Vishakha folded her dreams between pages and stood.

The clink of cutlery echoed faintly from the dining hall. She smoothed the pleats of her skirt, checked her reflection in the mirror - braided, kajal sharp, expression unreadable. Perfect, as always. Perfection was her armor, her silence a strategy.

 Daughter of duty, wrapped in jasmine and silence,

            She writes her rebellion in margins, not in words aloud !

            A flame kept still by glass, yet aching to burn through..

She stepped out into the corridor, where the air buzzed with invisible expectations. The house smelled of filter coffee and rose agarbatti, an odd comfort she never questioned. The drawing room lights were warm, too warm, like a spotlight waiting to expose her.

Ayaan was already there. Tall, in a pastel kurta too crisp for comfort, with the confident ease of someone who had never been told no. He rose as she entered, offering a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Polite. Practiced. He probably rehearsed it in the mirror too.

“Vishakha,” her mother beamed, gesturing for her to sit beside him. “You remember Ayaan beta?”

She did. Vaguely. A family wedding years ago. He’d spilled cola on her lehenga and cried harder than she did. But now he was charming, all grown up. She offered a small smile and a nod, her voice caught somewhere between her throat and her spine.

Ayaan leaned slightly toward her. “You still write?”

The question sliced through her calm like a paper cut.

“I… write school essays,” she said smoothly. “Nothing interesting.”

Lie.

She’d written three chapters of *"*The Winter Promise" last night alone. Lia, her pen name, had fallen in love with a war-scarred pianist on the page. But here, she wasn’t Lia. Just Vishakha a future medical student, future wife, future... whatever they told her to be.

She glanced toward the hallway, half-expecting the usual sound of sneakers squeaking across polished tile. But today, Adhvik hadn’t shown up.

He always did. Through windows, through unlocked back gates, through sarcasm and late-night poetry he never admitted to writing. Her best friend since second grade. Her constant.

But not today.

“Beta, what are your future plans?” Ayaan’s father asked.

She started to answer, but her father spoke for her. “She’ll apply to AIIMS. Top rank. No distractions.”

Vishakha nodded. Distractions. That was what they called Adhvik.

Later, when the evening dissolved into chai and polite laughter, she slipped back into her room, closed the door softly, and leaned against it.

The notebook waited for her on the desk, the edge of a heart drawn in the margin still visible.

She picked up her pen.

And this time, Lia wrote not of war-torn pianists or noble heartbreak. This time, she wrote of a girl who wanted to scream in a house where girls were taught to whisper. Of a boy who knew her heart better than she did. Of a love that bloomed in margins—and dared to spill into the center of the page.

Adhvik had known Vishakha since they were children who traded toffees and secrets in sun-dappled classrooms. She gave him her red candies because she liked the orange ones. He gave her his rough, unevenly torn comic books, not knowing she read them under her blanket with a torch. In second grade, when she got her first ever 'B' in dictation, she cried behind the banyan tree. He sat beside her silently, then misspelled every word on his own test the next day in solidarity.

Their worlds had grown apart over the years—his, loud and carefree; hers, structured like her timetable chart. But their bond had never loosened. Where she was pressure, he was pause. Where she was rules, he was rebellion. But he was always hers, in a way that no one else had ever been.

That evening, after the Ayaan visit, Vishakha didn’t need to explain.

She messaged him a single line: Same place. Need air.

He replied instantly: Already there. Got bhajjis. Bring that serious face of yours.

She arrived near the temple tank at twilight, the sky bruised in shades of peach and indigo. The tank’s ancient steps led down to still water that shimmered with the reflections of streetlights and fading rituals. There, on the third step, sat Adhvik—legs stretched out, hair ruffled like always, one paper bag of food in hand, and mischief in his eyes.

“No one in this city gets better molaga bhajjis than the lady outside the old bus stand,” he said, holding it out like a peace offering.

“You say that every week,” she replied, accepting it anyway.

He gave her a look. “Because it’s true every week.”

She smiled, finally. Just a little. Just enough.

They ate in silence for a while, the grease on their fingers a quiet rebellion against the stainless steel spoons and porcelain plates of her home.

He glanced sideways. “So... meet Mr. Matrimony?”

She rolled her eyes. “He asked if I still write.”

“Oof.” Adhvik grinned. “How dare he. Next, he’ll ask if you breathe or bleed.”

“I told him I write essays.”

“Liar.”

“Survivalist,” she corrected.

There was a flicker of something unreadable in his gaze, something that curled at the corners but never made it to his lips.

“You okay with this?” he asked after a while, voice gentler.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she stared at the water. “My father already sent the priest my birth chart. They say the horoscopes match perfectly.”

“That’s sweet,” he said. “You and I match on Spotify playlists. But I don’t see our families planning a wedding.”

She laughed. And it felt like coming up for air.

