TOGETHER

CHAPTER ONE

Sitting at the shore of Marine Drive, I'm hit with a wave of memories from my final year of school—when I made the decision to end my life.

It wasn't that the day itself was especially difficult; it was my entire life that had been slowly breaking me down. My mind had been overtaken by a numbing weight I never expected. A numbness so deep that it swallowed me whole. My body felt disconnected, like my motor functions had stopped responding. My mind, paralyzed, clung to one unrelenting thought: death.

The death I so desperately wanted for myself.

I wasn't a child diagnosed with any mental illness. No, I was just a kid, full of hopes and dreams. Yet, somehow, I'd been pushed to a place where those dreams felt like burdens, and I had become a disappointment. A disappointment so profound, it led me to that rooftop, ready to end it all.

Was that the first time I wanted to die? Not quite. I'd thought about it before, many times in fact. But I never acted on it until that day.
Was it the last time I wanted to die? Not exactly. The thoughts still creep in, even years later. But I refused to admit, back then, that I was battling something far bigger than I realized. And in the midst of that chaotic internal storm, just as I was about to jump off the hostel terrace, he found me.

Ashutosh.

I still don't know how he showed up at exactly the right moment. What brought him there, to that rooftop, just in time to stop me from stepping over the edge? If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be sitting here right now, three years later, reflecting on that night, still talking to myself about it.

Ashutosh had always held a place for me in his heart, though I didn't know it then. He never told me—not until the day I was leaving for good. But this time, he made sure I knew. Unlike the last time, when I left him behind as a confused teenager, too ashamed to reach out. Not that I didn't want to—I just couldn't.

He found me in my most vulnerable moment, and I couldn't bear to face him afterward. I didn't have the courage to talk about that night, to talk about the pain that led me there. I regret that. I regret not having all the conversations I've been holding inside. I regret taking back the diary I had left for him, back in Madhavgarh. A diary he never opened.

Whenever I flip through those pages now, I'm reminded of how much I care for him. How deeply I've loved him—loved him enough to want him to be happy, no matter what, even if I didn't realize then that it was *me* who held the key to that happiness all along.

It was three years ago, at the end of July, just before I left for Paris to attend fashion school. That's when he came to me.

"What are you doing here, Ahana?" Ashutosh's voice broke through my thoughts as he approached from behind. I had been lost in memories of India, of *him*.

"Not much," I replied, trying to mask the emotions rising within me. "Just... admiring the beauty of the sea."
He took a seat beside me, his presence warm and comforting, and after a moment, he gently took my hand in his.

"Let's go," he said softly, his voice a whisper against the crashing waves. There was something in his tone, something I couldn't quite place. But it was enough to make me nod without hesitation.

As we stood up to leave, walking side by side, the silence between us was no longer uncomfortable. There was an unspoken connection, a tenderness that had been missing for so long. The night air felt heavier, and as we walked away from the shore, I realized it wasn't just the sea I'd been admiring—it was him.

And somehow, in that moment, I knew—he was everything I had been searching for. Everything I had ever needed.