Shanaya

The room smelled faintly of dust and ginger tea. Shanaya pushed a burger into my hands, as if feeding me would silence the storm raging in my head.

I stared at it, my fingers trembling. How did I even end up here? Did I really kill that bastard? Or… was my sister lying when she told the cops it was me?

I couldn’t swallow the thought, let alone the food.

“Eat,” Shanaya said firmly, pulling a stool to sit across from me. Her eyes were calm, too calm for someone hiding a possible murderer in her house.

I forced a bite, chewing without tasting. “Why are you helping me?” I finally asked, my voice low, fragile.

Her lips curved in a faint smile, though her eyes never softened. She turned her back to me, clinking cups against the counter as she prepared tea. “Because we were friends,” she said simply.

I almost laughed, though it came out more like a scoff. Friends? The word felt foreign on my tongue, like trying to swallow something sharp. No… we were never friends. I never looked at you that way, never could. Friends don’t leave marks this deep, they don’t steal sleep from your nights or leave ghosts behind in your bed. We weren’t friends—we were something far more dangerous. We were lovers.

But that was the past. A past I’ve buried a thousand times in my head, yet it keeps clawing its way back to the surface. Maybe I wanted to believe there was still something left, maybe I lied to myself. But friends? No. That was never us.

“Really?” I said, cutting through my thoughts, a faint, bitter smile tugging at my lips. “I thought that broke a long time ago.”

Shanaya poured the tea into two chipped cups. The steam curled like smoke between us. She placed one in front of me, then lifted her own and sipped slowly before answering.

“Maybe you broke it,” she said, finally meeting my eyes. “But I didn’t.”

Her words hit harder than I expected. My chest tightened. Guilt pricked at the corners of my mind, memories of fights and cold silences flooding back. I had walked away from her when things got messy in my life, leaving her questions unanswered, leaving her standing in the rain once, clutching the umbrella she had brought for both of us.

And now, here she was, sheltering me from the police.

“You’re crazy,” I muttered, more to myself than to her.

“Maybe.” She leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms. “But you don’t look like a killer to me.”

I froze, my jaw locking around the bitter taste of tea. “What if I am?” I asked, testing her resolve.

Her eyes didn’t flinch. “Then I’ll deal with it when I have to.”

Silence pressed down between us. The only sound was the faint hum of the fan overhead. My chest felt heavy, my mind torn between relief and dread.

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe that someone still saw me as more than the monster the world was painting me to be.

“Shanaya…” My voice cracked. “What if my sister was right? What if I did it, and I just… can’t remember?”

She walked closer, her steps unhurried, her expression unreadable. She crouched in front of me, resting her hand on my shaking one.

“Then we’ll find the truth together,” she whispered.

For the first time that night, I felt something break inside me—not fear, not panic, but the faintest spark of hope.

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