Three years earlier.
Aanya had been smiling at her reflection for the fifth time.
She adjusted the small earrings she'd put on.
Then looked at herself again.
"Too much?"
She tilted her head.
"No."
A little too pretty, perhaps.
But that was fine.
She smiled.
Then immediately tried to suppress it.
She failed.
Her phone lay on the bed behind her.
She picked it up.
The message was still there.
Can you meet me, over here? I am sending the location
That was it.
Nothing else.
No explanation.
No reason.
Just those four words.
And somehow, that had been enough to ruin her entire ability to behave normally.
She had spent the better part of the morning wondering why he wanted to see her.
She had come up with approximately twelve possibilities.
Most of them ridiculous.
A few hopeful.
One or two she refused to acknowledge even privately.
She looked at herself again.
"Don't get excited."
She pointed at her reflection.
"He's probably just going to say something stupid."
A pause.
Then she smiled.
"But if he does..."
Her smile widened.
"I'll make him suffer."
She picked up her bag.
She was still smiling when she left.
The drive to the venue felt strangely short.
Aanya kept glancing at the time.
She had arrived early.
Of course she had.
She didn't want to seem too eager.
Even though she absolutely was.
She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel.
"What am I even going to say?"
She imagined seeing him.
She imagined him trying to explain himself.
She imagined herself folding her arms.
Looking unimpressed.
Maybe even walking away once, just to make him nervous.
She laughed softly.
"No."
She shook her head.
"That's too much."
A pause.
Then:
"Maybe."
Her smile returned.
She had already decided she would be angry with him.
Not truly angry.
Just enough.
Enough to make him understand that he couldn't disappear from her life and then suddenly return expecting everything to be normal.
Because if he had finally realized something—
if he had finally understood what she'd been trying to tell him all those years ago—
she wasn't going to make it easy.
She deserved at least a little satisfaction.
Didn't she?
She looked at the road.
Then at the phone mounted near the dashboard.
No new messages.
She smiled again.
"He asked me to come."
The words escaped her before she could stop them.
And somehow saying them aloud made her heart beat faster.
She turned toward the venue.
She had no idea that she was driving toward the worst day of her life.
Sagnik was already there.
Aanya spotted him almost immediately.
Her heart jumped.
She parked.
Took a breath.
Checked herself in the mirror one final time.
Then stepped out.
She saw him standing near the entrance.
For one ridiculous second, she forgot every line she had practiced.
She almost smiled.
Then remembered.
No.
She was supposed to be angry.
She walked toward him.
"Hi."
He looked at her.
"Hi."
There was something different about his expression.
Aanya noticed it.
But before she could ask—
he reached into his hand.
And held something toward her.
A card.
She looked at it.
Confused.
"What is this?"
"Take it."
She did.
The card was heavier than it should have been.
She opened it.
Her eyes moved over the words.
Once.
Then again.
She stopped breathing.
The smile disappeared from her face.
There was a name.
His name.
And another.
A date.
A venue.
A wedding.
She stared.
The card trembled slightly in her hands.
She looked up at him.
"Sagnik..."
He said her name.
"Aanya, listen—"
She looked back down.
The words blurred.
She read them again.
She couldn't make them change.
She looked at him.
"You're getting married?"
He nodded.
Aanya's face went completely blank.
"To her?"
He nodded again.
Something inside her collapsed so quietly that even she didn't understand it at first.
She looked around.
People were moving.
Cars were passing.
Someone laughed somewhere nearby.
The world hadn't changed.
Only hers had.
"You asked me to come here..."
Her voice was barely audible.
"I wanted you to know."
"Know what?"
He didn't answer immediately.
She waited.
"That I..."
He stopped.
Aanya's eyes filled.
"You wanted to give me an invitation."
He looked at her.
"Yes."
She laughed once.
It wasn't amusement.
It was disbelief.
"That's why?"
"Aanya—"
"No."
She shook her head.
"Don't."
He stepped forward.
She stepped back.
She looked at the invitation one last time.
Then at him.
Her eyes were already spilling over.
"Congratulations."
He looked stricken.
"Aanya."
"Really."
She nodded.
"Congratulations."
She turned.
And walked away.
He called after her.
She didn't stop.
She got into her car.
Closed the door.
And only then did she break.
She cried before she even started the engine.
She pressed both hands against her face.
Her shoulders shook.
The invitation lay on the passenger seat.
She couldn't look at it.
She started the car.
Pulled away.
Her vision blurred almost immediately.
She wiped her face.
Again.
Again.
She shouldn't have driven.
