Anonymous Ink

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...

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