The morning after their late-night call felt… different.
Arjun didn't wake up heavy. He didn't check his phone in fear - he wanted to.
And there it was - a message from Shruthi. Not a forwarded reel or a photo, but something long, raw, and typed with trembling fingers.
"I don't know how we became silent, Arjun.
Maybe I was scared to say too much, afraid I'd break what little we had left.
But the truth? I miss being your person. I miss being us."
She ended with:
"I found the letters you wrote me back in college… still folded in the old blue notebook. I read them again last night. You haven't changed. But I did… and I'm sorry."
Tears welled up in Arjun's eyes. He had no idea those letters still existed.
He opened his drawer, dug out a dusty envelope - one he never sent.
It was a letter he wrote the night she boarded the flight to the U.S., tucked away with the hope that she'd return before he ever needed to send it.
He read it again now.
"Don't forget the little things, Shruthi. The way we laugh without reason. The way we fight and make up without pride. The way we hold space for each other."
"Go build your world. But please, don't forget the one we started together."
That evening, Arjun replied - not with a message, but a photo. Of that old letter.
"Looks like I wrote across time too. Still waiting for our world to be whole again."
Here is the next chapter of their deeply emotional journey: