"I’d rather be dead than spend another minute pretending we’re a happy family." Kay's words shattered the evening stillness as he slammed the front door, leaving Mira clutching what remained of her composure. None of this was new. Their arguments looped like a tired record, wearing them both thin.

Mira drifted to the kitchen, movements mechanical — boiling water, gathering tea leaves — her hands moving with muscle memory, her mind elsewhere. Her fingers trembled slightly, but she gripped the teacup harder. The walls echoed with silence, heavy with unsaid apologies and fractured promises.

Cup in hand, she retreated to her balcony — her refuge. Rain sliced through the concrete haze, sheets of water falling from a bloated sky. Here, loneliness felt honest, swept into the rhythm of the storm. Her marriage had become a performance neither wanted to give, yet neither could abandon.

Through the grey veil of rain, she spotted a young couple dancing barefoot on the slick street, their laughter bright, untamed, defying the storm. Mira's chest tightened. Once, she and Kay had danced like that — fearless, infinite.

The girl slipped, limbs flailing, and Mira's breath caught. But the young man steadied her with gentle hands, his voice cutting through the rain. "You okay?"

The boy — Dev, she heard — leaned in, his hand brushing a strand of wet hair from the girl's face, whispering something too quiet for Mira to catch. The girl smiled softly, nodded, and Mira could only guess what promise or reassurance had passed between them. But they lingered, unwilling to surrender the moment.

Across the city, in their apartment still fragrant with dinner, Dev watched rain hammer the window. Rhea's humming drifted from the kitchen, her voice soft but filling the cramped space with warmth.

"Do you really have to go? Can't you find something here?" Dev asked, though they both knew the answer.

"What if you fall for someone else while I'm gone?" Rhea teased, masking fear beneath her playful smile. "But for city planning, I have to be where the cities are. We have tonight — let's not waste it on what-ifs."

She leaned in to kiss him, but the doorbell interrupted, their laughter mingling with the rain, unaware it would be one of their last unshadowed moments.

Back at Mira's, Kay returned, shoulders hunched inward, smaller than she remembered. She wanted to ask what was wrong but feared igniting the storm. Kay disappeared into the bathroom; soon, violent coughing echoed off the walls.

She hesitated — they tread on eggshells now — but when the coughs turned ragged, desperate, she found him slumped by the sink, blood flecking the tiles.

Her cry broke the silence as she rushed him to the hospital, streets blurring with rain and panic.

Later, by his bedside, machines beeped steadily. Harsh fluorescent light washed everything pale. Mira caressed his face, their fights dissolving into the quiet. Tears spilled — she hadn't just failed as a wife, but as a friend.

She slept in the chair beside him, holding his hand, listening to the machines tethering him to her, to their fractured life.

Across the city, at 2:00 AM, Dev's phone lit up with Rhea's name. Thunder rattled the windows.

"Storms in my world and you can't sleep?" Dev asked softly.

"I'm sorry, Dev," Rhea's voice cracked, breath tangled with sobs.

"What happened? Are you hurt?" Panic sharpened his voice.

The line hissed with static, then — "I kissed him. It just happened. I let it. I'm so sorry."

Dev's world constricted. Air thinned. Words abandoned him.

"Was I just your safety net? The moment I wasn’t there, you needed someone else?" His voice fractured, venom leaking through grief.

"Please, Dev. It was a mistake —"

"No. Love survives storms, but only with trust. You broke that. But you don't have to worry anymore you got another life to cling onto now for convenience ".

He hung up. The silence in his apartment was louder than the thunder outside. Pride smothered regret, but only for a moment before grief hollowed him out. For days, tears were his only relentless companions.

The world didn’t pause for his heartbreak. Days folded into nights, and nights into something heavier. Dev moved through life like a shadow of himself — eating less, speaking only when necessary, and waking up with grief crouched on his chest like a second heartbeat.

In those hollow weeks, he tried — genuinely tried — to reach out. He called Rhea once. No answer. Then again. By the third try, Dev's voice cracked as the storm outside howled, "I can’t do this without you, Rhea. Please… just come back."

The silence on the line stretched painfully. Finally, Rhea whispered, her voice raw, "I can't keep hurting you by staying in your life. You’ll only move on if you forget I exist." She paused, breath hitching. "But remember… I've always loved you, Dev. Even this… is coming from that."

