The sky didn't just rain that night—it broke. Heavy water slammed onto the streets of Bopal, washing over filth, mud, and the occasional smear of blood that told stories no one wanted to hear. Gutters overflowed with the city's sins, neon lights from closed shops smearing across puddles like dying fireflies. A police whistle pierced the storm, shrill and desperate, but the rain swallowed everything else—har shabd (every word), har cheekh (every scream), har aas (every hope).
Rahul ran like a man whose chest had nothing left to hold.
His legs screamed. His shoulder burned where something—a baton? a fist?—had struck him during the chaos at the station. His lungs tore with each breath, the cold air like broken glass sliding down his throat. Dirty water splashed around him, soaking through his jeans, tugging at his ankles as if the city itself wanted to drag him down into its gutters. His right hand pressed against the bleeding shoulder, fingers slick with hot blood that dripped steadily into the water, mixing with the rain until he couldn't tell where he ended and the storm began.
Boots behind him. Voices shouting his name like a curse. The relentless chase of men who had already decided he was guilty.
He didn't dare look back.
A narrow alley appeared on his left—barely visible, just a slit carved into the night between two crumbling buildings. He threw himself into it, shoulders scraping against brick walls that had seen too many desperate men before him. The smell of wet plaster and garbage rose around him, mixing with the rain. His heart hammered so hard he thought it might crack his ribs. A cracked wooden door loomed ahead, hanging on rusted hinges, paint peeling like dead skin. He slammed his body against it and slid down, his back against the rotting wood, rain soaking his hair and dripping into his eyes like liquid chains.
The chase roared past the alley entrance. Boots pounding. Curses in Hindi and broken English. Whistles cutting through the storm like knives.
Then—silence.
For a single, frozen moment, it was just Rahul, the storm, and the pounding of his own blood in his ears.
Kya ho raha hai? (What is happening?)
His hands were shaking. Not from cold. From something deeper, something that had been building for weeks and had finally exploded tonight in that police station when they'd shown him the evidence—the photographs that couldn't be real, the accusations that couldn't be true.
Where did it all go wrong?
He closed his eyes, and despite the rain, despite the pain, despite everything—the night melted into memory.
Three Months Earlier
The library smelled of old paper and damp wood, a scent that clung to clothes like a second skin and followed you home. The ticking clock on the wall sounded louder than it should, each second a small knife cutting into Rahul's already frayed nerves. He hunched over his notes at the corner table—his table, the one he'd claimed every night for the past six months—pen scratching furiously across paper, eyes bloodshot from too many nights with too little sleep.
His stomach was a hollow drum. He'd skipped dinner again. The money his mother had given him for food had gone toward photocopying study materials instead.
Just a few more weeks. Phir sab sahi ho jaayega (Then everything will be fine).
This job wasn't about ambition. It wasn't about dreams or passion or any of the things his professors talked about in their air-conditioned offices. This was survival. Pure and simple. Without this police constable position, he had nothing—no respect, no future, no place in a city that devoured the weak and ground them into the same dust that now covered his secondhand textbooks.
"Rahul."
He stiffened at the sound of his name. The voice was soft, barely a whisper over the rain that had started drumming against the library's tin roof. He knew that voice the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat.
Ananya.
She slid into the seat beside him, and immediately the air changed. Her perfume—something expensive, something he could never afford—cut through the dusty smell of old books like a blade. She didn't belong here among the stacks and the desperate students. She looked carved from something else, something dangerous and unknowable, with her perfectly straight hair and the clothes that probably cost more than his monthly expenses.
His chest tightened. Even after two years, she still had this effect on him—this strange mixture of pride and inadequacy that he couldn't name.
"Prepared properly this time?" she asked, her voice that low hum that used to make him feel like he was the only person in the world.
Used to.
Rahul gripped his pen tighter, knuckles going white. "Yes. I'll clear it."
She leaned closer, and the sudden proximity was unnerving in a way it hadn't been before. When had that changed? "Are you sure?" Her eyes searched his face, dark and unreadable, as if she could see all the cracks behind his skin, all the doubts he buried under bravado and desperate studying.
"Yes," he forced out, louder than he meant to, trying to convince himself more than her. "I've studied everything. I know the syllabus inside out. I'll get a good rank."
Her eyes lingered on him for a moment longer—measuring, calculating something he couldn't quite understand—then she smiled. That small, knowing smile that never quite reached her eyes.
"Good," she said simply. "Because you know how important this is."
The clock ticked. The rain drummed. Rahul returned to his notes, but the words blurred together now, meaningless shapes on a page.
For two years he had thought they were in love. He'd believed it with the desperate certainty of someone who had nothing else to believe in. But in that silence, as the clock ticked its relentless beat, doubt whispered through his mind like cold wind through a cracked window.
Shayad maine kabhi usse sach mein nahi jaana (Maybe I never really knew her).
Result Day
The examination hall reeked of sweat and chalk, packed with desperate faces that all looked like variations of his own. The notice board stood at the front like a judge's bench, and the crowd around it moved like a living thing, pressing forward, pulling back, groans of disappointment mixing with shouts of joy.
Rahul's hands trembled as he finally pushed through to the front, his finger tracing down the list of names. Each name he skipped tightened the noose around his chest.
The list ended. His name wasn't there.
A bitter laugh slipped from him, dry as splintered glass, before he could stop it. Several classmates turned to look at him, their eyes sharp with pity—that particular kind of pity reserved for those who tried hard and failed anyway.
It's your fault, Rahul. You weren't smart enough. Weren't good enough. Weren't enough.
He stumbled out of the hall, rain starting to fall, cold and accusing, soaking through his shirt. A cold rage gnawed at his ribs, but underneath it was something worse: the hollow certainty of failure.
The next morning, Mohan burst through his door, rain still dripping from his hair.
"Rahul! The rank list—the actual rank list—it's out. Hurry, dekh (see)!"
Rahul's hands shook as he unfolded it. There it was. 31: Rahul Kumar.
And just one line above: 30: Niraj Kapoor.
He froze.
"What?" he whispered, voice cracking.
Mohan's voice was low, grim. "He paid for it, yaar (friend). Bought the rank. Everyone knows."
All the struggle, all the late nights, all the hunger, wasted.
The Confrontation
The ceremony hall glowed with marigold garlands and flashing cameras. Rahul moved like a ghost toward Niraj, who lounged like a king, surrounded by his friends.
"Niraj!" The word tore from Rahul's throat, raw, ugly.
He grabbed Niraj by the collar. "Kyon? (Why?) You have everything! Money, family, connections—why steal this from me too?"
"Because I can," Niraj said, eyes glittering with malice. "People like you stay where you belong. In the dirt."
A hand on his shoulder. Firm. Cold.
Ananya.
"Come on. Now."
She dragged him out into the rain. The marigold petals dissolved into orange smears on the wet concrete. Pieces of his rank list floated away like his dreams.
Rahul looked at her, expecting concern, love, anything.
But she wasn't saving him.
She was letting him drow.