Nysa's POV

She stood rooted in that familiar place — the very spot where her heart had shattered months ago, where the pain of unrequited love had first etched itself deep inside her soul. The fading sunlight draped the street in gold, but all she could feel was the cold ache growing stronger.

And then, as if fate had rehearsed this cruel act just for her, he appeared.

Apurv.

There he was, standing a few feet away, his eyes calm but searching, his lips curved in a smile that once made her world spin and now made her heart fracture all over again.

He looked different. Softer somehow. Maybe it was the way his gaze lingered on her, as if he was seeing her for the first time — really seeing her.

A silent wave of confusion crashed over her.

Had he started liking her?

Was this a new beginning or just another cruel twist?

Her mind raced, tangled with memories of all the moments she had given him her whole heart — moments he never truly returned.

But then there was Aarav.

Steady, dependable Aarav — who loved her quietly and fiercely, who never demanded more than she could give, who stood beside her like the gentle wind, never the storm.

She felt the pull of two worlds.

Apurv, with his stormy charm and unpredictable heart — the boy she had loved fiercely and painfully.

And Aarav, with his calm, unwavering love — the man who held her steady when she thought she might fall apart.

Her chest tightened, breath shallow.

How could she choose?

Who deserved her heart?

And more than that — would she ever love Apurv the same way again, after all the hurt?

She looked at Apurv, searching for answers in his eyes, but all she found was a quiet hope, a longing she hadn’t expected.

And then she thought of Aarav, of his patient smiles, his gentle words, the way he made her feel safe.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

She didn’t know whom to hold — whether to reach for Apurv’s uncertain promise or Aarav’s quiet certainty.

She didn’t know if she was brave enough to risk loving Apurv again, to open that door to pain once more.

But deep down, beneath the confusion and fear, she knew this was her crossroads.

And the choice — when it came — would change everything.

For now, all she could do was stand there, heart torn in two, caught between the boy she loved and the man who loved her.

And wonder if she would ever find the courage to heal, to trust, to love — again.

She didn’t sleep that night.

She just stared at the ceiling, blinking away the weight behind her eyes, trying to listen to the parts of her that still made sense — the soft voice of reason, of healing, of Aarav. But her heart… oh, her heart had always been disobedient.

It wasn’t fair — to Aarav, to herself.

But love had never asked for fairness.

It only asked to be felt.

And against every thread of logic, every bruise still fresh, every warning whispered by her soul…

She still chose Apurv.

Why?

She didn’t know.

Maybe because he was her first real ache.

Maybe because there were corners of her heart that still belonged to him — untouched, unopened, waiting.

Maybe because somewhere, some broken part of her still wanted to be chosen by him so badly that she forgot she could choose herself.

As she stood in front of her mirror that morning, she whispered to her reflection, “Don’t do this,”

But her hands still typed his name.

Her heart didn’t thump with the excitement it once did.

It ached — like a wound being opened by her own will.

She met Apurv that evening.

He smiled, hesitant. “You really came…”

And she did — with all the shards of herself she had tried to stitch back together.

She laughed. She talked. She pretended.

But inside, her soul screamed — not out of joy, but from betrayal.

Not of him.

Of herself.

Because she knew.

She knew he wasn’t safe.

She knew his love was a maybe, not a promise.

She knew Aarav would never have made her question her worth.

But still… she chose Apurv.

Because sometimes we don’t choose who makes sense.

We choose the person our scars recognize.

The one who fits our chaos, not our calm.

And that night, when she returned to her room, her heart was silent.

Not peaceful.

Not content.

Just… silent.

Like a storm had passed but left nothing behind.

She stared at her phone, at Aarav’s name sitting quietly in her messages, unread.

And she whispered through her tears,

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I do this to myself. I don’t know why I choose him when I know it’s going to hurt.”

And maybe the truth was — she had fallen for a boy who never truly loved her,

While a man stood in the shadows, loving her without needing to be loved back.

