HALF-LIFE

Some reactions happen in an instant.

Others take months before anyone realizes something has changed forever.

Rishvi Roy has spent her entire life fighting for a future no one else seemed to want for her. A prestigious molecular biology fellowship is supposed to be her escape. Six months of research. Six months proving that ambition deserves more than the marriage proposals waiting back home.

The only problem is her mentor.

Dr. Adrien Vance is brilliant, ruthless, and impossible to impress. The kind of scientist who can dismantle a research proposal with a single question and praise someone only by choosing not to criticize them. His laboratory runs on discipline, precision, and rules.

Rules Rishvi has never been particularly good at following.

As professional rivalry slowly becomes something neither of them is prepared to name, every experiment begins to blur the line between logic and longing. Outside the laboratory, family expectations tighten around Rishvi's future. Inside it, every glance, every argument, every silence carries consequences neither of them can afford.

Because some discoveries belong in journals.

Others ruin lives.

And half-life was never just a scientific term.

It was always about the parts of ourselves that survive after everything changes.

"Not every equation can predict the human heart."