The rain blurred the world outside the shelter’s plastic-sheeted windows, turning everything into watercolor. People passed in a flurry of mud-caked boots and soaked uniforms. But Arya sat still, her hands cradling a half-filled medical file, unmoving.
Her mind wasn’t on work.
It was on a name.
Navu.
The boy who never waved goodbye.
He had been everything to her in the orphanage. A warm hand in the cold, a laugh in long silences. He called her Ari before anyone else did. He once promised he’d never leave, then vanished without warning, taken by people with soft voices and clean shoes. She remembered running to the gate, shouting after him until her voice gave out.
Now… Arnav Raj.
Could it really be him?
His face was older. Sharper. But his silences felt familiar. His kindness didn’t need permission. And sometimes—just sometimes—he’d glance at her like something deep inside was flickering, trying to light.
But he hadn’t said a word.
And neither had she.
That night, curled beneath her thin shelter blanket, she called her father.
He answered with a warm, “Ari...?”
Her throat clenched. “dad… when I first came home… I used to talk about someone, right?”
A pause. “Yes. Navu. You wouldn’t stop asking about him.”
“I tried to find him. You did, too. Do you remember?”
“I do,” he said gently. “But the orphanage said his records were confidential. No surname. No trace.”
“I think I’ve found him now,” she whispered. “dad, his name’s Arnav Raj. He’s here, working with the military terrain team.”
Another pause.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Arya admitted. “But… I feel it. And he wears that same stillness. Like someone who forgot how to talk about pain.”
Her father’s voice softened, filled with love. “Then talk to him, mole. Let your heart ask what your voice is afraid to.”
---
Arnav’s Perspective
Sleep was a stranger now.
Arnav sat inside the dim communications tent, surrounded by crumpled maps, satellite render projections, and flood progression graphs. The generator hummed beside him, louder in the silence. One of the interns brought him coffee; he didn’t touch it.
He should’ve been focused. But his mind… drifted.
That dream again.
The one with the landslide.
The screaming wind. The rain. The collapsing hillside.
He remembered holding Ishani’s hand. His little sister. She had called for him.
Then—nothing.
Just darkness.
The doctors said memory loss was common. Trauma had a way of burying things too painful to hold.
He had been seven. Maybe eight.
After the landslide took his parents, he was shifted between camps. Then, an orphanage. Then, adoption.
Only one memory stood tall—Ishani’s name. Ishu. The girl who tied ribbons on his shoes and believed fireflies were fairies. Everything else had dissolved.
And yet, lately… something stirred.
Arya.
The woman with sharp eyes and quiet strength. A doctor. A stranger.
And yet…
There was something in the way she said certain words. The way she glanced at him like she knew another version of him. A gentler one. A forgotten one.
He’d caught her watching him yesterday—looking at him not with suspicion or flirtation but with recognition.
It unsettled him.
Was she mistaking him for someone else?
Or worse… was she part of the past his brain refused to retrieve?
He ran a hand through his damp hair and leaned back. The roof above crackled with another burst of rain.
Arnav didn’t know who he used to be.
But Arya made him wonder if there was a name beneath the silence.
And if maybe… he was never truly alone in that landslide after all.
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