Invisible String

| epilogue |

It was evening, Neil stretched his limbs looking at his handiwork, he smiled, the hat he had crocheted looked same as the he had imagined after watching a video of a girl crocheting something same like this. He would get good money for it since it was a bucket hat which were as much he kept track of trend through Riya's posts was in trend.

He wondered if he should courier it to her, she would like it but then again it's been four years since he had seen her, or anyone of them, maybe her taste changed?

Even for him it seemed like he barely knew twenty-year-old Neil whose most important aim was to excel in everything he did. Now he could make peace with not being able to do some things, it was hard to unlearn what he had grown with, but it was peaceful when he did unlearn those things.

He was sure others thought same, they all were at peace and seemed happy with where they were, Karan just like he always wanted but never was allowed now had coded two games, which were pretty successful, he had stayed away from public eye even when he was now famous now.

Vidhyut and Juhi had invested half of their money in opening a orphanage, they had even recently adopted a fifteen-year-old kid who was not getting adopted by anyone because of being older than normal adopting age, nobody wanted a teenager whom they had not raised, Juhi had told him, it felt slightly weird to know, they were now parents.

Then there was Riya she was a famous on instagram, doing what Neil remembered she loved, arranging outfits and wearing pretty outfits, she never showed her face never revealed her real name but it still was her Neil knew in a moment when he saw a picture of her on his account, and when asked, she confirmed his
assumption.

Then there was Aman, he was one Neil knew less about, it hurt slightly to be almost ghosted by him other than few frequents how are you messages but he understood it was him healing he needed that.

And then there was Neil who never had enough time to develop a hobby so when he landed in Gokarna, a place when he googled and read about and knew it was the place for him. Gokarna was filled with fleeting tourists who had came to visit its vast expanses of beaches and holy places. It was a calm place to disappear to.

He was clueless, he spent all his times thinking about things he should not, the times spent with his friends, he yearned for them. He didn't knew who he was if he was not Neil Khanna.

Then there was self-loathing, he spent a year telling his friends he was okay, missing them and her. Missing everything he had lost even if it was toxic for him. He still remembers the feeling of uselessness when he heard from his friends they were doing better, because he was not.

Even the looking at sea, which used to calm him when he was younger did nothing to him.

That was when he had come across a handmade flyer about crocheting, he would blame the loneliness he felt when someone will ask him what motivated him to go through those class if it was not one of the best thing happened to him.

He would not say learning and doing crocheting healed him but it did make everything easier, when he was crocheting he never thought of anything else other than what step he needed to do next, what he design he needed to do, it helped him from going to dark places.

"Neil beta, there are few people looking for you." Neil glanced up from his design, the lady his neighbors, in her sixties said, standing in front of his house.

First Neil felt was a panic after hearing her, he picked up his phone and googled Phoenix Industry and went to news part, he sighed, there was no new news. The last news was from three years ago about them with headlines, where are heir of phoenix now?

It was not them, second he felt was confusion who it  could be.

"Beta if you want I can send them ba--" before she could finish, a kid dressed in white shorts and black t-shirt ran came ahead from her back, he ran near to the steps of his house.