POV: Max
The sun was setting, but everything around me already felt dim.
Ren found me sitting quietly under the banyan tree near the hostel gate—our usual escape spot.
Ren sat beside me, calm as ever, as if she hadn't just opened a vault of old stories.
"I think you should know," she began, "about the kind of person Ram was before college. Before all this."
I blinked at her, unsure where she was going.
We are tution mets,
"He used to love someone," she said gently. "Back in school. Never said her name. But I knew he was in deep. Quietly, wholeheartedly."
I felt something tighten in my chest.
Ren continued, "He'd wait for her after class, bring her books, write notes he never gave her. I thought one day he'd say it. But he never did. And then… she left. Just like that. Not knowing, probably."
Her voice softened. "He changed after that. Pulled back. Became… closed."
I nodded slowly, processing every word. But something about it left an unfamiliar ache.
So it wasn't me? I wasn't the one he loved back then?
But then… why did everything feel so real?
Why did his silence carry the weight of memories I couldn't name?
"Do you know who the girl was?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Ren shook her head. "No. He never said. Just called her 'the one who never looked back.'"
I tried to smile. "Maybe she didn't know she had to."
Ren looked at me with quiet sympathy. "Maybe."
Max's internal monologue :
So there was someone else. Someone who had the version of him I never got to see.
And I… I was just a chapter that came too late.
-----