The room was small, almost tender in its quietness - a cocoon of soft pillows, faded teddy bears, and the faint scent of sandalwood. The evening sun poured through the half-open window, spilling molten gold across the study table. In that honeyed light sat a girl, legs crossed on her chair, a worn book resting in her hands. Her hair, loose and untamed, caught the sun like strands of fire.
Yet her eyes betrayed her.... those deep, wistful eyes that had forgotten how to sparkle. They spoke of stories untold, of promises that had withered long before they were broken.
Her gaze fell on the calendar hanging beside the window. For a moment, time stood still. The day, the date, they meant nothing and yet, everything. Her lips parted as if she might whisper to the silence, but no sound came.
Minutes passed before she stirred again. The book closed with a soft thud, the kind that feels like an ending. She rose and walked out, barefoot, the air turning cooler as she made her way to the river that had seen her through every season of her life.
The sunset mirrored her - a slow burning, a beautiful collapse. The sky bled orange and crimson, and for the first time in a long while, she didn't flinch at the sight of endings.
"It's August next month," she murmured into the fading light, as if the river would remember for her.
"Time flies. Five years since my marriage… three since it ended. I'm done living in the ruins. The marriage was a lesson, not a curse. I won't make the same mistake twice. No more chasing ghosts. No more bleeding for people who never learned to hold love gently."
She closed her eyes, feeling the whisper of the wind against her ski, almost like a promise. "I want to love myself this time," she breathed. "So give me courage."
That night, her phone rang, her cousin's voice spilling through the receiver, bright and insistent. "Join me at the music centre. It'll be fun!" she said, unaware that she was echoing fate itself.
And so she took it - the sign, the invitation, the challenge.
She didn't know then that this decision would shatter her calm, rewrite her truths, and bend her world into something both terrifying and beautiful.
But in that moment, with the river whispering and the dying sun watching, she simply smiled - a quiet, defiant smile.
Because for the first time in years, she wasn't waiting to be loved.
She was ready to leave every desire behind.