Fool To Believe You

The rain in Mumbai didn't wash things clean; it just made the blood and the tears run together.

​Inside the quiet luxury of a high-rise penthouse, the heavy silence was deafening. Advik Malhotra sat on his leather couch, a cold, detached expression on his face as he casually dabbed at the fresh blood on his split lip. A few minutes ago, a solid punch had snapped his jaw, followed by a sharp, echoing slap that still burned against his cheek.

​"Is this what I was to you? A joke?" her voice had shaken violently, tears welling in her eyes. "I actually thought you were different."

​He hadn't flinched. He had forced his voice to remain dead, hollow, and completely nonchalant as she stormed out into the storm. "In the real world, people get used. They get broken," he had told his friends, wearing his cruel mask like armor. "If she's too weak to handle that, she shouldn't have stepped into my life."

He told himself she was his biggest enemy. He told himself he didn't care. But as the days bled into weeks, the empty space beside him in the lab screamed her name. He was addicted to her presence, and forcing his emotions down was starting to feel like holding back a flood.

​Twenty days later, and hundreds of miles away, the rain was different. It fell softly over the sun-drenched gardens of Mangalore, where Vidhi sat eating fruits with the woman she called mother.

​To the world, Vidhi was just a quiet girl who had finished her semester exams and rushed home to be with the brother she missed terribly. She was a girl missing six months of her memory-a blank slate.

​"What shocking thing happened to me that I lost my memory? That made my brother lose his voice?" Vidhi asked, her eyes narrowing as she watched Sanvi's face turn completely pale.

"I will never let you go back to Mumbai," Sanvi thought desperately as they hugged. "What if they find you and realize your real identity? They will take you away from me."