"What would you do if nothing held you back?"
Kabir had asked it like a joke, tossing the words into the air like a cricket ball he didn't care to catch.
But Aarav had caught them. And they stayed.
All weekend.
---
The question lingered like ink in water.
Aarav Mehta had never been asked that before. Not really. His life had been shaped more by restraint than release. Expectations. Silences. Politeness mistaken for passivity. He had been taught to survive, not soar.
But now, here he was, staring at a blank notebook page in the quiet of his room, the question echoing.
He pressed his pen to paper.
Nothing.
He tapped the page once, then again, as if the ink might reveal something he didn't already know.
"What would you do… if nothing held you back?"
He scrawled a line in the corner:
> "I would write."
That was easy enough. But write what?
---
Sunday night, Aarav couldn't sleep.
The wind outside whispered secrets through his window grills. Somewhere in the flat, his parents were watching an old movie—low volume, but loud enough to keep his thoughts unsettled.
He rose, pulled out the dusty box under his bed, and retrieved his old journals.
He hadn't opened them in nearly a year.
Each one was a time capsule of someone he barely recognized—versions of himself trying to think their way through grief.
Some entries were sharp, clinical, almost inhuman:
> "The difference between pain and numbness is that pain screams. Numbness whispers."
Others were desperate:
> "Where did Arjun go when the lights went out? Did he know he wasn't coming back?"
Aarav turned the pages slowly, tenderly.
He found a poem, half-finished, written sometime after his brother vanished:
> "You were the sun,
I was the shadow behind the wall,
Waiting to be warmed,
But never daring to step out."
He closed the journal.
For the first time in months, he didn't feel like that shadow.
---
Monday came quietly, like fog rolling over rooftops. The classroom buzzed with sleepy chatter. The school walls had taken on that familiar pre-festival nervous energy—excited, chaotic, and barely manageable.
Suhani was sketching a backdrop design, headphones in, nodding subtly to something only she could hear. Kabir was helping the theatre kids rehearse dramatic pauses by yelling Shakespeare quotes with exaggerated flourishes.
Aarav sat at his desk with his notebook.
This time, he was writing.
Not assignments. Not notes.
But something else.
Raw. Uneven. Real.
> "They tell you to speak.
But I have lived in silence so long
my voice is a stranger
wearing my face."
He paused. Re-read it.
Crossed out nothing.
---
Later, during a rare quiet lunch break, Kabir slumped onto the bench beside him, dramatically dropping his head onto Aarav's shoulder.
"I'm dying."
"Of?"
"Rehearsal. Teen actors. Ego wars. Suhani made me promise not to strangle anyone, but honestly…"
"Tempting?"
Kabir groaned. "So tempting."
Aarav smirked, then offered his notebook without a word.
Kabir blinked, sat up, and read.
Slowly.
When he finished, he looked at Aarav.
"You wrote this?"
"Last night."
"It's… good. Really good."
Aarav shrugged.
"No, I mean it," Kabir said, flipping back to reread. "You could submit this to the lit fest zine."
"I'm not looking for attention."
Kabir leaned forward, voice softer now. "Then why write?"
Aarav hesitated.
Then said, "To exist without being seen."
Kabir nodded slowly. "Fair. But if no one hears your voice… are you really speaking?"
That question stayed too.
---
Later that evening, Aarav walked home alone. Clouds were gathering. A late-winter drizzle had begun its silent descent.
His school bag felt heavier than usual—not because of books, but because of what now filled his mind.
His words.
His truths.
What would he do if nothing held him back?
Maybe, just maybe… he would let himself matter.
---
Tuesday morning, Aarav found Suhani at her usual spot by the old courtyard tree.
Sketchbook in hand. Earphones out this time.
He sat beside her.
Said nothing.
She looked up. "You okay?"
"I wrote something," he said.
She raised a brow. "Show me?"
He handed her the notebook.
She read it slowly, her finger trailing each line like she was touching something delicate.
When she looked up, her eyes were glassy.
"I've felt this," she whispered.
"That's why I wrote it," Aarav replied.
Suhani shut the notebook gently.
"You should read this at the open mic."
"I don't do stages."
"You don't have to perform. Just… exist out loud."
Aarav looked down at his hands.
"I'm not ready."
She smiled.
"Maybe not yet. But the fact that you're writing again… that means something."
He didn't know what to say.
So she added, "Your silence used to feel like distance. Now it feels like depth."
And somehow, that meant more than any applause ever could.
---
That night, Aarav sat with a fresh page.
Wrote:
> "Today, I showed someone my insides.
She didn't flinch.
Maybe that's how healing begins—
not with fire,
but with mirrors."
---
The next few days blurred into something surreal.
Every morning, Aarav woke up wanting to write.
He brought his notebook to class, to lunch, even to the library bathroom once when a line struck him mid-handwash.
He wasn't writing for Suhani. Or for Kabir. Or for the zine.
He was writing because it felt like breathing after holding his breath for years.
And slowly, others noticed.
"Dude, you've been scribbling nonstop," Yash observed. "What's the deal?"
"Therapy," Aarav replied.
That seemed to shut him up.
---
Friday arrived with rain.
Again.
It always seemed to rain when something meaningful was about to happen.
Suhani found him in the hallway after final bell.
"Come with me."
"Where?"
"The stage."
"The auditorium's closed."
She smiled. "I stole the key."
Of course she did.
---
They entered the empty hall.
The stage was dark, the seats empty.
Suhani walked up, turned on one spotlight, then sat cross-legged in the front row.
"Read."
Aarav blinked. "What?"
"Read your poem."
"There's no one here."
"There's me."
He stood there, notebook trembling in his hand.
His throat dry.
His heart pounding.
He looked at her, eyes calm, waiting.
And then… he read.
> "They tell you to speak.
But I have lived in silence so long
my voice is a stranger
wearing my face."
The light made everything feel sharper. Intimate.
He read to the end.
No claps. No noise.
Just Suhani, looking up at him like he'd just told her who he really was for the first time.
"You're not a ghost, Aarav," she said. "You never were."
He sat down slowly beside her.
"I think I was afraid that if I spoke… I'd shatter."
"And now?"
"Now, I think maybe I'll still shatter."
"But?"
"But I'll put myself back together differently."
Suhani reached over, took his hand briefly.
"You're allowed to want more."
And for once, he believed her.
---
That night, Aarav looked out his window, watching rain streak the glass.
He opened his notebook and wrote:
> "I thought I was a boy who forgot how to dream.
But maybe I was just waiting for someone to ask:
'What if nothing held you back?'"