He first saw her during the monsoon, the kind of rain that soaks through your bones and slows down time. Ayaan had returned to the coastal town of Manora after nearly a decade of absence, the sea wind still smelling of salt and grief. Everything had changed, and nothing had. He had spent the better part of ten years building a name in Karachi’s relentless film industry—screenwriting hits, collecting awards, living in a condo high above the noise. But none of it, none of it, ever made him forget the way her name still hurt. Her name—Miraal—wasn’t just part of his past. It was the center of it. She had been the girl who ran barefoot across the rooftops, the one who taught him how to breathe when the world was too loud. She was the kind of person who remembered what kind of tea you liked and how many spoons of sugar made you feel safe. The kind who painted people when they were asleep, not because it was romantic, but because that was when she thought souls looked the most real.
They had met when they were nineteen, two kids who shared a roof on a summer writing retreat in Murree. He was reserved, brooding, the kind who carried too many notebooks but never read anything aloud. She was fire—messy hair, ink-stained fingers, always barefoot, always too loud in the most beautiful ways. For three months, they lived on instant noodles, old typewriters, and each other’s breath. When the retreat ended, they didn’t. For the next six years, they wrote letters that could fill novels. They shared rejection slips and manuscripts, heartbreaks and first publications. Then, they fell in love slowly, like dusk leaking into evening.
He remembered the exact day she moved into his small apartment in Saddar. She brought only three things: a leather sketchbook, a faded green dupatta that smelled like sandalwood, and a worn-out copy of The Little Prince with pages marked in blue ink. They had nothing—no furniture, no future, no stability—but they had each other, and they were foolish enough to think that was enough. At night, she’d rest her head on his chest and say, “Ayaan, promise me, if we ever break, don’t forget to leave with kindness.” And he had whispered, “I’d never leave.”
But promises are often made in the language of hope, not in the dialect of reality. It wasn’t a dramatic end. No shouting. No betrayal. Just the slow corrosion of dreams rubbing against the grain of survival. Miraal got an offer to exhibit in Paris—a full-year fellowship, everything she’d ever worked for. He got his first real script optioned in Mumbai. Suddenly, the city wasn’t big enough for both of their ambitions. “Let’s try long distance,” she had offered. “Let’s not lie to ourselves,” he had answered. And just like that, they had let go, as if love could be paused. As if hearts would stay where they were left.
He didn’t cry. Ayaan didn’t do that. But something inside him cracked, and when he looked in the mirror that night, he barely recognized the man with hollowed eyes staring back. Two days later, he heard someone say her name aloud in the local book café. Miraal. His breath hitched. He turned around. It wasn’t her. But the ache, the dull, familiar ache returned with a vengeance. That night, he walked to the beach and sat under the rusted lightpost where they once confessed love. The sea hadn’t forgotten them. The waves still hummed the rhythm of their past.
The next morning, he opened his old email for the first time in years and searched her name. Dozens of messages—unread, unopened—stared back at him. The most recent was dated two years ago. The subject line read: “Are you okay?” He clicked it. There was nothing in the message but a link to a YouTube video titled “Still Here: A Spoken Word by Miraal Rahman.” He hit play. Her voice—aged, softer, wiser—filled the room.
“I waited for you in poems. In empty teacups. In cities I never belonged to. I wrote your name in the steam on foreign windows, in the silence of hotel beds, in the pause between applause. You were always here, Ayaan. Even when you weren’t.”
He watched the video four times before falling asleep on the sofa, eyes puffy but dry. That voice—it didn’t ask for anything. It simply reminded him of everything he had lost when he thought he was gaining the world. He spent the next day trying to find her. Instagram showed nothing. Facebook had one account last updated in 2018. Her email bounced. It was as if Miraal had vanished into the art she always swore she’d become.
But fate, for all its cruelty, sometimes offers fragments of grace. On his last night in town, Ayaan attended a coastal literature festival out of sheer boredom. He wandered through stalls and open mics, half-present, half-haunted—until he heard it. That voice. Not in a video. Not in a dream. Real. Now. Live. Miraal was on stage, performing a poem titled “Unfinished Things.” He stood frozen in the crowd, pulse in his throat. Her hair was shorter now, streaked with gray. Her eyes looked older. But her smile—God, that smile—still held galaxies.
After the applause, he didn’t wait. He pushed past people, found her behind the stage, and whispered, “Miraal?” She turned slowly, calmly, as if she’d known he was there all along. “Ayaan,” she said simply. No shock. No drama. Just his name, like a prayer she never stopped saying. They stood there, staring, measuring the distance that time had carved between them. “I saw your video,” he began. “You always were slow,” she smiled, tilting her head. “I missed you,” he said, voice low. “Then why did you go so far for so long?” she asked. “Because I was scared I’d never be enough,” he admitted. “You were always enough,” she said. “You just didn’t know how to stay.”
They talked for hours by the beach, not as the lovers they once were, but as two people finally brave enough to be honest. She had moved to Manora two years ago, escaping the noise of galleries and deadlines. “I wanted silence,” she said. “But silence with memory is just another kind of noise.” He told her how nothing he wrote felt real after her. How he won awards but lost his words. She told him about her mother’s illness, the sleepless nights, the letters she never sent. They didn’t ask the big questions—Do you still love me? Will we start again? They just sat, shoulder to shoulder, letting the tide fill the space between sentences.
As dawn broke, she whispered, “Some people come back to rewrite the ending.” He looked at her, tired and hopeful. “Do we get that chance?” She stood, brushing sand off her kurta. “Only if we write slowly this time.”
That morning, Ayaan canceled his flight. The house could wait. The world could wait. He moved into a small cottage not far from hers. They didn’t fall in love again immediately. There were wounds to unpack. Years to stitch. But they met every evening—tea, poems, paint, silence. And one night, when the rain came like it had all those years ago, she kissed him and said, “This time, promise me one thing.” “What?” he asked. “Promise me we’ll love like we’ve already lost each other once.” He held her close and said, “Then I’ll love you like I’m writing the final draft.” She smiled. “No. Like the first.”
And so they did.
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