But for now, she let her tears fall.

And her heart bleed quietly.

Because she had chosen Apurv.

And she didn’t know how to undo that.

Apurv had never liked surprises.

But that day, fate didn’t ask for his permission.

He wasn’t even supposed to be there. He had come to visit a friend at a nearby campus, casually walking through the college gardens, phone in hand, mind detached — until he heard her laugh.

Naysa.

He didn’t even realize how fast his eyes found her.

She was sitting under a tree, sunlight pouring onto her face like a warm filter. Her eyes sparkled — not because of him, not anymore.

Because of someone else.

A guy sat beside her — Aarav, wasn’t it? He had heard the name in passing.

They were laughing. Like… really laughing.

It was a sound he remembered from when it used to be meant for him.

Apurv didn’t move.

He couldn’t.

His fingers curled into fists inside his hoodie pocket, his throat went dry, his heartbeat stumbled into chaos.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, something ugly bloomed inside his chest.

Jealousy.

It hit him like a sharp wind, slicing through his calm facade.

Why was she laughing like that?

Why was he making her laugh like that?

Why wasn’t it him?

He thought she’d moved on, sure — but he didn’t think it would hurt.

Not like this.

Not like watching her tuck her hair behind her ear while listening to someone else.

Not like seeing her eyes search someone else’s face like he held the answers to her world.

He looked away.

But it didn’t help.

The ache had already taken root.

---

That night, Apurv scrolled through his own photos, through old chats he never deleted, voice notes he never had the courage to replay.

And somewhere between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m., he whispered something into the dark that no one was meant to hear.

> "I never thought… I’d lose you for real."

He didn't send her a text.

He couldn't.

Because what would he say?

> “I’m jealous”?

“I didn’t choose you when I had the chance, but now that you’ve found someone better, I suddenly care”?

He’d always been too late with her.

Too slow with his heart.

Too sure she’d wait.

But seeing her laugh with Aarav… it broke something.

Not because she moved on.

But because she finally looked free.

And for the first time, Apurv realized:

Maybe he wasn’t the one who was hurt.

Maybe he was the one who caused it.

It had been a strange week.

Aarav noticed her silence first.

She wasn’t the same — not distant, not withdrawn — just... floating. Like a person who wasn’t sure which shore she wanted to swim to. And Aarav, being Aarav, didn’t force her to talk. He just stayed. Quiet, patient, painfully present.

Naysa, however, didn’t speak of it.

She couldn’t.

Because saying it aloud meant accepting it — that she had seen Apurv again.

And it wasn’t just seeing him. It was the way he looked at her.

Not with love. Not with longing.

But with regret that came too late — the kind that dripped slow and sharp, like a paper cut on the soul.

---

They met again. Unexpectedly. Isn’t that always how it happens?

A college fest.

Crowds. Noise. Lights.

She was standing alone for a moment, waiting for Aarav to return with a cup of chai. And that’s when Apurv appeared.

“Hey,” he said, voice soft, uncertain.

She froze. But only for a second. She wasn’t the girl who once waited hours for his reply.

She wasn’t the same, and she wanted him to see that.

“Hey,” she replied, cool and neutral.

But Apurv — he was anything but composed.

“I saw you last week… with him.”

Naysa blinked. So he had noticed.

“So?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Apurv hesitated. “You looked… happy.”

“I am happy,” she said, a little too fast. A little too loud.

Silence fell between them like a closing curtain.

He looked down, kicking at the gravel with the side of his shoe.

“I don’t know why it bothered me,” he said, finally.

She waited.

“But it did. And that’s not your fault, I know. I just—” he sighed. “I guess I didn’t think you'd actually stop waiting.”

Her lips parted, stunned.

“Why would I keep waiting for someone who made me feel like I was always… almost enough?” she asked, voice breaking despite herself.

“I didn’t know how to choose you,” he whispered.

“You didn’t even try.”

That silence again.

