The moonlight seemed to pool in the space between them, turning Khushi's simple request into a tangible, shimmering thing.
Yuvaan's solemn nod finally broke as he gave a soft, almost imperceptible sigh. His gaze drifted from her face to the celestial sphere beyond the glass, and back again. A faint, wry smile touched his lips—the first of its kind, weary but self-aware.
"You ask for the impossible, Miss Khushi," he murmured, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. "Even with all my resources… I cannot bring you the moon."
Khushi's eyes, which had held that ancient, whimsical light, softened into something warmer and more direct. A gentle, knowing smile bloomed on her face.
"Exactly," she said, the single word landing with the weight of a truth he had been circling all evening.
She took a small step closer, not intruding, but closing the distance the moonlight had bridged. Her playful demeanor settled into one of quiet conviction.
"That's the point, Mr. Yuvaan. Some things are priceless. You cannot buy the moon. You cannot invoice a sunset. And you most certainly cannot… repay a person's happiness. Especially a child's."
She glanced toward the doorway where echoes of Kiaan's laughter seemed to still linger in the air.
"A child's joy isn't a transaction. It's not a favor to be logged and balanced in some ledger. It's… it's a living thing. It needs space, and sunlight, and the simple, terrible courage to let it be." She turned her full attention back to him, her gaze steady and clear. "You tried to pay for his happiness for years, didn't you? With gifts, with toys, with everything money could secure. And it left him emptier, because what he was truly owed was the one thing you thought was too costly to give: you. Your presence. Your messy, imperfect, human attention."
Yuvaan stood perfectly still, listening. The businessman in him, the man who quantified and controlled, felt each word like a chisel against a long-held belief.
"Their happiness isn't a debt you incur, Mr. Yuvaan," she continued, her voice now a gentle, unwavering sermon. "It's a garden you tend. You don't build a wall around it and call it protection. You kneel in the dirt. You pull the weeds of your own fears. You water it with time—real, patient, boring time. And you have to be brave enough to stand back and let the sun touch it, even if that sun is sometimes another person's kindness."
She paused, letting the silence swell around her words.
"So, no. You cannot repay me. Not with money, not with favors. The only thing you can 'give' me is to understand that what happened today wasn't a service I provided. It was a gift Kiaan allowed us both to receive. His laugh, his trust… that was his generosity. Our job is just to be worthy of it."
The last vestige of Yuvaan's formal offer—how can I repay you—dissolved in the night air, leaving behind a raw, humbling understanding. Khushi hadn't just organized a party. She had handed him a new lexicon, a new way to measure what mattered.
He didn't speak. He simply looked at her, this woman who spoke of children's hearts as if they were the most sacred of texts, and in the quiet of his own, the frozen ground of his parenthood cracked a little wider, making room for something new to grow.
The silence after Khushi's gentle sermon wasn't empty, but full—saturated with the truth she had just spoken. Yuvaan looked down at his hands, the hands that had built empires but had fumbled with a simple piece of birthday cake earlier that evening.
He finally lifted his gaze, not to the moon, but to the hallway where the last traces of the celebration still seemed to linger like a pleasant scent.
"He laughed today," Yuvaan began, his voice rough with a vulnerability he seldom allowed. "A real, belly-deep laugh. The kind that makes his eyes disappear and his whole body shake." A soft, incredulous breath escaped him. "I hadn't heard that sound in… I can't remember how long. I'd started to think I'd never hear it again."
He risked a glance at Khushi, finding her listening with a stillness that invited confession.
"When he fed me that cake… I saw her," Yuvaan continued, the words drawn from a deep, sacred well of memory. "For a second, in his smile, in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners… it was Kiara. Pure and undiluted." He paused, swallowing past a sudden tightness in his throat. "She would have loved today. Not the party, not the decorations… but the noise. The messy, chaotic, joyful noise of it. She lived for that. She would have been…" he searched for the word, "…radiant. To see him so light, so free."
He turned fully to Khushi then, his customary sternness replaced by a profound, weary gratitude. "You gave that back to him. And in doing so, you gave me a glimpse of what she would have seen. That is a gift that exists outside of any ledger, as you say."
Khushi's eyes had grown soft, a sheen of empathetic tears glistening in the moonlight but not falling. She offered no platitudes, just a slow, understanding nod, honoring the memory he had shared.
"So," Yuvaan said, squaring his shoulders slightly in a gesture that was both formal and deeply earnest. "Since I cannot repay a debt that doesn't exist… and since you have, whether you intended to or not, stepped into the intimate machinery of this family…"
He extended his hand, not in a businesslike manner, but open, palm slightly angled.
"…I would like to offer my friendship, Miss Khushi. It seems a woefully inadequate currency for what you've done. But it is genuine. And it is yours, if you'll have it."
The moment hung between them—the wealthy, guarded widower offering the only thing left in his power that felt untainted by transaction: a sincere connection. It was perhaps a greater vulnerability than his apology to Kiaan.
Khushi looked at his offered hand, then up to his face. Her playful spark returned, but tempered with a deep warmth. She placed her hand in his, not for a shake, but a brief, solid clasp of acknowledgment.
"Friendship is never inadequate, Mr. Yuvaan," she said, her voice firm yet kind. "And it's the only form of 'payment' I've ever been interested in. I accept."
As their hands parted, the dynamic in the room shifted irrevocably. The titles—Mr. Yuvaan, Miss Khushi—remained, but the space around them had changed. They were no longer just a troubled employer and a mysterious guest. They were allies, however tentative, in the delicate project of a little boy's heart.
Outside, the moon watched, its impossible light now feeling a little less like a taunt and a little more like a silent, approving witness.