When Raha opened her eyes, she found herself in a hospital room.
Her mother sat beside her, worry etched deep into every line of her face.
Her mother gently took her hand. "Are you hungry?"
Raha gave a small nod. Yes.
That single nod was enough to break her mother completely. Tears streamed down her face as she rushed out to get food, leaving Raha alone in the quiet white room.
Raha lay still, staring at the ceiling.
The memories of school crept back uninvited — the locked bathroom, the darkness, the silence that had swallowed her whole. And somewhere in that silence, a single thought echoed —
Did Meena have to endure all of this too?
The door opened softly.
Shawn walked in and settled into the chair beside her bed, his usual confident demeanor replaced with something gentler. "How are you feeling?"
Raha nodded slowly. Fine.
He reached out and took her hand carefully, as if she were made of something fragile. "Who locked you in that bathroom?"
Raha didn't respond. She simply turned her face away, her silence louder than any answer she could have given.
Her mother returned with food, and Shawn quietly released Raha's hand and stood.
With patient, trembling hands, her mother fed her — spoonful by spoonful — the way she used to when Raha was just a little girl who still had a voice.
Raha was starving. She ate quickly, almost desperately.
Shawn stood back and watched. Something twisted painfully in his chest.
How could they do this to someone like her?
His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of a phone — Raha's mother's phone. He glanced at the screen.
Subin.
He answered. "Hello?"
"Who is this?" came the sharp reply.
"It's Shawn."
A brief pause. "Where's Raha? Is she okay?"
"She's fine. She's eating right now," Shawn said quietly.
The line went silent for a moment. When Subin spoke again, his voice had dropped into something cold and controlled.
"Who's responsible for this?"
Shawn stepped out into the hallway, lowering his voice. "It had to be Bella, Rabina, Grace. How else would Bella have known Raha was at school? And what was Rabina doing with the bathroom key?"
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end.
Then the call went dead.
The doctor discharged Raha shortly after, and together — Shawn on one side, her mother on the other — they walked out of the hospital and into the pale afternoon light.
Raha went home.
On the other side of the city, Rohan arrived at the hospital, moving quickly through the corridors until he reached her room.
It was empty.
He stood in the doorway for a moment, something cold settling in his chest. He found a doctor nearby and learned she had already been discharged.
He left without a word.
Shawn had one mission — make her smile again.
He suggested going out, and her mother agreed immediately, desperate for anything that might bring light back into her daughter's eyes.
Raha shook her head again and again, protest written all over her face.
Shawn simply took her hand and pulled her out the door.
Meanwhile, Rohan stood outside Raha's house, a gift tucked under his arm.
He knocked.
Her mother appeared, and her expression softened the moment she saw him. "Rohan! Come in, come in — sit down!"
He stepped inside, his eyes moving quietly around the room.
No Raha.
"Where is she?" he asked, keeping his voice casual.
"Oh — Shawn took her out for a while. To cheer her up."
Something shifted in Rohan's expression. He looked down at the gift in his hands.
He stood up. "I see. I should go then."
"What? No, sit — let me get you something."
"I'm fine, really—"
But her mother was already back with a glass of water, and somehow Rohan found himself sitting again.
She sat across from him, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes distant.
"If you hadn't been there yesterday..." she began softly. "What would have happened to Raha?"
Rohan said nothing.
Her tears came quietly, without drama. "If you hadn't been there... I don't even want to think about it."
"Nothing would have happened," he said, his voice low. "She's strong."
"We can't stay here anymore," her mother whispered. "We'll have to leave. Find somewhere else."
Rohan blinked. "What? Why?"
"My daughter has endured so much since she was little. The reason we came here in the first place — and even here..." Her voice broke.
"No one will hurt her again," Rohan said quietly, with a certainty that surprised even himself. "I'll make sure of it."
Her mother looked at him for a long moment, then spoke again — softer this time.
"She lost her father when she was young. And she lost her voice in the same accident."
Rohan stilled. "Lost her voice?"
"Glass from the crash. It damaged her throat. She hasn't spoken since."
The words hit him somewhere deep, somewhere he hadn't expected.
And then — as if a door had been quietly pushed open inside his mind — fragments of something distant began to surface. A memory he couldn't quite hold. A rainy night. Shattered glass. A small girl with wide, terrified eyes—
He felt something crack open in his chest.
Across town, Raha sat beside Shawn in the dim glow of a movie theater.
For the first time in what felt like forever, she was laughing — silently, but completely. Her whole face lit up, her shoulders shaking with it.
Shawn wasn't watching the screen.
He was watching her.
And he thought — this. This is enough.
Rohan waited.
He sat with her mother, talking quietly as the evening stretched on. But Raha didn't come home.
Eventually, he said goodbye and stepped out into the cool night air.
He sat in his car for a long moment before driving away.
Shawn dropped Raha off a little while later.
She was still glowing. She gestured for him to come inside — insistent, bright-eyed.
He laughed softly, shook his head, and drove away.
Raha walked inside, still smiling.
"Rohan came by," her mother said gently.
The smile vanished.
Raha's eyes flashed. Her hands moved quickly — Why did you let him in?
"He's the one who saved you, Raha. If he hadn't come when he did — we would never have known where you were."
The anger in Raha's eyes dimmed.
Just slightly.
Her mother smiled softly. "He's not as bad as I thought."
Raha sat down quietly. And despite herself, a memory surfaced —
Rohan's room. Her tears falling freely. And his hand — careful, almost hesitant — reaching out to wipe them away.
Rohan sat alone in his room, the silence pressing in around him.
Every moment he'd been cold to her. Every cutting look. Every wall he'd put up.
It all came back now, and none of it felt the way it used to.
He crossed to his wardrobe and opened it slowly. At the back, behind everything, was an old photograph.
He and his father. And a woman.
His mother.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then, quietly — the way grief always comes when you stop fighting it — he began to cry.
"Mom..."