Years passed, and Indu kept her promise — she never changed.She lived quietly, moving through life like a shadow that people forgot after a while. At first, it felt like freedom. No attachments, no expectations, no one to disappoint. But freedom slowly turned into emptiness — the kind that doesn't hurt, just lingers.
People came and went. Some tried to know her, but she never let them stay long enough to matter. Whenever someone got close, she found a reason to push them away — a word too sharp, a silence too cold. She called it protection, but it was fear. Fear of being seen, of being understood.
She grew older, surrounded by the quiet she once thought she wanted. Her phone stopped ringing, her messages stayed empty, and even anger — once her favorite weapon — began to fade. There was no one left to fight with, no one to control. The world had learned to live without her, just like she had wanted.
Sometimes, late at night, she thought about Meera. About the last conversation, the look on her face, the words Indu had thrown like knives. She told herself she didn't care — and maybe she didn't. But there was always that pause in her thoughts, that half-second of silence that felt too heavy to ignore.
Indu never became better, but she also never got worse. She simply stayed the same — trapped in her own stubbornness, watching life move forward without her. She never apologized, never reached out, never changed.
And when her time finally came, there was no one beside her, no one to remember her stories or her laughter. Just a quiet room, a flickering light, and the weight of a life spent running from herself.
In the end, Indu got exactly what she wanted — complete independence, untouched by anyone.But the silence she left behind was her only legacy.