And then, the words tumbled out — raw, unpolished, jagged.

> “When I saw you laughing with him, I wanted to hate you… but I couldn’t. I hated myself more. Because I knew... you deserved that laugh. You deserved someone who made you laugh like that every day. And I— I was just afraid. Afraid to love you the way you needed. So I didn’t.”

Naysa stood still. Her throat burned. Her hands were cold.

“I loved you, Apurv. Do you even understand that? I loved you when you had nothing to offer except confusion. And you let me drown in it.”

He closed his eyes. “I know.”

“Then why now?” she asked. “Why show up now? When I’ve finally started to feel peace?”

Apurv swallowed.

“Because I didn’t know peace could look like losing you.”

---

Aarav saw them from a distance. He didn’t interrupt.

He knew.

He always knew she carried a piece of Apurv inside her.

But he also knew that pieces of us don't define us. It’s the people we build homes with — not the ones we bleed for.

---

That night, Naysa cried. Not because she wanted Apurv back.

But because she finally believed he once felt something too.

Still, it didn’t matter now.

Some people don’t return for love.

They return to show you what love never was.

She sat on the hostel terrace that night — the wind whispering things she didn’t want to hear. The sky above her was smeared with stars, mocking her chaos with their stillness.

Aarav had not said much since that night at the fest. He had held her hand, looked into her eyes, and asked just once:

> “Will you stay… or will you go back to the one who once left you bleeding?”

And she hadn’t answered. Because her silence was the answer.

---

She thought she had healed.

She thought her love had faded the way old scars do — present but no longer aching.

But seeing Apurv again was like reopening a wound she had learned to walk with — not because she forgot, but because she had trained herself to live in pain without screaming.

And when he finally looked at her — not with ego, not with casualness, but with that trembling regret — something inside her cracked.

Not because he said he was sorry.

But because for the first time, he meant it.

---

She knew what choosing Apurv meant.

It meant chaos. It meant waiting again. Wondering again.

It meant smiling while dying inside — maybe.

But still… still…

> “I never unloved him,” she whispered into the night.

Not when he ignored her texts.

Not when he said he could never love her.

Not when he disappeared after becoming everything to her.

Her heart, foolish and loyal, had kept the light on at the doorstep — hoping, aching, burning.

---

The next morning, she met Aarav at the college gate. He looked at her — the way he always did — gentle, warm, understanding beyond words.

“I think you already know,” she said softly, eyes stinging.

He nodded, smiling with the kind of sadness only the truly kind-hearted feel.

“You love him,” he said. Not as a question. But a truth.

“I wish I didn’t.”

“But you do.”

She nodded. “Even if it breaks me.”

Aarav looked away for a moment, gathering himself.

> “Then go,” he whispered. “And if one day it shatters you completely — just know, I never loved you because you were mine. I loved you because you taught me what it means to love… even when you’re not chosen.”

---

Later that day, she stood in front of Apurv — no makeup, no walls, no games.

Just her — as raw and hopeful as the first day she’d fallen for him.

> “I don’t want to pretend anymore,” she said.

He looked at her, startled.

> “I don’t want to lie and say I’ve moved on. Because I haven’t. I love you, Apurv. I never stopped. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe everyone’s right. But I choose you… again. Even if it hurts. Even if it ruins me. Even if you don’t know what to do with my heart.”

He didn’t reply immediately.

But in that pause, in that silence, something flickered in his eyes — something real, something fragile.

He held her hand, hesitantly.

> “I don’t know what to promise. I don’t know if I’ll ever be what you need.”

> “Then don’t promise,” she said, tearfully. “Just stay. Just try.”

And for the first time, he didn’t let go.

---

They didn’t fall into love again like people do in books.

They walked into it—quietly, carefully—like stepping barefoot on glass.

Because both of them knew how sharp love could be.

---

After she chose him again, the world didn’t turn magical overnight.

There were no fairy tale fireworks. No background music.

