Part 1: “Letters from the Window”
Her name was Aara.
A girl who laughed with her eyes and wrote poems on old receipts. She lived in a quiet town where everyone knew everyone’s name but not everyone’s pain. Aara had a favorite window — her room’s balcony — where she sat every evening sketching clouds and staring at the world beyond.
His name was Kabir.
He had just moved into the house opposite hers. An engineering student turned part-time photographer, trying to escape a past too heavy for his age. His eyes were tired, as if he'd been waiting for something — or someone — for too long.
The first time Aara and Kabir saw each other, it was from across that small lane, through rain-fogged windows.
She waved.
He didn’t.
But he noticed her.
Days turned into weeks. Aara started leaving tiny paper cranes on her balcony ledge, each with a handwritten note:
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“What’s your favorite memory you’ve never told anyone?”
“What if we’re both broken but fit perfectly?”
One morning, she found a reply beneath her own crane.
Kabir had written:
“I’ve forgotten how to love. Teach me, maybe?”
They never met in the beginning. Only letters, late-night shadow games from their balconies, smiles through glass, and hours of watching the stars together — from two sides of the same world.
---
One day, Kabir whispered across the lane, “Aara, I think I’m falling for you.”
Aara whispered back, “I already have.”
But Kabir was hiding something.
He started disappearing some nights. Sometimes for days. Aara waited, her face pressed to the window, tears falling on unwritten letters.
When he returned, he looked paler. Faded.
His eyes, once full of quiet fire, now seemed to be saying goodbye.
“I’m sorry,” he said one night.
“For what?” she asked, voice trembling.
He didn’t answer.
She cried for hours after he left.
And then the letters stopped.
---
Aara searched. She ran through streets, hospitals, cafes, parks — all the places they never went together but once spoke of. She found nothing. No goodbye. No explanation.
Just silence.
And one final paper crane on her balcony a week later.
Inside it was a poem written by Kabir:
> “If I don’t come back,
It’s not because I stopped loving you.
It’s because I didn’t want you
To love a dying dream.”
And then… he was gone.
