The second day in the village began with a distant bell, not the kind that signaled lectures, but the kind that belonged to temples and tradition. The sky above had softened into a sleepy blue, clouds like cotton trails left by a sleepy god.

Aarohi tied her dupatta tighter and stood in front of the school building. She had insisted on visiting the local primary school with a few other students, saying she wanted to “observe their educational methods,” but truth be told, she just wanted to see what learning looked like when there weren’t projectors, ACs, or pressure to be perfect.

The building was small, a cracked wall, a rusted gate, and a blackboard with faded chalk lines. Yet, somehow, it felt more alive than any polished seminar room she had ever walked into.

Karan showed up late, surprise.

He strolled in like he belonged to the scene, hair still ruffled from the morning and sleeves rolled up like an indie film lead. "You’re late," she said, arms crossed. "You’re early," he replied. "Balance."

"You promised you’d come on time.” “No,” he corrected. “I said I’d try. And I never lie. I just bend expectations.”

She wanted to be annoyed. But the way his eyes scanned the playground, the way he smiled at the kids waving at them, she knew he meant well. He always did, in his Karan-kind-of-way.

A teacher walked out to greet them. Middle-aged, frail, but with a voice that echoed across the courtyard.

“Namaste beta, aap hi log aaye hain sheher se? College waale?”

Aarohi nodded. “Ji, awareness ke liye aaye hain.”

“Achha kiya,” he smiled. “Bacchon ke liye koi alag sa din banega.”

The students huddled into three groups , each group pairing up with a local teacher. Karan and Aarohi were accidentally put together again, because of course they were.

Their task?

Help a group of five kids write full sentences in Hindi and English. Then encourage each to talk about their dreams. Aarohi began with structure. She pulled out a notebook, divided it into neat columns. Karan pulled out a box of colored pencils and handed one to each child like it was a wand.

“You know they’re just learning basics, right?” she whispered. “Don’t give them a rainbow before they know how to write ‘sky’.” He smirked. “Maybe they’ll learn faster if it feels like play.” Surprisingly… it worked.

Each child held a different colored pencil and began writing slowly, letters wonky but words filled with wonder.

One girl, barely taller than the desk, said shyly, “Main teacher banna chahti hoon.”

Karan leaned down and whispered, “Tum already kisi ke liye teacher ho sakti ho. Bas yakeen karna seekhna hai.”

Aarohi watched. No sarcasm this time. Just quiet admiration.

She wasn’t used to softness in boys that wasn’t performative.

The oldest child in the group, Meena, struggled to write her name. Her hands shook every time she picked up the chalk.

Aarohi knelt beside her.

“Chalo... main pakad ke dikhaati hoon,” she said gently.

She guided Meena’s hand, stroke by stroke. The M curved slowly, hesitant but there. When it was done, Meena stared at it like it wasn’t hers. Then looked up with tears in her eyes.

“Yeh pehli baar kisi ne bola ke main likh sakti hoon,” she whispered.

Aarohi swallowed the lump in her throat. “Ab baar-baar bolenge,” she said. “Jab tak tum khud na maan lo.”

At lunch, they sat under a tree, sharing food with the school teachers and local volunteers.

Omkar had traded his chips for homemade puris. Rhea had managed to sneak two ladoos from somewhere. Karan and Aarohi sat beside each other, their tiffins untouched, caught in a conversation that kept shifting between laughter and lingering silences.

One of the schoolteachers, a sharp-eyed woman in her fifties, suddenly asked, “Toh aap dono shaadi ke baad bhi aise hi kaam karenge?”

Aarohi choked on her water. Karan blinked.

“Ma’am?! We’re not... I mean... no...”

The teacher just laughed. “Aise ek hi saath chalne waale log ya toh bhai-behen hote hain… ya kuch aur.”

Karan, never missing a beat, added, “Good thing we’re not siblings, then.”

Aarohi turned to him, mouth open. “Stop smiling like that.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Your dimples did.”

“I don’t control them.”

They didn’t speak for a few seconds. Just laughed into their plates. But something in the air… thickened. She looked down at her food. He looked at her. Neither said it. But both felt it.

Later that evening, the professor gathered everyone again. “Group B the backboard of the school needs fixing. Volunteers?” Karan raised his hand.

Aarohi sighed. “You don’t know how to fix anything.” He stood. “Not true. I fixed your mood once. I’ll manage wood and nails.”

“I’m coming too,” she muttered.