Later, as the streetlights flickered on and the temple bells rang for the evening aarti, Vishakha stood to leave. He walked her halfway to her lane, as he always did, then turned back just before the corner - like an unspoken ritual neither of them questioned.

But the next morning shattered the routine.

She stepped into the kitchen only to find her mother silent, stiff-backed, holding a steel tumbler like it was a weapon.

“I saw you,” she said coldly.

“With him.”

Vishakha blinked. “We were just..”

“You were seen, Vishakha. By neighbours. By aunty from across the street. Holding food, laughing. Is this how we raised you?”

“We were just talking,” she said, heart racing. “Nothing happened.”

Her mother’s lips thinned. “It doesn’t matter. People don’t see talking. They see a girl from a respected family loitering with a boy who doesn’t even tuck in his shirt.”

Vishakha stared at the floor. There was no right answer. Only landmines.

Her father didn’t say anything then. But his silence was worse. It meant the decision had already been made. There would be limits now. Schedules. Shadows. A wall was rising between her and the tank, her and her stories, her and Adhvik.

By evening, her phone was confiscated for “overuse.” Her tutoring hours were shifted. Her temple visits were now escorted.

And Adhvik?

He messaged her through their shared class group:

You okay?

She stared at the screen, typing and deleting.

Finally, she sent: They saw us.

A pause. Then: Do you want me to stop meeting you?

She hesitated. Her fingers trembled.

No.

He replied: Then I won’t.

But she knew walls don’t need consent to rise.

The assignment was simple: Write a monologue - an honest, unfiltered expression of emotion. Let the words bleed if they must.

But Vishakha couldn’t. Or maybe, she could only too well.

She sat by the window of her room that Sunday afternoon, the filtered sun slanting across her desk, golden and warm. Her chemistry textbook lay open beside her, unread, ignored. Her notebook was filled with scratched-out starts, half-baked ideas, and ink-smudged pauses.

How was she supposed to write about heartbreak when she hadn’t let her heart break yet?

Instead, her pen moved with quiet urgency. Not guided by logic or structure but by the pulse of something buried deep. Her hand trembled slightly, but her words were fluid, certain.

           "You see through me like glass, even when I pretend to be steel.

            I speak in silences, hoping you’ll hear the cracks.

            I dream with my eyes open because you’re always there,

            Somewhere between the moment I inhale and forget to exhale.

            If I ever run, I hope you follow !

            Not because I need to be found,

            But because only you know where I’ve hidden myself."

She didn’t sign it. She didn’t have to. She didn’t even reread it she just let it settle inside the folds of her notebook like a secret tucked under a pillow.

It wasn’t written for her teacher. It wasn’t written for anyone. Just for herself, and maybe, silently, for him.

Monday came too soon, and Vishakha, running late, swept her books into her bag without care. The monologue notebook got shoved in between, the loose pages folded inside unnoticed. She barely remembered her own name during the first few hours of class, her mind fogged with the memory of Adhvik’s voice, of his text from the night before:

If they build walls, we’ll climb them.

And the way that line made her both smile and ache.

After Literature class, the teacher called for the monologue assignments. Vishakha, distracted, passed her notebook down the row. Her thoughts were on the math test next period. On the unspoken silence with her mother at breakfast. On the text she wanted to send Adhvik and didn’t.

She didn’t realize the letter had slipped between the pages until it was too late.

That evening, she sat on her bed, revising for economics, when her phone buzzed.

A message from an unknown number:

“Beautiful words. Who are they for?”

She stared.

Her heart lurched.

Another message followed:

“Was it an assignment? Or something... accidental?”

Her blood went cold.

She opened her notebook. Flipped through the pages.

The letter was gone.

In the quiet that followed, time slowed. The ceiling fan hummed a strange rhythm. The jasmine oil from her mother’s puja tray drifted faintly through the door.

Her fingers hovered over her phone screen.

Her thoughts raced like wild horses, Adhvik? It couldn’t be. He would’ve joked. He wouldn’t ask anonymously.

Unless…

Was it the teacher? No. That was impossible. Inappropriate. Unthinkable.

Or maybe someone had read it when the notebook was passed around?

What was once private now sat exposed, vulnerable.

Ink stains are harmless - until someone reads between the lines.

And then they become confessions.

She didn't reply to the message.

But her silence only deepened the storm inside her.

That night, she didn’t sleep. She stared at her ceiling and rewrote the letter a hundred times in her head - only this time, with a name.

The next morning, Adhvik was waiting for her outside the school gate, like always. Hands in pockets. Hair windblown. The sun rising behind him like it had no choice but to follow.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, but it was a lie stitched in habit.

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re doing that thing where you say nothing and everything at the same time.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I’m just tired.”

He didn’t push. He never did.

But that day, when she looked at him, really looked something in her began to shift. The space between them, once filled with ease, now carried an invisible weight.

Some letters don’t need envelopes.

They travel in the air between glances.

And when they arrive,

They burn...