Some people leave your life. Some leave a space that nobody else can fill.
The alarm had been ringing for the past twenty-three minutes.
Nobody had answered it.
Beneath a mountain of blankets, a hand emerged, searched blindly across the bedside table, knocked over a half-empty glass of water, and finally found the offending phone.
Silence.
Peace.
Five seconds later, the phone rang again.
A pillow flew across the room.
"I'm going to throw you out of the window," Sia mumbled into her blanket.
Unfortunately, the phone was not the only thing determined to ruin her morning.
"SIA!"
Her mother's voice rose from downstairs.
Sia went still.
"Sia, wake up! You'll miss your train!"
One eye opened.
Train?
Her brain took a moment to catch up with the word. Then she sat bolt upright, sending the blanket sliding to the floor.
"Oh, no."
She grabbed her phone.
"Oh, NO!"
The clock stared back at her with absolutely no sympathy.
She had approximately forty minutes to get ready, drag her suitcase downstairs, survive her mother's lecture, and reach the railway station.
Forty minutes.
For someone who could spend twenty minutes deciding which pair of earrings matched an outfit, this was not a morning. This was a national emergency.
"SIA! I AM COMING UP!"
"COMING!" she shouted, leaping out of bed.
Her foot landed on a book. Her elbow struck a pillow. Somewhere beneath a pile of clothes, an object made a small, suspicious cracking sound.
She looked down.
"Please be my hairbrush."
It was not her hairbrush.
She decided not to investigate.
Her room looked as though a clothing store had been hit by a storm and the storm had developed personal preferences. Open drawers, scattered notebooks, tangled earphones, a half-packed bag, and three different jackets occupied the floor.
In the middle of it all, a small photograph stood crookedly against the frame of her mirror.
Sia almost rushed past it.
Almost.
Then she stopped.
The photograph showed four girls squeezed together, their arms tangled around one another, their faces bright with laughter. One was trying to hide behind the others. Another was making a ridiculous face at the camera. The third looked as though she had already predicted the disaster the picture would become.
And the fourth was laughing so hard that her eyes had nearly disappeared.
Sia smiled.
It was an old photograph. The edges had softened, and one corner had begun to curl. She had taken it years ago, back when seeing the other three meant knocking on a door instead of checking a phone screen.
Back when a bad day could be fixed by sitting together on the floor.
Back when goodbye had never seemed permanent.
She picked up the frame, brushing a little dust from its surface with her thumb.
"Look at us," she whispered. "We were so stupid."
Her smile grew.
"Still are, probably."
For a moment, the room was quiet.
She had spoken to them yesterday. And the day before that. There had been messages, calls, photographs, complaints about life, and arguments over things so insignificant that none of them could remember how they had started.
They had never truly stopped being friends.
But a phone could not steal someone's blanket. It could not offer a shoulder when words failed. It could not turn an ordinary afternoon into a memory that would be discussed for the next ten years.
And it certainly could not give her all three of them back in the same room.
Today, that would change.
Today, the four of them would finally be together again.
Sia held the photograph against her chest for a second before placing it carefully inside the front pocket of her bag.
"Right," she announced to nobody in particular. "Emotional reunion first. Personal breakdown later."
"SIA!"
"COMING, MAAA!"
She hurried towards the bathroom, already planning how to convince her mother that the disaster upstairs was completely under control.
It was not.
And neither was Sia.
Across the city, in a room where everything had its place, Radhika sat beside her window with a diary open on her lap.
The morning sunlight rested across the pages, illuminating the neat handwriting that filled them.
She had written three lines and crossed out two.
Finally, she sighed and began again.
Dear Diary,
What if the people who know you best are the same people you are most afraid of losing?
Radhika stared at the sentence.
Then she drew a thin line beneath it.
"No," she murmured. "That sounds dramatic."
She opened a fresh line.
Fine. Maybe I am dramatic.
A small smile touched her lips.
Her room was quiet, filled with the pale gold of the early morning sun. Her books were arranged neatly, her clothes were folded, and her suitcase stood beside the door with its zip fastened.
Almost everything was ready.
Almost.
Her diary lay open on the bed, its pages filled with thoughts she rarely spoke aloud. Some entries were long enough to fill several pages. Others consisted of a single sentence, written at an hour when sleep had refused to come.
She had been writing in it for years.
It knew about the things she laughed at, the things that hurt her, and the questions she had never been brave enough to ask anyone.
It also knew about the nights she could barely remember.
Radhika's pen stopped moving.
For a second, the sunlight seemed too bright.
A memory stirred somewhere in the back of her mind. Not a complete memory. Never a complete one.
A road.
The sound of something striking metal.
Her mother's voice, distant and frightened.
And eyes.
Beautiful eyes, watching her through the darkness.
Radhika's fingers tightened around the diary.
She blinked, and the room returned to normal.
The clock ticked softly on the wall.
She drew a slow breath and reached for the small medicine pouch on her bedside table. Her aunt had reminded her twice to keep it in her handbag, and Radhika had promised she would.
She checked it once more before placing it inside her bag.
She hated how easily an old memory could make an ordinary morning feel unfamiliar. She hated the questions that followed it, too.
Most of all, she hated not knowing what had really happened that night.
She had been seven when the accident took her parents. Her aunt had told her that a deer had appeared on the road, that the driver had swerved, and that the car had struck a tree.
A terrible accident.
An unfortunate night.
A story everyone seemed willing to accept.
Everyone except the little girl who had survived it.
Radhika could not remember enough to prove that anything was wrong. She had only fragments, impressions that slipped away whenever she tried to hold them.
And those eyes.
She shut the diary a little too quickly.
"Not today," she whispered.
Today was supposed to be happy.
Today, she was going to see her girls.
The thought softened her expression almost immediately.
Sia, who could turn a five-minute conversation into an hour-long argument and somehow make everyone laugh before it ended.
Durga, who would fight a wall if she believed it had looked at her incorrectly.
Saraswati, who would watch the entire argument unfold, point out exactly why both sides were wrong, and then quietly help them clean up afterward.
And Radhika?
She was usually the one writing down what happened.
At least, that was what she told herself.
The truth was that she remembered little things. The way Sia's voice changed when she was trying not to cry. The way Durga pretended not to care whenever someone praised her. The way Saraswati always noticed when somebody was left out.
She remembered because, somewhere along the way, she had learned that ordinary moments could become the things you missed most.
She had lived with Sia for a few months after the accident. Those months remained among the warmest memories she possessed. Sia had filled the silence in the house with stories, ridiculous games, and questions that never seemed to end.
Then life had pulled them apart.
Different cities. Different homes. Different routines.
Their friendship had survived through calls and messages, but there had always been a little distance between the words on a screen and the people she wanted beside her.
Radhika rose from the bed and walked to the mirror.
Her long hair fell loosely over her shoulders. She gathered it in her hands, considered tying it back, and let it fall again.
For once, she didn't want to spend ten minutes worrying about how she looked.
She wanted to get there.
She wanted to see their faces when they realised they were finally standing in front of one another again.
She wanted to hear Sia laugh without a phone speaker distorting the sound.
A knock interrupted her thoughts.
"Radhika?" her aunt called from outside. "Are you ready, sweetheart?"
"Yes, Maasi. Just coming!"
Sia slipped the photograph into her bag, unaware that across the city, another girl was writing about the very thing that had brought a smile to her face.
Dear Diary,
Have you ever missed someone so much that even the happiest memories begin to hurt?
Radhika paused, her pen hovering over the page.
Outside her window, the morning sun painted the world in shades of gold. Everything looked peaceful. Ordinary.
And yet, something about that morning felt different.
Perhaps it was the thought of seeing her girls again after so long. Perhaps it was the excitement she had tried, unsuccessfully, to hide from her aunt.
Or perhaps it was the strange uneasiness that had followed her since she woke up.
She couldn't explain it.
She only knew that some memories never truly faded, no matter how desperately you tried to forget them.
Radhika lowered her eyes to the diary and continued writing.
Today, I'm going to see them again. I should be happy. I am happy.
She hesitated before adding one final sentence.
So why does a part of me feel as though something is about to change?
A knock sounded at her bedroom door. Again.
"Radhika, sweetheart? We need to leave."
She quickly closed the diary.
"Coming, Maasi!"
She tucked it into her bag, unaware that the day she had been looking forward to for so long would bring her closer to questions she had spent years avoiding.
And some questions, once awakened, never let you sleep peacefully again.