✧･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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I pushed the front door open, the familiar, mechanical click echoing through the quiet foyer. It wasn't the sound of welcome I heard, but the sound of a latch securing a cage. For the last four months, this house, with its walls saturated in the perfume of familial expectation, had become both my sanctuary and my prison.
A wave of exhaustion, cold and absolute, washed over me, the kind that seeps into your bones after a long day of pretending. It was a professional exhaustion from the operating table, yes, but far worse was the emotional fatigue of playing the role of the unaffected daughter, the supportive sister, the happily married woman whose husband was simply "away on work." Pretending to be someone I wasn't, pretending everything was alright, was the most draining surgery of all. Every time I fixed my mouth into a facsimile of a casual smile, every time I practiced the lie about Vidyut, a little piece of my genuine self was cauterized.
"Thank God you are home!" Badi Mumma's voice rang out, a warm, rich melody cutting through my weariness. It was her voice—unfiltered love, pure and demanding—that forced the internal switch. The cold, analytical Dr. Ada Sharma vanished, replaced by the affectionate, compliant Ada, the one who didn't carry the gaping wound of abandonment in her chest.
I stepped into the living hall, forcing the corners of my lips into the required smile. The familiar scene was a balm, yet also a source of guilt. Bade Papa, his spectacles perched low on his nose, was engrossed in his newspaper, the pages rustling like autumn leaves in a gentle breeze, a sound so constant it was the auditory heartbeat of the household.
Samaira was huddled into herself, utterly lost in her own world, her face illuminated by the soft, toxic glow of her phone screen. She was always escaping lately, retreating into the digital noise to drown out the silence of our real lives.
Badi Mumma was issuing instructions to the staff, her voice calm and composed, the effortless matriarch. Three pairs of eyes turned towards me as I entered the circle of light, each holding a different, heavy emotion. Bade Papa's held curiosity, assessing the exhaustion beneath my makeup. Samaira's held indifference, but Badi Mumma's held pure, immediate concern. She always saw too much.
