Se-Ri's POV
It rained on the day I left the hospital.
Not the heavy kind — not dramatic. Just a grey drizzle, soft and endless. Like the sky didn't know how to stop grieving either.
I thought Amisha would drive me to my Toronto villa.
She didn't.
We crossed city lines without speaking, the silence stitched between us like gauze. And when the plane landed in Vancouver, I didn't ask why.
I knew.
They were all worried. And I... I was a ghost still pretending to wear skin.
Our family home in Vancouver had always been loud. Layered. Chaotic. The kind of place where someone was always making tea, someone else was always arguing over card games, and marigolds bloomed like they had opinions.
But this time?
It felt muffled. Like the house was holding its breath around me.
I didn't unpack.
Didn't work — except for answering the rare urgent call, when Amisha or my uncle needed clarity on Serenité. They tried not to bother me. The brand ran. The world spun. Products launched. Deals closed.
Without me.
Most days, I sat in the garden.
On the old stone bench near the lemon tree Dadi had planted the year I turned ten. I just... sat. Watching shadows stretch and shrink. Staring at petals that refused to bloom. Listening to my own breath like it belonged to someone else.
I didn't eat much.
Didn't cry in front of people.
Only at night. Alone. Quietly. Always muffled.
Like grief should be polite.
Three months passed like that.
Rhea visited sometimes — with the baby bundled in a cloud of pastels and innocence. She'd place baby in my lap like it might fix me.
I'd smile for her. Just enough not to scare her.
But I wasn't there.
Not really.
One evening, Dadaji sat beside me in the garden. No lecture. No advice. Just his weathered hand resting over mine — warm, still strong, like time hadn't managed to take that part of him yet.
"You need to be brave again," he said softly.
I stared at the roses, their petals curled inward, edges browned.
"I'm tired, Dadu."
He said nothing. The silence stretched, familiar and comforting.
I finally asked the question that had been eating at me from the inside.
"Have I let you down?"
He turned to me, quiet.
"I put your name out there... and then I failed. Serenité's mine, but your name made people listen. I was reckless. Wasn't I? You must be hurting."
He looked at me like I'd just confessed to a crime I hadn't committed.
"You've never once let me down, Se-Ri."
His voice was firm now — but not angry. Rooted. Certain.
"I've always been proud of you. You're the strongest person I know. You fell, and still built something no one thought was possible. You didn't inherit success — you earned it."
He paused.
"You take after your mother. She was strong enough to stand through a storm without flinching. And so are you."
The silence that followed said everything else.