The skies cracked open without warning.
It wasn't storm season, not yet — but the heavens didn't seem to care. By the time I reached the school gate, the world had turned gray, the kind that seeps not just into clothes and shoes, but into the very edges of thought.
I watched students scatter like startled birds, ducking beneath umbrellas, notebooks held overhead. Some cursed the rain. Some laughed. Some stood still, letting it drench them.
I was one of the still ones.
Because it wasn't the rain outside that I was worried about.
It was the storm inside.
Sia didn't come to school.
No texts. No word from Arjun either. And I couldn't shake the feeling that something was being rearranged behind a curtain I couldn't lift.
I found myself in the library again, alone this time, walking to the corner shelf where the old science fiction novels sat. The one she read — Fahrenheit 451 — was gone.
Not checked out.
Just gone.
I ran my fingers across the dust-lined spines. One of them wobbled when I touched it. I pulled it back.
There, between two books, folded like a secret: a torn-out notebook page with Sia's handwriting.
"If I leave early, I won't get to say it properly. So just know this—
some people disappear, not because they want to…
but because no one ever asked them to stay."
My fingers trembled as I read it again. And again.
I went to Arjun's place that evening.
It wasn't far, just a ten-minute walk from the tea shop our gang used to haunt. His mother opened the door, her face lined with surprise.
"Rishi?" she said. "You boys fighting again or something?"
I blinked. "Why?"
"He left for coaching camp early. Packed up yesterday. Didn't even say goodbye to Sia, poor girl."
Yesterday?
This wasn't right.
They had fought before, yes — but this early? This sudden?
Everything was shifting.
It wasn't just memory anymore. Something was accelerating.
I walked back home in the drizzle, my shirt sticking to my skin, but my head miles away. I felt like a man walking through his own story… and realizing someone else had picked up the pen.
At dinner, I didn't eat.
Mom noticed.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah."
She touched my cheek. "You're burning up."
I didn't reply. Because it wasn't fever. It was grief. A pre-grief. Like watching a replay of your life and realizing the tape is slowly degrading.
That night, I stood at the window, rain trailing down the glass like veins. The calendar on the wall blinked back at me —
March 20th.
The day my brother vanishes was tomorrow.
The day Dad loses his job? Two days away.
And now, even the people I thought I'd save — they were slipping through the cracks.
Time wasn't giving me a second chance.
It was testing me.
And if I didn't move soon, I'd lose everyone all over again.