In the dream, he screamed her name with every fragment of his shattered being "SHREYA!", and woke to the echo of his own voice reverberating through the dark room.
Sudhanshu came running, panic etched across his face. Only after learning it was merely a nightmare did the household calm down. But Arjun knew the truth. This was no ordinary dream. It was his deepest fears given form; his guilt, his terror of losing her, the crushing weight of all that had been left unsaid. The nightmare was his heart's way of warning him: time was running out.
Sleep abandoned him completely after that. Every time his eyes closed, Rani (Shreya) appeared, sometimes smiling with the innocence of their childhood, sometimes reaching out with tears streaming down her face, always slipping away before he could touch her. The ache in his chest was so profound it felt physical, as though his soul itself was bleeding. Dawn finally broke, but it brought no warmth. Arjun sat by the window, the letters clutched in his hands like sacred relics.
Memories flooded him in waves: Rani's tiny hand in his during their first monsoon together, the way she would rest her head on his shoulder and promising they would never be apart. How cruel life had been to turn those innocent vows into this endless separation.Yet within the ocean of sorrow, a fierce determination began to rise. He would find her. He would tear apart every lie, every shadow, every conspiracy. He would walk through fire if he had to. Because their story could not end in silence and unanswered questions.
He whispered into the golden light of morning, voice trembling with unshed tears and unbreakable resolve. "Wherever you are, hold on. I am coming for you Shreya, I am coming to find you and uncover the truth. No matter what hardships I must endure, I will expose the lies. I will go to any length."
With those words, a new story was born in the darkness of the night. Arjun told himself, "My innocence has been proven, yet until a final conclusion is reached, this tale will not end."By the time dawn broke, his resolve had hardened. He was determined to reach Shreya at any cost, though he still wondered where to begin. The heavy burden upon his heart had become unbearable.
●●●●
The night before leaving for BHU, Kavya and Arjun spoke without end. Their conversation stretched well beyond two hours on the phone. In the deep silence of the night, when the cool breeze stirs the most hidden memories within a person, Arjun and Kavya sat on their respective balconies, connected through a video call. Below them, the streetlights drifted past like fleeting thoughts. The wind seemed to shake the dust from the trees of Arjun's past years.
Kavya held a cup of tea in her hands. In a gentle, tender voice, she asked, "Arjun, who was the first to make a place in your heart?"
Arjun remained quiet for a while. He lifted his gaze toward the sky, as if searching for an old name still written among the stars."Rani," he said at last, so softly that it seemed an old wound had drawn breath.
"She was the most beautiful part of my childhood—the sunlight of those early days, which has slowly faded somewhere far away." He began to speak of her: how Rani would walk with him halfway to school, how they would get drenched in the rain and play in the puddles instead of attending classes, and how, after she left, a part of his world remained forever incomplete.
"I never told her anything," Arjun confessed, "but for me, she always held a sacred, unspoken feeling—like the bell in an ancient temple that no one rings, yet it hangs there still."
Kavya listened in silence. There was no jealousy in her eyes, no complaint—only the deep, steadfast understanding of a woman who knows that every man carries within him a child who clings to an old memory.
After a pause, Kavya smiled and said, "It's good that Rani was in your life. That's why the pain of separation is so vivid in your poetry. The fragrance of first love must settle in the memory before time can turn it into verse."
Arjun looked at her. There was a strange serenity in Kavya's smile, as if she felt no fear of his past.Then, with a blend of mischief and gravity, she added, "Listen, Arjun… I have no complaint that there was someone before me. But after me, there should be no one else. I may not be your first love, but I want to be your last. The kind of last… after whom you desire no one else."
As she spoke, her gaze settled deep into his eyes. It was that one desire in which a woman melts all her inner contradictions into a single plea, the final claim upon his heart. And there was nothing wrong in it.
Arjun's heart swelled. He felt no selfishness in Kavya's words, only a longing that gave depth to love. Being someone's first is not as precious as being their last. To become a person's final love is the most priceless thing of all.
Rani had been his first light—innocent, unformed, and without expectation. Kavya was the light that understood, profound and full of courage.Rani had taught him how to feel his heart beat for the first time. Kavya taught him how to make it rest.
Rani was the melody of a song from his past; Kavya became its meaning. Rani had taught him to smile in secret. Kavya taught him to live openly. In the quiet of his heart, Arjun realized that Rani was his memory, but Kavya had become his destination.
He drew a deep breath and said, "Rani was the rain of my childhood that drenched my early years. You are the dew that brings peace and sanctity to my present. After meeting you, there is no space left inside me for anyone else. This is not a promise; it is the truth."
Rani's name still lingered between them, but no longer as a burden. It had become a beautiful, tranquil memory that had helped bring him to Kavya in its own extraordinary way. Rani was the past. Kavya was the present. And Arjun was the traveler walking between them, who had finally understood that the one after whom no other desire remains is love's final home.
Rani had been a tender bud—Arjun's first innocent feeling, who taught him how to love. Kavya taught him how to cherish that love. With Rani, it was not yet love, or perhaps it was, but it lived in the fierce emotions of childhood, where feelings need no words and find a home simply in someone's laughter.
Rani's two braids would always dance in the wind, and Arjun would deliberately tug them. "I'll beat you, Bittu!" she would say in annoyance, the mischief hidden in that very nickname. And Arjun would get irritated whenever she called him "Bittu" in front of the whole school.
Sometimes, on the way back from school, Rani would hold his wrist without reason or announcement, simply claiming him as her own. The innocent Arjun would think life would continue like this forever, walking with her fingers entwined in his. But time's cruelty stole the innocence from two pure hearts.
©️ copyright Pushpa Chaturvedi
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