Inside the classroom, the backboard was leaning. Nails loose. Surface cracked.

Karan struggled with the hammer, muttering under his breath. Aarohi crossed her arms. “Want me to do it?”

“No.”

Ten seconds later, he handed her the hammer. “I loosened it for you,” he added defensively. She rolled her eyes and got to work, hair falling across her cheek.

He watched.

There was something about Aarohi when she worked. Focused. Determined. Almost sacred. She looked up.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Then stop staring.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Liar.”

“I was admiring.”

She froze. Just for a beat. Then went back to hammering. Heart louder than the nail.

That night, just before dinner, the clouds finally gave in.

A soft, slow rain began to fall, not furious, just forgiving.

The students rushed to their tents. But Karan and Aarohi stayed back, under the small shaded porch of the school’s doorway. Rain painted the world in stillness. The village lights flickered like lullabies. Karan leaned against the pillar. Aarohi stood beside him, arms folded, hair damp.

Neither spoke. The silence wasn’t awkward anymore. It was… comforting.

A place they met without words.

After a few minutes, she said softly, “Why do you write so much and still never say what you feel?” He turned, surprised.

“I write to hide,” he said honestly. “It’s safer when people just read and assume.”

“And what if someone wants to read and understand?” He looked at her. For a long time.

Then whispered, “Then maybe… I’d finally write something real.” Aarohi didn’t respond.

Instead, she gently rested her head against the pillar beside him. Close. But not touching.

He looked up at the rain, then down at the muddy ground, then at her hand, only a breath away from his.

He didn’t move. But he whispered, not expecting an answer:

“Tum jaise log kabhi kisi ko apne paas aane dete ho kya?”

Aarohi turned her face toward him.

And said, quietly but surely:

“Kabhi kabhi… kisi khaas ko. Shayad.”

The rain fell heavier. But inside them, something had already begun to soften.

***...***...***...***...***...***...***...***...***

The village was quieter on the last day.

Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was the way goodbyes hovered in the air like fog before rain. Or maybe it was that final-morning hush, where you realise something is ending, and you’re not sure you’re ready for the world outside it yet.

Aarohi stood by the edge of the camp, her backpack hanging loose on one shoulder. The sun was still sleepy behind clouds. Her hair was damp from the rushed bath. A notebook peeked out of her side pocket, half-written, dog-eared, and messy.

Karan spotted her from across the field. She hadn’t seen him yet. Or maybe she had and chose not to wave. That was the thing about her,v she liked being seen but never asked for it.

He, on the other hand, kept choosing her in a hundred small ways. Every single day.

“Breakfast line’s shorter now,” he called out, walking up beside her.

She didn’t turn. “I’m not hungry,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “That’s rare.”

“I’m just... tired.” “From the trip or the pretending?” She finally looked at him.

“You think I’m pretending?” “I think,” he said gently, “you’re someone who doesn’t know what to do when she’s allowed to pause.” She didn’t argue. The professor called everyone for one last group meet before departure.

The students gathered in a half-circle, sleepy faces, muddy shoes, sun-tanned arms. Omkar was wearing a shawl he’d been gifted by an elderly villager. Rhea had made four braids out of boredom. Everyone else looked like they didn’t know how to go back to buildings after this.

Professor Mehra stood tall, clipboard tucked under her arm.

“I’ve been doing this camp with students for 12 years now,” she began. “And every single time, I see the same thing, something leaves your heart heavier when you pack up.”

She paused.

“That heaviness is not guilt. It’s responsibility. Carry it.”

A small child ran up behind her and tugged her kurta. She bent, picked him up mid-speech, and continued like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Karan leaned toward Aarohi. “She’s kind of amazing.” Aarohi nodded.

“She reminds me of someone.” “Who?” You,” he said. Aarohi blinked.

“You just compared me to a professor with two master’s degrees and no tolerance for nonsense.”

“She makes people uncomfortable in all the right ways,” he whispered.

“And yet, people keep returning to her.”

She didn’t reply. But something shifted behind her eyes. A softness he hadn’t seen in her since that first week on campus.

By late morning, the students were back at the village centre for a farewell gathering. The kids had made small paper garlands and crude chalk cards. The women had prepared a large batch of poha and jaggery water. Every corner of the space hummed with the kind of intimacy that only grows in places where people have less but give more.

Aarohi knelt beside Meena, the girl who’d written her name for the first time just yesterday. Meena clutched her hand tightly.

