Mitra's parents had come rushing to the town as soon as they got a call from her grandparents regarding Mitra's involvement in the case. They could see that Mitra was tormented by her own self, that she was struggling with a certain helplessness unidentifiable by them.
She was keeping her mouth shut most of the time, barely remarking anything, avoiding everyone's gaze, restraining herself to a corner and not eating her meals unless forced to. Her parents assumed it was because she was traumatized by the bullying and murder incidents and the exhaustive investigation that followed.
After all, she had been called to the police station too many times and made to go over the details of a cold-blooded murder; a fifteen-year-old girl being made to relive the worst moments of her life again and again.
The absolutely weird turn of events was Mitra maintaining a cold distance from Vishal.
The day she first separated from him for the investigation at school was the last time Vishal had had the lengthiest conversation with her. After the first round of questioning, Mitra went straight to her home escorted by her grandparents and refused to see Vishal when he turned up at their doorstep; she feigned a tired sleep.
A couple of weeks went by with Mitra barely attending school, spending her days either lying down behind the closed doors of her bedroom or sitting in front of the police and CID answering questions.
Word spread fast and Vishal heard the exact extent of the truth Mitra had revealed. He was glad she had the guts to admit that she was the last one to see Lekha alive, yet troubled that she had lied about the exact situation. He could understand her predicament completely.
So, when Mitra refused to see him or even speak to him for more than two minutes, he put two and two together to get a picture of her conscience.
Mitra was embarrassed to face him.
He was the only one in the whole world who knew what she had done; and he was much more righteous than her. He was someone whom Mitra wanted to have a good opinion of her. Yet, he had seen her at her worst, which was a nightmare in itself for her.
Mitra could only imagine what he would have done had he been in her place. He wouldn't have turned his back on Lekha, and even if he did, he wouldn't have lied to the police.
That's what she thought.
Vishal, on the other hand, realized the complexity of his own moral mapping. Deep down he knew that he might have done the exact same things that Mitra had done. To the dot. There was a reason why they both got each other like soulmates.
And so, he never spoke a word of what he knew to anyone.
The culprits of the murder were never found. There were no witnesses and Mitra didn't remember the face of the perpetrator she saw to even draw a composite sketch. The police suspected the three murderers to have left the town the night of the incident after dumping Lekha's body. They had collected the DNA and had the data, but no credible suspects to match them against.
The town had a high number of migrants and daily wage workers employed at the surrounding sugar factory and car spare parts workshops, who came in the morning for work and left the town for home at night. The few people the police rounded as possible suspects checked out their alibi and didn't match the evidence they had.
Lekha's family did have a few red-flagged acquaintances who could have done the crime to spite her rich and powerful father, yet they couldn't be completely pinned as the culprits either.
It slowly became a cold case.
Days after the police confirmed that Mitra wouldn't have to turn up for giving any further statements, she left the town with her parents. They went back to Kolkata, with Mitra's parents making arrangements to get her home-schooled for the rest of the year.
They were extremely worried about Mitra's state of mind. She was refusing to step outside the home and was retreating from interacting with anyone at all.
Her parents were themselves scared that she might be targeted by the criminals of Lekha's murder for having witnessed one of them in the act. What if they came after her for speaking up about seeing them? What if they tried to kill her too?
The police had figured it could be a good way to lure the criminals out, which Mitra's parents pointedly refused. It was enough to have one child lose her life accidentally to the cruelty of those monsters. So, they almost raced away out of the town with Mitra in tow.
Vishal was the most heartbroken of all with all the proceedings. He was losing his best friend and the incident itself had left their school and their class in particular in such dark shades of gloom that the students became taciturn.
The teachers noticed how the class was the least noisy in the school, the students were oddly silent most of the time and they weren't proactive in many of the activities. They pieced the puzzle together that the empty seats of Lekha and Mitra and the fizzled-out spirit of Vishal had become a constant reminder of what had happened to their peers, with whom they had been together with for a long time.
Especially with Lekha, whom the townspeople had been watching since she was a kid; her absence and the reasons for it hit the strongest.
The day Mitra left town, Vishal came to bid her goodbye. As he stood in the drawing room of Mitra's house facing her, taken aback by the amount of weight Mitra appeared to have lost, he realized how much he wanted to be with her and help her.
"Can't you even look at me?" he muttered slowly to her.
Mitra looked up, her face devoid of the spark she used to have, her eyes sunken deep with dark circles, her cheeks hollow and colourless. She didn't smile. "I am sorry," she simply said.
"Sorry for what?" Vishal asked, not sure why he was feeling uneasy and angry.
"For everything. I got you involved in something heinous."
"I am not involved in anything Mitra. I wish I were. I am just a spectator and you have no idea how frustrating that is," Vishal vented out, failing to hide his angst.
"You know my secret and you kept silent. That is something no one else could have done," Mitra admitted.
Vishal gazed at her unable to think of what to say next to calm her anxiety. "When will you be back?" he asked quietly.
"I don't know. I don't want to be back here," she whispered.
There was a very uncomfortable silence in the room. Mitra knew those words were hurting her best friend who wished for her to stay back.
"I feel like Lekha's ghost would come haunting me," she voiced her fear.
"That's not possible. Ghosts don't exist."
"It exists in my head."
"You just need to get back to school and normal life. Then everything will fall back into place," Vishal tried convincing her.
"No," Mitra refused. "I can't sit in the class where I would be reminded of her every day. I don't want her friends looking at me as if I caused her death. Although, ironically, that is true."
"No one will look at you like that Mitra," Vishal persisted.
"They will. You have no idea how they have been looking at me ever since I spoke out about being the last person to see her. They think I did something. And they are not wrong, are they?" Mitra sneered in self-pity.
Vishal was about to rebut her statement when Mitra's mother entered the room with snacks for both of them. She sat down next to Mitra making a small talk with Vishal and he lost the chance to confront some of the biggest worries of Mitra.
Mitra left the next day, and true to her words, she didn't return for three years.