling through the air like leftover dreams, it wasn't just cold and numbing, but was heavy. Ashen. Personal. The kind of air that knew your name and your weakness, your sad story. The one that can feel your grieving heart, that can see the invisible tears and yearning screaming through your heart.
She stepped out.
The wind caught the hem of her scarf and tugged like a memory trying to follow her. Every gust felt like the city's voice- demanding one last look back.
But she wouldn't. Not today.
The glass panels of the terminal gleamed ahead, distant and sealed.
Inside waited silence, metal detectors, announcements in flat tones, and a seat on a plane to Seoul.
Behind her:
A city gasping under winter smog.
A heart she couldn't mend.
And a version of herself that had stayed far too long.
She gripped the handle of her suitcase, her equipment bag and walked towards the doors. Not with certainty- just with the kind of resolve that comes when everything else has already fallen apart.
She enters the terminal, carrying nothing but silence and her own shattered breath. The world around her moves like machinery, but her inner world is a slow ache of numbness.
The glass doors parted with a mechanical sigh, and warm air wrapped around her like indifference.
Inside, the terminal was alive—people crisscrossing, screens blinking, trolleys rattling over polished tiles. But for her, it all blurred.
She didn't feel like she was inside an airport. It was like she was between worlds, suspended in a space where time had stopped caring.
She reached the Korean Air Counter.
"Passport?"
She handed it over. The man at the desk looked at her photo, then her face-lingering for a second too long.
Not because of the beauty. But perhaps he recognized the hollowness people carry when they've finally stopped pretending.
"Seat Preference?"
"Window," she said.
She needed to see the sky. To make sure it still existed.
She passed through the security checkpoint.
The conveyor belt swallowed her belongings.
She hesitated when they asked her to remove her wrist watch.
{It was Rishabh's last birthday gift}
She slid it off without a word, placed it in the tray like an offering.
The beep of the scanner was brief, but it felt like a judgment.
She soon picked her belongings from the tray. A sudden glance at the watch and it felt like the watch was saying, leave your past here only. Don't tag me along in your new journey.
She didn't want to let it go, but in the brief pause, she decided.
She moved forward.
The watch still lay inside the tray, like giving a farewell to its previous owner.
With her boarding pass now clutched between cold fingers, she wandered past perfume counters, brushed against silk scarves, stopped before a shelf of overpriced sunglasses she didn't need.
That's when she saw it-
A small bookstore tucked behind a row of travel accessories and over priced snacks. It wasn't a library, not really.
But it had shelves.
Books.
A child sitting cross legged on the carpet near a low bench.
He looked up at her with pleading eyes, struggling to reach a thick comic book with his little arms.
"Monsters or Dragons?" she asked softly, kneeling beside him.
"Both", he grinned.
She laughed. The sound startled even her.
She opened the book and was about to began reading aloud, her voice low, animated.
The child leaned in, the pages breathing to life between them.
And somewhere across the store, behind a half- raised hoodie and dark tired eyes—Haemosu watched.
Not out of curiosity. But because something in her presence quieted the nose in his chest.
Not her voice.
Her ability to disappear into kindness so completely.
The mother of the child arrived quietly, cradling a nine-month old in one arm while her other hand reached instinctively for the boy beside Kiana.
"gam-sa-ham-ni-da", bowing gently.
Kiana looks at her.
She continues in accented English, Thank You for reading with him. He has trouble waiting long time at airports."
Kiana smiled, soft and kind.
She nods and greeted her accordingly.
Before the mother could say anything more, the little boy chimed in with innocent authority- turning to his mother and translating every word with the pride of a young diplomat. The mother chuckled, nodded again and said, "He said you helped him wait happy."
Something warm fluttered in Kiana's chest.
She hesitated a moment, then looked towards the baby-with a desire in her heart to hold her- the tiny bundle in the woman's arms smiling and blinking at the fluorescent world around her.
"May I…?" Kiana asked softly, nodding toward the infant.
The mother smiled and gently placed the baby into her arms.
Kiana's breath caught.
The baby nestled into her chest as if it knew her heartbeat. As if it had always known. And Kiana….she laughed. Not out of joy, but out of some strange, aching relief. The kind that comes when something long lost touches you again—if only for a moment.
From a quiet corner of the bookstore, Haemosu watched.
He wasn't staring.
He was…wondering.
How does she do that?
How can a child from another country rest so peacefully in her arms? As if borders, races, don't matter. As if love has really no language and no boundations. A child can find comfort in a strangers arms, how strange is that!
There was something in her- a kind of still warmth he hadn't felt in years. Not performative. Not loud. Just present.
He didn't know her. But he wanted to.
Not because she was beautiful- though she was.
But because…..she felt like a story he wants to read and know about.
And then he saw it.
Something which was beyond his understanding.
A single tear, gliding through her cheek quietly which she wiped softly without letting anyone know.
Inside her, as the child curled closer against her, something broke in her heart.
"I could have been holding my own child by now…."
" I should've been reading lullabies and comforting my own child in a nursery painted soft yellow…"
"I should've been someone's mother…someone's home…"
Her arms, though full, felt unbearably empty.
She smiled at the baby- a trembling, broken smile- because how could she not?
But in the moment all the dreams she had once drawn in pastel colors came crashing back:
A wedding that never happened.
A child that never existed.
A home she had named in her heart but never built.
And now, here she was- outcasted from a familiar land, disbanded from a future she dearly wanted, standing in a foreign terminal with only her silence for company.
Haemosu watched as she handed over the baby back, gently brushing the soft blankets as if saying goodbye to something she had never truly held.
She smiled at the mother. The child waved.
But he couldn't stop watching.
A woman who makes babies laugh…while her own eyes silently bleed.
How can a stranger carry so much warmth and so much sorrow at once?
And for the first time in a long time, something stirred Haemosu.
It was not music.
Not duty.
But curiosity…and the quiet ache of recognition.
As Haemosu was lost in his thoughts, she suddenly vanishes into the crowd.
His eyes search for her to the ends he could look up to, but of no avail.
The Boarding announcement begins.