✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
[ 𝐒𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐋 1 ]
Because this is where love fades and hate resides and intensifies, broken hearts produce the most tragic stories.
Their treachery is told through their bleeding hearts: their unrequited love was never reciprocated. The...
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Seven days. Seven days since the headline stole the breath from the entire city, but still, no trace of you. They didn't find your body, not even the burned one. The officials talk about vaporization and structural collapse. Some, the ones with the quiet, resigned voices, say you are gone. Others, the breathless conspiracists, whisper that you are alive, that this was the perfect, elaborate escape for a man like you. And I? I am just waiting to die. I close this page because I cannot write a future that doesn't exist.
I snapped the book shut, the faint click echoing in the hushed, empty bedroom. The room was mine, here in the Sharma house, but it didn't feel like a sanctuary; it felt like a cage woven of silken pity and unspoken anxiety.
The past week had been a slow, agonizing slide into a routine built entirely on denial. My life was now measured in small, meaningless acts that somehow kept the larger truth at bay. I still wore my heavy, engagement lehenga for the first two days, refusing to change, until Diya had gently, tearfully, forced me into something looser, something black. The rose-gold ring, the one he had placed on my finger only hours before the world ended, was still there. It was cold, heavy, and a terrible, constant reminder of the brevity of my joy. I touched it now, tracing the diamond's sharp edges, seeking pain to confirm I was still breathing.
Downstairs, the house was operating under a solemn, artificial calm. My parents were exhausted, moving like shadows. Diya Di had cancelled all her commitments to stay with me, hovering with a worried frown. Advait Jiju was silent. He spent his days on the phone, his voice a low, hard rumble of controlled fury, speaking to police, lawyers, investigators, and company officials. He was trying to find answers where there were none, and the silence that followed his phone calls was always the most terrifying sound in the house. His lack of concrete findings fueled my impossible hope.
No body, no death.
I knew they were all watching me, waiting for the dam to break, for the tears that hadn't come since that first violent, primal scream on the night of the tragedy. But the tears were gone, replaced by a hollow, persistent ache.
I tucked the journal into the bottom drawer of my bedside table, covering it with a stack of untouched wedding magazines. The irony was suffocating. I walked to the door, took a deep breath, and forced my face into the mask of mild resignation I had perfected over the past seven days.
