Burried Hear
Chapter 2
And in that quiet place between memory and truth, something long-buried began to wake again. A heart.
The next morning, Meher stood in her kitchen with two slices of toast burnt beyond saving and a cup of chai that had gone cold. She hadn't slept. Not really.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Aarav standing under the station lights — older, quieter, but still carrying the same loneliness that once made her want to sit next to him forever.
He hadn't told her much.
But some silences don't need translating.
He wasn't here to stay.
He wasn't here for her.
But her heart… it had already started rearranging itself. Like it always did whenever he was near.
Aarav, meanwhile, sat on a hospital bed under a false name. The nurse didn't ask questions — just gave him his file, a weak smile, and a white envelope marked "Follow-up: Urgent."
He didn't open it.
He already knew what it said.
"Stage four. Unresponsive. Estimated survival: under one year."
The words weren't new.
The ache wasn't either.
But somehow, after seeing Meher again, death had started to feel less like a relief and more like a thief.
He stepped outside, blinking into the harsh afternoon light, and walked with no real direction — until his feet took him exactly where he shouldn't go.
Her bookstore.
Meher looked up just as the bell above the door chimed. For a second, she thought her mind was playing games again.
But it was him.
Leaning against the door like he'd never left. Like the past eleven years had just been a long, uncomfortable nap.
"You followed me," she said.
"I didn't mean to. My legs are just… stubborn."
She smiled. For real this time. Not the broken, forced kind — the kind he remembered from school days, when her laughter could drown out sirens.
He walked toward her slowly, like the air itself had gotten heavier.
She noticed the way he moved — careful, calculated. Like his body no longer trusted itself.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded too quickly. "Just tired."
"You look more than tired."
He didn't answer.
They sat in the reading corner — the same one they used to fight over as teenagers. Same crooked lamp, same dusty window that always leaked sunlight just right.
For a while, neither spoke.
Just quiet breathing, too many unsaid things, and a thin thread of memories pulling them closer.
"You remember the poem I wrote in tenth grade?" she finally asked.
"The one about paper boats and lonely skies?"
She looked surprised. "You remember that?"
"I remember everything."
That silenced her.
Not because it was romantic — but because he said it like it hurt.
She turned to him, suddenly braver than before. "Why are you really here, Aarav?"
He stared at the floor. Then at his hands. Then at her.
"Can I lie?" he whispered.
"No."
He looked up, and something behind his eyes cracked.
"I'm just… trying to feel something before I can't anymore."
Meher blinked, unsure what that meant.
But her heart already knew.
"Aarav—" she began.
"I'm okay," he interrupted. Too quickly. Too practiced. "I'm just tired. That's all."
"You keep saying that."
"I keep hoping you'll believe it."
Silence again.
But this time, it wasn't ancient. It was fresh — raw and trembling.
Meher reached out, fingers brushing his knuckles. A simple touch, but it felt like a question.
He didn't pull away.
"Do you ever wish we had more time back then?" she asked softly.
"Back then, or now?"
She didn't answer.
Because she wasn't sure anymore.
When he left that evening, it was already raining.
Of course it was.
The sky had always loved turning his feelings into weather.
Meher watched him walk away from the bookstore window, the raindrops smudging her view like the tears she refused to cry.
She wanted to stop him.
She wanted to ask the truth.
She wanted to say: Tell me what's really going on. Tell me before it's too late.
But she didn't.
Because some love stories don't begin with confessions.
Some begin with the unbearable weight of things never said.
That night, Aarav coughed until the sheets were stained and his palms trembled.
He pressed his hand to his chest and whispered, "Not now. Not yet. Just a little more time."
Then he opened his notebook and wrote:
"She touched my hand today. It wasn't romantic. But it made me feel alive — which is more dangerous than dying."
Meher, curled up by her window, finally opened the old box under her bed — the one full of his letters, never answered, never sent back.
And inside, she found the last photo they had taken together — two kids on a swing, both smiling like life hadn't broken them yet.
She held it against her chest and whispered, "You came back too late."
Then softer, "Or maybe I just never moved on."
And somewhere between denial and memory, two hearts began to burn quietly again — one already fading, the other just starting to remember what it means to feel.
End of Chapter 2