She knew that.
But she didn't know where else to go.
She just wanted to get away.
Away from him.
Away from that card.
Away from the humiliating fact that she had spent the entire morning getting ready because some part of her had believed—
No.
She couldn't even think it.
Her phone began ringing.
She looked at the screen.
Sagnik.
She rejected the call.
The phone rang again.
She rejected it again.
Again.
Again.
She stopped counting after a while.
The phone kept vibrating.
She ignored it.
She was angry.
No.
She was furious.
She felt cheated.
Trampled over.
Embarrassed.
She had spent years trying to put him somewhere in the past.
And he'd walked back into her life for five minutes—
only to hand her a wedding invitation.
Her phone rang again.
She ignored it.
Again.
Again.
By the tenth call, she was shaking with frustration.
The eleventh call came.
She looked at his name.
Her eyes burned.
"Enough."
She answered.
She didn't let him speak.
"I don't understand what you were trying to get through with this."
Her voice shook.
"When I was fine—when I was doing fine—why did you have to budge back into my life as if you belong there?"
Sagnik said something.
She couldn't even hear it properly.
"Because even if you do, you know what?"
Her voice broke.
"Why did it have to be so painful?"
He tried again.
"Aanya, listen—"
"No!"
She gripped the steering wheel tighter.
"Why did it have to be so painful that I can't seem to forget anything now?"
There was silence from his end.
Then his voice.
Worried.
"How are you driving?"
She laughed bitterly.
"That's what you're asking me?"
"Aanya, please pull over."
"No."
"Please."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"You know what?"
Her voice became quieter.
"You expected me to move on."
He didn't answer immediately.
Then:
"It's been so many years."
She laughed through her tears.
"I know."
"I thought you'd moved on, Aanya."
Something in her expression changed.
"I never..."
His voice faltered.
"I never—ever—not in my biggest nightmares—if I had known, I wouldn't have contacted you."
Aanya's eyes burned.
"You expected me to move on?"
"Aanya—"
"How?"
She was crying again.
"How?"
Her voice rose.
"What have you done so that I could have moved on with time?"
He went silent.
"Do you not remember how you ended things between us?"
Sagnik closed his eyes on the other end.
He remembered.
The blocking.
The silence.
The way he had cut her off without giving her the closure she deserved.
And hearing her now—
he finally understood the damage it had caused.
He had thought distance would make things easier.
He had thought disappearing would allow her to move forward.
He had never considered that she might have needed an ending.
A real one.
A conversation.
A rejection spoken to her face.
Something she could understand.
He realized it too late.
Aanya continued.
"You were selfish back then."
Her voice trembled.
"And you're selfish now too."
"Aanya, please—"
"If you did care about me..."
She was sobbing now.
"Even if it was a little bit..."
Her voice cracked.
"You would've kept me out of it."
She hit the steering wheel with the palm of her hand.
"Oh, God, dammit!"
Sagnik heard her crying.
He heard her breathing.
He heard the sound of the road beneath her.
"Aanya, stop the car."
She didn't.
"You should've just left me alone!"
"Aanya."
"You should've let me hate you!"
"Aanya, please pull over."
"You had no right to come back!"
She was screaming now.
Crying so hard that the words were barely forming.
"You had no right to make me feel all of this again when you're getting married!"
Sagnik's voice became desperate.
"Please listen to me."
"I listened to you!"
Her voice broke.
"I listened to you for years!"
She wiped her eyes.
Her vision was almost completely blurred.
She couldn't see the road properly.
"Aanya, slow down."
She looked ahead.
Nothing was clear.
She blinked.
Once.
Twice.
The world remained smeared behind tears.
"I hate you."
The words came out broken.
"I hate that I still..."
She stopped.
Sagnik heard her breathing.
"Aanya?"
She didn't answer.
He called her name again.
"Aanya?"
Aanya tried to wipe her eyes.
Her fingers trembled.
The phone slipped slightly in her hand.
She reached for it.
The car moved.
A horn sounded.
Aanya looked up.
There was a fraction of a second.
A flash of light.
A violent metallic sound—
CRASH.
Sagnik heard it.
Then silence.
"Aanya?"
Nothing.
"Aanya!"
Nothing.
"Aanya, answer me!"
The line remained open.
But she didn't speak again.
And that was the last sound he ever heard from her that day.
Three years later, she opened her eyes.
And the first face she saw—
Was his.
For one impossible moment, she thought
Nothing had changed.
Then she remembered the beach.
The unfinished question.
And he remembered the sound of the crash.