Chapter1:The Promise
The message came at 2:17 a.m.
The kind of hour when the world forgets how to breathe. When guilt creeps through locked doors, soft-footed and bold. When ghosts don't rattle chains to scare — they whisper, aching to be remembered.
Rain whispered against the windows like secrets no one dared to speak aloud. The kind that fell in slow, heavy drops — not wild, not furious — just steady. A quiet grief falling from the sky.
David lay motionless on the floor of a rented room in Lahore. No bedframe. No furniture. Just a thin mattress, one pillow, and a ceiling that refused to blink. The bare bulb above his head flickered, casting shadows that shifted like memories.
His phone buzzed once.
Then again.
But he didn't move.
He hadn't moved in hours. Or days. Not really.
He hadn't spoken to anyone in six weeks.
Not even Mavia.
Especially not Mavia.
The silence between them had grown so thick, it felt alive.
A third buzz. This one longer.
David stirred. The rain didn't pause. Neither did the ache behind his ribs. One arm reached out blindly, fingers clumsy with sleep and sorrow, fumbling for the phone.
A single message on the lock screen.
> "He said, 'I will die.' And then he did."
His breath caught.
His pulse didn't spike. It stopped.
He sat up slowly, like moving too fast might shatter whatever fragile thread held him together. The mattress creaked beneath him.
His eyes didn't blink.
He just stared.
> From: Meher
Mavia's sister.
Her name felt like glass in his throat. A name he hadn't read in nearly a year. A name that opened a wound just by existing.
He read the message again.
> "He said, 'I will die.' And then he did."
David's fingers went numb. The cold in the room suddenly had a voice — and it whispered one word, over and over:
No.
---
The last time they spoke, he and Mavia had fought.
Not loud. Not cruel. Just tired. Words sharpened by guilt and weariness, thrown like stones.
David had said something bitter. Something cowardly. Something he'd prayed for months to un-say.
> "Maybe we're all just wasting time until we disappear."
He remembered the way Mavia had looked at him — quiet, unreadable. His eyes like still water, as if every answer lived beneath a surface David couldn't reach.
And then he left.
No goodbye. No explanation.
No forwarding address.
He hadn't blocked anyone. He didn't have to.
He just... powered down. Vanished. Like ink spilled across paper — messy, irreversible, silent.
---
It was still raining.
It had been raining for days, as though Lahore itself was in mourning. The city wore its grief in rivulets — rain crawling down windows, pooling on broken sidewalks, dripping from eaves like unshed tears.
David didn't sleep.
He stared at his phone until the sky turned gray and the morning bled through the curtains like fog.
8:03 a.m.
Only then did his thumb move.
The call rang once.
Twice.
And then:
"David?"
Her voice was hoarse. Not from crying — from carrying too much.
"It's me," he said, his voice barely recognizable.
A silence followed — not empty, but heavy. As if the air between them carried every word they hadn't spoken.
"I didn't know if you'd call," Meher said.
"I almost didn't," he admitted.
"I figured," she whispered. "But I hoped."
The silence stretched again.
And then:
"Mavia's gone."
There was no breath left in him to steal. But still, something inside him collapsed.
"He took sleeping pills. Last night. He... didn't wake up."
David closed his eyes, but the darkness only deepened. No sound came from him. Not even a breath.
"I'm sorry," Meher added. "I shouldn't have messaged like that. It was cruel. But I didn't know what else to do."
He waited. His body had turned to stone. Still. Cold. Cracked.
"There was a note," she continued. "Just one sentence."
His throat tightened. "What did it say?"
> "Tell David he was right."
That was all.
---
David left Lahore before noon.
He didn't pack a bag.
He didn't eat.
He didn't look back.
He sat on the bus, forehead pressed to the window, the glass cold and wet. The countryside blurred as it passed — green and gray, like memory itself.
His phone sat in his lap. Silent. Heavy.
He didn't open any apps.
Didn't reply to anyone.
The only thing he carried was the weight of everything he hadn't said.
---
The cemetery was soaked.
Rain fell like thread, stitching sky to soil.
David stood far from the crowd, under the broken canopy of a banyan tree. No umbrella. Just the hood of a borrowed coat. Cold water slid down his spine.
The coffin was too small.
Too final.
Too quiet.
The mourners whispered. Some cried. Others just stared. As if waiting for Mavia to sit up and say it was all a joke.
But he didn't.
Because David had left.
And silence had swallowed him whole.
---
When the funeral ended, people drifted away — umbrellas folding like wings, shoes muddy, voices hushed. Car doors slammed. Engines hummed.
Only Meher remained.
She stood at the grave like it had challenged her — and she wasn't backing down.
Then she turned.
Walked toward him.
David didn't move. Couldn't.
Their eyes met. Hers were darker than he remembered. Not just tired — changed.
"You came," she said.
He swallowed. "I didn't know if I should."
"He waited for you." Her voice was low, almost lost beneath the rain. "Every night. Right until the end. He kept his phone close. Just in case."
David's heart gave a violent lurch.
"I wasn't worth that hope," he whispered.
But Meher didn't argue.
She reached into her coat and pulled out an envelope. Pale blue. Edges worn. Faint smudge on the corner — like a tear that had dried.
"He wrote this. For you."
---
That night, David sat in a room that wasn't his.
No lamp. Just a candle flickering on the window sill. The power had gone out an hour ago, but he hadn't noticed.
The letter trembled in his hands.
The handwriting was familiar. Hurried. Like it had been written between sobs — or breaths.
> David,
If you're reading this, I'm already gone.
I'm sorry. I never blamed you. I swear.
You left because you had to. I understand that now.
I kept checking my phone. Not because I was angry — but because I hoped.
We weren't wasting time. We were surviving.
I didn't make it. But you still can.
Please don't vanish like I did.
Try. For both of us.
— M
David didn't realize his hands were shaking until the candle's flame wavered, casting long shadows across the walls.
Outside, the rain continued.
Steady.
Patient.
Unrelenting.
Just like grief.
The phone beside him still glowed with the same message.
> "He said, 'I will die.' And then he did."
Over and over, like a sentence carved into stone.
Like a curse.
Like a confession.
---
He didn't sleep.
He couldn't.
He sat there until dawn, the letter pressed to his chest like it might glue him back together.
Somewhere between night and morning, something broke.
Not loud.
Not messy.
Just final.
He curled into himself, voice barely more than a breath, and whispered into the dark:
"I'm so sorry."
---
Grief doesn't ask for permission.
It doesn't knock.
It arrives like rain — quiet, endless, patient.
And sometimes, buried inside its downpour, there is a seed.
Not of peace.
Not yet.
But of something like a beginning.
---
End of Chapter