“Aap phir kab aayenge?” she asked, not looking up.

Aarohi didn’t know how to answer. She pulled out a pen from her bag and wrote something on the inside of Meena’s palm. “Jab bhi tum iss naam ko likhne mein kamzor mehsoos karo… yeh yaad rakhna, tumhare haathon mein taqat hai.” Meena traced the letters, then hugged her so tightly that Aarohi forgot where she was.

Across the courtyard, Karan helped a group of boys take down the blackboard they’d repaired. The chalk still faintly showed the crooked ‘WELCOME’ the kids had written the day before.

One of them, Birju ran up to Karan, held out a stone painted with the letter ‘K’.

“Kya hai yeh?”;"Talisman!” the boy shouted.

Karan laughed. “Tumhein kaun sikha raha hai yeh sab words?”

“Didi,” he said, pointing at Aarohi. Karan looked over. She was already watching him. The space between them, filled with strangers, walls, unspoken things, suddenly felt small.

After lunch, the buses were being loaded. Students tossed duffel bags, thanked villagers, clicked selfies, and held last-minute huddles. But Karan and Aarohi… drifted.

She had walked ahead, toward the neem tree at the far end of the field. No one followed.

Except him.

He didn’t say anything when he reached her. Just stood beside her, hands in his pockets, wind ruffling his shirt, silence sitting between them like an old friend.

She finally spoke.“I don’t want to go back yet.” “Then let’s stay.” She turned to him. “You’d actually miss the bus?”

“I’d miss a hundred buses if staying meant being here with you.”

She laughed. The kind that surprises even the mouth it leaves from.

“I hate how easy you make it sound.”

“I hate how hard you make it feel,” he said softly.

“My mom used to write me letters,” she said, eyes on the grass. “Still does sometimes.”

Karan turned slightly. “Letters?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Not texts. Actual, hand-written letters. She says some things are too important to be sent with typing errors and emojis.”

He smiled. “Your mom sounds… poetic.” “She is. In her own way.”

She took out a folded page from her journal. It was yellowed, old, the ink faded in some places.

She held it out to him. “This one was from when I turned thirteen. She wrote, ‘The world will try to measure you by numbers, marks, medals. Don’t let it. Find people who speak your language, even in silence.’”

Karan read it again. Then again. “You’re doing that, you know?” he whispered. “What?” “Becoming what she wrote.”

She blinked hard. Swallowed harder. They didn’t speak for a while. Then he said, “Want to know a secret?”

She nodded.

“I’ve never finished a poem.”

She turned. “What? But you write all the time.” “I always leave the last line blank. Like the sentence is waiting for life to catch up.” “That’s… weirdly romantic.”

He smiled. “I want to give the last line to someone who’ll understand the pause before the period.”

They both looked away at the same time. The wind picked up.

Aarohi reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper.

“Here,” she said. “One for your collection.” It was a poem. Untitled. Unfinished.

One line caught his eye.

"I didn’t know healing could look like someone who forgot they were broken."

He looked at her. Really looked.

“You wrote this?”

She nodded. “That was before I met you.”

“And after?”

She took the paper back, added one more line under it in front of him:

“Until he stood beside me like punctuation l, and reminded me how to breathe between commas.”

They stood there. Under that neem tree. The whole village fading behind them. And then, just like that, the bus horn broke the moment. Aarohi turned away first. Karan didn’t follow. Not immediately.

When he did, he didn’t say goodbye. He just walked beside her. Silently.

Like a comma. Exactly how she had written him.

...***...***....****...*****.....****....****

The ride back was long, filled with restless naps and muffled songs on shared headphones. No one spoke about what changed, but something had.

Omkar dozed off on Karan’s shoulder. Rhea kept texting someone secretly. Aarohi stared out the window, her diary open, pen tapping gently against the page.

Karan leaned toward her once, whispering:

“Did you really mean that line about me?”

She didn’t look. But she said, “Maybe.”

“And the punctuation bit?” She finally turned, a small smile playing on her lips.

“You’re definitely not a full stop.” “What am I then?” “A bracket.”

“Why?” “Because you walk in mid-sentence and make it make sense.”

He grinned.

And for a moment, nothing hurt.

..***...***......******.......**********..........

❤️ Final Line:

They didn’t confess. They didn’t promise. But in the silence between goodbye and see you soon, something real stayed behind.

,.*.*.*..*.*.*.*.*..*.*.to be continued*.*..*.*.*.*..*.*..*.