The ceiling fan above Aarav's hostel bed creaked every four seconds. A rhythm he hadn't noticed the first night, but now it pulsed like a metronome inside his head. Four seconds of silence, then the soft mechanical moan. Over and over. Just like the days here.
Everything in Kota felt borrowed—borrowed light through dirty windows, borrowed hours measured by test schedules, borrowed conversations about ranks, attempts, and results.
Aarav sat on the edge of his single bed, the morning air already smelling faintly of chalk dust and boiled tea from the mess downstairs. He hadn't spoken to anyone in the past hour. Not since he'd woken up from a dream where Niya was laughing, and he wasn't even in the room. Not even watching her this time.
She just wasn't there for him anymore. She was somewhere else, and he had become a background extra in his own memory.
He picked up his pen. It didn't work. Another sign.
He tried shaking it. Tapping it on his notebook. The page remained blank. His fingers, though, remembered how they once moved without thinking, without fear. He scribbled random lines, then stopped.
He looked at the page again. It said nothing. He flipped to a previous one. A line caught his eye:
"If one day I disappear, will she remember that I used to write her into poems she never read?"
The bell rang for the first class. Physics. The kind of class where everything moved too fast. Acceleration, force, motion—but in Aarav's world, everything stood still.
He didn't move.
His roommate, Pranav, was already dressed, brushing his hair with more effort than the syllabus ever got from him. "Coming?"
Aarav nodded but didn't mean it.
He stayed.
Once the room emptied, it became something else. Not quiet, but emptied of voices. Emptied of expectations. And in that stillness, Aarav exhaled.
He took out the envelope he had tucked inside his books. It had Niya's name written on it. Not an address. Just her name. He had written it the night before leaving. Meant to post it from the station. Instead, he kept it. Still sealed. Still full of whatever he couldn't say.
He placed it under his pillow. Not because he believed she'd find it one day. But because some things need a grave.
The coaching institute was painted in dull pastel colors, meant to appear cheerful, but it reeked of hopelessness layered over ambition. Aarav walked into the building after the first period ended, and no one really noticed. Another boy walking in late. Another face in a crowd of toppers-in-training.
The instructor kept speaking. Something about magnetic fields. Aarav scribbled a line on his notebook instead:
"A magnetic field is a space where something invisible pulls you. Like memory. Or her."
No one looked. No one cared.
There was a girl two benches away. Not Niya. Just another girl who reminded him of what it felt like to look forward to someone.
She turned. Their eyes met.
She blinked. He blinked. That was it.
He smiled.
She didn't.
Back at the hostel, he avoided calls from home. He knew what they'd say. How are your scores? Are you focusing? Are you doing this for us or not?
He once thought that silence was peaceful. But now he knew it was sharp. It dug into his ribs and stayed there.
He stared at the cracked ceiling above his bed and whispered, "I left because I was told to dream bigger. But what if all I wanted was to stay small, just enough to sit beside her again?"
That night, he walked to the rooftop.
The sky wasn't poetic. It was smoggy, orange, dull.
But he closed his eyes and tried to imagine her voice anyway.
He whispered a joke aloud, one she might've laughed at. He didn't even smile.
A gust of wind blew his notebook open.
He looked down. Another line stared back at him:
"Sometimes the pressure to become someone great drowns the version of you that once laughed at bad jokes."
He tore the page.
Then stared at it for a long time.
Then folded it.
And slipped it into his pocket.
Back in the room, he texted Yuvaan.
Aarav: "Do you think she remembers me?"
The reply came ten minutes later.
Yuvaan: "Why does it matter if she does or doesn't?"
Aarav: "Because I do."
No reply after that.
He didn't blame him.
The next day, Aarav attended all his classes. Took notes. Smiled politely.
Something had shifted. Not healed. Not improved. Just shifted.
He was learning how to disappear gently. How to exist just enough to be left alone. How to breathe even when everything smelled like dust and pressure.
He found a pen that worked.
He wrote:
"Even if no one sees me, even if no one reads me—I will keep writing, because the words are my way of remembering that I was here."
And for now, that would be enough.