The storm arrived without warning.
One afternoon, outside the college gates, Jesmine's elder brother stood waiting. His eyes were cold, unyielding. He knew everything.
That night, chaos broke loose inside her home.
"We have a reputation to protect!"
"You will have no contact with that boy ever again!"
Jesmine did not cry. She did not plead.
She only said, quietly but firmly,
"I haven't done anything wrong. I didn't betray anyone."
Her phone was taken away.
She was no longer allowed to attend college.
There were no locks on her door, no chains on her hands—
yet she was confined.
Iron grills on the windows. Watchful eyes at every step. Silence where there once had been laughter.
An invisible prison built not of walls, but of control.
Yash kept calling.
Switched off.
Again and again.
Switched off.
He went to the riverside and waited on the old stone steps where they had once shared dreams. He wrote letters—careful, trembling words poured onto paper.
No reply ever came.
Days later, through a mutual friend, he heard the news.
Jesmine's marriage had been arranged.
For a moment, every sound inside his head stopped. The world seemed to fall into a strange, suffocating stillness.
That night, he stood by the river alone. The same river that had once witnessed their promises.
In a voice barely louder than the wind, he whispered,
"You gave me your word…"
The breeze moved softly across the water.
The river rippled in the dark.
But no answer came.