At work, he kept to himself — until one afternoon in the breakroom when Aisha, a quiet colleague with kind eyes, offered him half her sandwich with a shy smile. "You look like you haven’t eaten in a week," she said gently.

They began sitting together at lunch. No grand confessions, no probing questions — just the comfort of another presence. Aisha never asked about the sadness that clung to him, but she didn’t ignore it either. Her steadiness was a balm, something unspoken but needed.

Weeks later, Dev asked her to a party — hesitantly, awkwardly. She looked surprised, but nodded. "Sure," she said. "It could be nice."

For the first time in months, something flickered. Hope. Small, but stubborn.

But on the evening of the party, a message came: "Hey… I'm so sorry. Something came up. I hope you understand." No lies, no excuses — just sincerity. Yet the sting was undeniable. Dev sat on the edge of his bed for hours, suit still on, staring at the empty space beside him.

He turned off the lights and let the darkness settle. In the quiet, he realized: it wasn't just about Aisha. It was about Rhea — and how he had once believed that love would come easy, like it did for her. He had assumed that the moment he decided to search again, it would appear — clean, certain, waiting. But it hadn't. And in that stillness, Dev understood how deeply he had underestimated what it meant to heal, to hope again.

Meanwhile, Mira buried Kay. The funeral passed in a blur of sympathetic faces, hands squeezing hers, words she barely registered. She ran her fingers over his grave — "A Loving Husband" — words that felt both true and insufficient. Tears evaded her, despite the weight in her chest.

Nights were the hardest. Empty spaces beside her in bed. Echoes of arguments hanging in the walls. Work kept her upright — tasks, deadlines, filing reports. It filled the hours, but never the hollow.

One rainy afternoon— time had passed since Kay's death and Dev's heartbreak, their paths crossed at a bus stop. Mira's stack of work files slipped from her arms, papers scattering into puddles. Dev instinctively knelt to help — tall, tired-eyed, kindness veiled beneath exhaustion

Grief recognized itself in the other.

Their hands brushed briefly, cold from the rain. Mira caught the grief in his eyes — raw, familiar — the kind that recognized its own.

They gathered the papers in silence, the rain intensifying, streaking the glass shelter in silver sheets.

An elderly couple shuffled past under a shared umbrella, their quiet rhythm practiced, steady.

Dev muttered under his breath, "I wonder if they ever thought about timing. If it was the 'right time' when they met."

Mira looked over curiously, catching only fragments. "What did you say?"

Dev hesitated, then repeated, clearer this time, "If it was the right time when they met."

Mira smiled faintly, following his gaze, thinking of Kay — the slammed doors, the hospital rooms, the silence — yet how he always showed up.

She met Dev’s eyes. “With the right one, it doesn’t really matter when you meet,” she said softly, her voice low but steady. “I met mine at the worst possible time. But even in the hardest times, he never left. That’s why I still feel him here.”

They stood in silence as rain pattered against the shelter's roof, the city blurred behind fogged glass.

The bus hissed to a stop. Dev stood rooted, her words echoing through him like forgotten prayers. Possibility flickered.

A few stops later, Mira stepped off. The sky wept, earth damp with spring rain. She bought flowers from a vendor, familiar now, who no longer asked how she was doing.

At the cemetery, Mira knelt, tracing Kay's name with trembling fingers. Her thumb hovered over the carved letters, remembering the shape of his laugh. She brushed damp leaves from the stone, arranging the flowers with careful hands.

"I spoke about you today," her voice cracked.

"I told him you were everything to me — even when I didn’t always say it."

Her breath hitched, shoulders folding inward.

"Just come back… I don't know how to do this without you. I can't go on."

The words emptied her. And for the first time since his funeral, she broke completely — sobs wracking her, the kind that leave nothing behind but breath and silence.

Elsewhere, Dev wandered rain-slick streets, drenched but steady. He opened his phone.

To Rhea:

I won't ask you to come back. But I'll try to keep walking. I don't know how yet… but I'll try.

Then to Aisha:

Baby steps — meet me for coffee sometime? No pressure, just company.

He hit send, smiling — not from happiness, but the fragile possibility of it. The skies above him still heavy, but lighter now. Not gone… but lighter.

Rain fell softer now — less like endings, more like something washed clean.