The next morning was painfully quiet.The kind of quiet that sits in your chest and grows heavier the longer you breathe.
She was in the kitchen, humming something under her breath, making tea. The same routine, the same rhythm — but everything felt wrong. Too normal. Too staged.
I sat at the dining table, pretending to scroll through emails on my phone, though my eyes weren't reading anything. I was watching her movements instead. The way she stirred sugar into the cup. The way she paused for half a second before turning — maybe wondering if I'd seen the late-night message that had flashed across her screen.
I hadn't confronted her. Not because I was scared — no, it was something else. It was because I wanted to watch her lie.Because every time she smiled at me and said, "Good morning, love," I wanted to see if her voice cracked, even slightly.
It didn't.She handed me the cup. "You're leaving early today?"
"Yeah," I said quietly. "Got some things to finish."
She nodded and turned away, and I stared at the back of her neck, where her hair lifted slightly with the breeze from the window. That small detail — the ordinary grace of it — made something in me ache. Because for a second, my mind betrayed me. It remembered how I used to kiss that spot when life was still soft.
But now, that same memory burned.
When she walked away, I looked down at my tea. The steam swirled like smoke. I whispered under my breath,"You really think I don't know, huh?"
I spent the rest of the morning pretending to get ready for work, but my thoughts kept circling back to last night's message — Arjun.The name pulsed in my head like a bruise.
Outside, the city buzzed with life — car horns, vendors shouting, a child crying in the distance. It all sounded far away, unreal. I felt like I was watching the world from behind a glass wall.
When I stepped out of the apartment, she called out, "Hey, don't forget your lunch!"I turned, gave her a half-smile."Thanks," I said.It was the kind of thanks a stranger says to another stranger out of politeness.
The elevator ride down felt endless. My reflection in the metal doors looked calm, but I could see the storm behind the eyes — the quiet, patient kind that destroys everything when it finally breaks.
In the cab, I took out my notebook and added one more line:"Midnight message. Arjun again. She doesn't know I saw."
And as the car moved through the traffic, I thought,Let her believe she's safe for a little longer. The fall always hurts more when you don't see it coming.