Not every homecoming actually brings a person home.
Andini arrived that afternoon while the sun was still a bruised amber, clinging to the horizon. The iron gates hummed open with an automated, soulless precision, revealing a lawn so manicured that even a fallen leaf felt like a transgression.
Everything was curated; everything was watched.
Inside, the living room was an exercise in symmetry. Gray sofas stood in perfect alignment; glass tabletops remained defiant against fingerprints. The walls were adorned with expensive canvases she had never quite learned to translate.
The house was vast, opulent, and far too sterile to ever be called warm.
Her mother sat at the far end of the room, the pale blue glow of a laptop illuminating her face. Her fingers moved with a staccato, clerical speed. She didn't look up as Andini passed.
"Don't forget to eat," she said, her voice a flat reminder—the way one might remind a gardener to water a plant that would otherwise ruin the aesthetic.
"I won't, Ma," Andini replied to the back of her head.
Upstairs, in the sanctuary of her room, Andini sat on the edge of the bed. She opened her phone, staring at the cursor, then retreated into the black screen.
There were sentences she wanted to carve out—words about the hollowness of wealth, about a house that felt like a museum of things she didn't own—but she stifled them.
Some truths were too jagged to be committed to glass and light.
Downstairs, the low hum of the television drifted up. It wasn't there for entertainment; it was merely white noise, a desperate barricade against a silence that threatened to become lethal.
Andini lay back, tracing the shadows on the ceiling. Unbidden, the memory of Fani's house surfaced—the chaotic bookshelves, the scent of seasoned paper, and a quietude that didn't demand an apology. The comparison stung.
In this house, sound was an uninvited guest, and every piece of furniture seemed to be held in higher regard than the voices of the people living within it.
Here, to speak was a disruption; to feel was a technical glitch.
On the other side of the city, Fani sat in a small, cluttered family room. Her two sisters were laughing at a variety show, the volume sharp and frenetic. It was a boisterous atmosphere, but she was merely a spectator at the edge of the frame.
One of her sisters glanced over.
"Fan, don't stay out too long. You'll get sore."
"I know," she replied softly.
She understood the subtext. It wasn't a prohibition, nor was it a depth of concern—it was a repetitive script, a social tic performed to ensure everyone stayed in their assigned roles.
Fani navigated her chair back into her room. At a small desk by the window, she opened a journal. She wrote a few lines, paused to watch the streetlights flicker on, then continued.
The exhaustion doesn't live in my body, she wrote. It lives in the constant performance of explaining that I am fine
She closed the book. Outside, the echoes of her brothers' laughter continued, but they sounded as though they were coming from another continent.
***
Sunday afternoon found the campus library welcoming them back into its familiar, dusty embrace.
Fani had claimed their spot near the great window, her thoughts untethered from the open book before her. Andini arrived moments later, the fatigue etched into the slight slump of her shoulders, her movements slowed by an invisible weight.
"Are you tired?" Fani asked, her voice an anchor.
"A little," Andini said, letting her bag slide to the floor with a dull thud.
Fani nodded, accepting the singular word as a complete narrative. They retreated into their books, yet the act was no longer solitary.
The afternoon light bled across the table, shifting the shadows in a slow, tectonic crawl.
"It's strange, isn't it?" Andini said suddenly, her voice cutting through the stillness. "How we ache to go home, but once we arrive... we have no idea where we're supposed to go."
Fani closed her book, giving the thought her full attention. "I feel that every day. My house exists, but sometimes I feel like I'm just a ghost passing through the hallways."
There was no bitterness in their voices, only the raw, clinical honesty of two people who had finally found a witness.
The library began to dim as the day lost its resolve. The remaining students drifted toward the exits.
"If you're tired... you can just sit here," Fani said gently. "The silence doesn't need you to say anything."
Andini looked up, a small, genuine smile breaking through the exhaustion. "Thank you," she whispered.
It wasn't a polite reflex. It was a profound acknowledgment of the space Fani had cleared for her—a space where she didn't have to be 'fine' or 'tidy.'
They packed their things as the call to prayer drifted from a distant mosque. There were no grand plans, no promises of future adventures.
But as they parted in front of the building, Andini felt a shift in her internal compass. She realized that there was finally a destination she sought not out of obligation, but because, for the first time, she actually wanted to be there.