Main Hoon. Na Link

“I know,” he said.

The silence stretched. A train horn moaned in the distance. Somewhere, a cat screamed. Life continued its brutal, beautiful rhythm.

The rain had stopped three hours ago, but the world still smelled of wet earth and rust. Arjun leaned against the crumbling wall of the abandoned bus shelter, his reflection a ghost in the puddle at his feet. The last bus had left at midnight. It was now 2:17 a.m.

“You’re right. I can’t know your creature. But I know mine.” He finally moved, sitting down cross-legged on the damp concrete, still keeping distance. “Mine tells me I’m invisible. That no one would notice if I stopped showing up. That every smile I give is just a performance.” main hoon. na

A sob escaped her—not the quiet kind, but the ugly, heaving kind that comes from the deepest well. She pulled her legs back from the edge. Just an inch. But an inch was a universe.

“Then I’ll carry the ‘can’t’ for both of us. Until you can borrow some back.”

She turned her head slightly, just enough to see his silhouette against the faint glow of the city. His face was smudged with exhaustion, his shirt torn at the elbow from where he’d tripped over a fallen billboard. His eyes, though—they weren’t pleading. They weren’t desperate. They were simply there . Unblinking. Solid. “I know,” he said

He wasn’t waiting for a bus.

He took a slow breath. The wind carried the sound of a stray dog barking somewhere far below. The city slept, indifferent.

“I’m not asking you to stay for hope,” he said. “Or for family. Or for some future that might get better. I’m asking you to stay because right now, in this broken second, I am here . And that has to be enough for the next ten seconds. Then we do ten more.” Somewhere, a cat screamed

“Then why are you here?”

And that, for tonight, was a kind of miracle.

Now he stood outside the terrace gate of the old Tiwari mansion—her family’s abandoned property. The place she always fled to when the world became too heavy. The gate was unlocked. The staircase was dark.