Just awkward silences, unguarded glances, and moments where the ghosts between them breathed louder than they did.

But this time… Apurv stayed.

And that changed everything.

---

Some mornings, they’d just send each other “Good morning” with a small sun emoji — as if daring the day to be kind.

Sometimes, she’d write to him about her classes, her failures, her fears.

He would respond with small lines that meant everything to her:

> “You’ll make it.”

“You’re stronger than you think.”

“I’m proud you didn’t give up.”

And though his words weren’t drenched in romance, they carried something far more dangerous — hope.

---

They began meeting once a week.

At a chai tapri outside his coaching center.

At a bookstall near the bus stand.

In front of Gomti Nadi — their unsaid sacred place.

Those two hours became sacred.

Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t.

One evening, she asked softly, “Why didn’t you choose me back then?”

He looked at the river, not at her.

> “Because I didn’t know how to be loved like that,” he admitted.

She didn’t press.

Because for her, that truth was enough.

---

Bit by bit, she began opening up again.

She told him about the dreams she had buried — the orphanage, the girl child, the fears that she would never be enough for anyone.

He didn’t flinch this time.

> “Maybe,” he said, “we’ll both learn how to build things together. Slowly.”

For the first time, she believed he meant with her.

---

But healing wasn’t linear.

There were days she’d cry for no reason.

Nights she’d question why he stayed.

Moments when his silence brought back every abandonment she’d ever known.

And yet, he stayed.

Sometimes angry.

Sometimes confused.

But never leaving.

One day when she broke down over a small fight, saying, “Maybe I’m too much,” he held her hand and said:

> “Maybe you are. But that’s what I came back for.”

---

She wrote in her diary one night:

> “We’re building something that could break any day.

But we’re still building it.

Maybe that’s what love is — not perfect people coming together.

But two broken hearts choosing each other, again and again, even with shaking hands.”

---

They weren’t the same people anymore.

She wasn’t the girl who waited for his notifications all night.

He wasn’t the boy who ran from love disguised as freedom.

But they were trying.

And in that trying…

There was a quiet, trembling kind of love.

Not the loud kind. Not the movie kind.

The kind that heals.

It wasn’t planned.

It wasn’t a date.

It wasn’t even supposed to be a special evening.

It was just…

a cold evening in the middle of her messy week, when her world was too loud, and her insides too heavy.

She was in the library, her eyes staring at the same sentence for the past twenty minutes, her fingers trembling from something she couldn’t name — maybe anxiety, maybe exhaustion, maybe that deep ache that had no name but always lived in her chest.

She didn’t text anyone.

But he called.

> “I was just nearby… felt like checking on you,” Apurv said casually, like he hadn’t rehearsed the words five times before calling.

She didn’t say much — just whispered,

> “I don’t want to be seen right now.”

> “Okay,” he replied.

“But I want to see you. Will you allow that?”

That line undid something inside her.

---

They met outside the campus, where streetlights flickered like old memories, and the chai guy smiled at their familiarity.

He didn’t ask what was wrong.

He just slid the extra warm kulhad in her hand and sat beside her — letting the silence be the softest kind of music.

Then softly, like peeling off a scar, she said it:

> “Sometimes, I feel I’m not built for this world. Like I’m too soft, too heavy, too lost. I’m scared I’ll never be… easy to love.”

Apurv didn’t interrupt.

Didn’t deny.

Didn’t sugarcoat.

He simply leaned in — not physically, but emotionally — and said:

> “I don’t think you were born to be easy to love.

I think you were born to be impossible to forget.”

And that — that was the moment she realized this boy had learned her heart more deeply than she ever allowed anyone to.

---

They walked without knowing the destination, through dusty paths and light rain that didn’t ask for permission.

He told her how he’d failed his mock test that day and laughed about it like failure wasn’t scary anymore.

She told him how her roommate told her she stopped laughing like before.

He asked her:

> “Do you want to try laughing now?”

She chuckled through her tears,

> “It doesn’t work like that, stupid.”

He smiled,

> “Then I’ll wait.”

---

They sat on a broken bench under a gulmohar tree, and he showed her his notes — not about surgery or medicine, but about her.

Yes — he had a notes app filled with her favorite mithai, the name of her orphanage dream, the line she always said after fighting with her roommate:

> “Don’t touch me unless you’re bringing chocolate.”

And she just sat there — stunned, undone, seen.

> “Why did you keep all this?” she whispered.

Apurv looked straight into her — not her eyes, but her.

> “Because I wanted to hold on to something real.

And you were the most real thing that ever happened to me.”

---

That night, she didn’t sleep crying.

That night, her heart didn’t ache for someone who left.

That night, she didn’t dream of being chosen.

Because she already was — in the quiet way, in the real way.

And when she looked at Apurv, sipping the last of his chai, smiling without words…

She realized — this wasn’t a fairytale.

This was better.

Because it was real.

And real doesn’t always shout.

Sometimes, real just stays.

They didn’t label it.

Not this time.

No confessions.

No promises.

Just a soft attempt — like rebuilding something out of shattered glass, piece by piece, careful not to bleed too much again.

Apurv texted her that night, nothing dramatic — just:

> “Did you eat?”

Naysa stared at her screen for a few seconds longer than usual.

She could feel her heart pause — because he hadn’t asked that in a long time.

Not since before the silence.

Not since before the heartbreak.

And yet, she replied:

> “Not really. Hostel food drama, you know.”

That was it.

One simple text.

But between those four words and her reply, something had shifted.

---

They didn’t talk about what had happened between them.

It was too fragile.

Instead, they built new conversations on top of the old ones.

Apurv sent her songs — the kind that didn’t say I love you, but I miss the person you are when you talk about the stars.

Naysa started asking him about his classes, the surgeries he dreamt of, and what scared him most.

He told her.

She listened — not with the ears of someone who wanted to fix him, but with the heart of someone who simply wanted to understand.

---

They weren’t perfect.

They were messy.

She still overthought.

He still ran away in his silences.

Sometimes she would send a paragraph, and he would reply with a one-liner.

Sometimes he would talk about a girl from his batch, and she would quietly look away from her screen.

But they kept coming back to each other —

again

and

again.

---

One weekend, they met.

No fanfare.

No surprises.

He came to her city.

They went to that same riverside café.

The one where she once sat and listened to his dreams.

But this time, she talked.

She told him about how she used to cry alone after pretending everything was fine.

How she wrote poems but never shared them.

How Aarav had held her during a breakdown once but her heart still whispered Apurv's name.

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

Just reached out and held her hand.

Not like a lover.

Like home.

> “We both broke,” he said.

“But maybe… maybe we’re the kind of broken that fits back together.”

She looked at him — a little shocked at the tenderness in his voice.

Apurv was never good with emotions.

He was the guy who hid behind logic, jokes, arguments.

But today, he wasn’t hiding.

---

They started doing small things for each other.

Late-night voice notes.

Book recommendations.

Photos of the sky they both loved.

He started remembering her period cycle and checked in on her cramps.

She remembered the date of his entrance exam and sent him calming mantras the night before.

They still hadn’t said the three words.

But it was there —

in the way he never forgot to ask if she took her medicines.

In the way she sent him screenshots of Bengali mithais she’d try to learn just for him.

They were not the same people anymore.

But somehow, they were better.

Softer.

Kinder.

She asked him one night:

> “What are we now?”

He replied:

> “Maybe we’re the version of us that was always supposed to exist —

without fear, without ego, without pretending.”

> “So… are we safe now?”

> “We’re not safe.

But we’re honest.

And sometimes that’s better than safe.”

---

In the silences that followed, she knew.

They weren’t running anymore.

They were choosing —

not out of desperation,

but out of healing.

And maybe that was what love really looked like:

Two people, broken in different places,

trying to build the same home

with trembling hands.