"We both loved in silence -

me, a girl who never saw me,

and him? a friend who thought I couldn't feel anything."

The morning after the breakdown felt unreal.

Like the world had hit reset, but I hadn't.

I didn't cry anymore - not because it didn't hurt, but because the pain had settled.

Like background noise. Always there.

I sat on the campus bench outside the hostel, staring at the empty coffee cup in my hand when Reyan found me.

He sat beside me, silent at first. Just breathing in the same heaviness I was.

Then, finally, he said, "Meera told you?"

I nodded.

"She said you cried," he added.

I nodded again.

Reyan leaned back, hands in his pockets. "It's about time."

I looked at him, confused.

He smirked bitterly. "You've been bleeding inside for months, Aarin. Watching you fake smiles was more painful than watching you break."

I stayed quiet.

He sighed, staring up at the sky.

"You know? I used to envy you."

That hit me sideways.

"What?"

He chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound.

"You always felt everything so deeply. Loved with your whole damn soul. You saw beauty in pain. You wrote poems out of rejection. And me? I never let anyone in that far. I was always the guy with jokes and distractions."

He looked at me then, really looked.

"But I was scared too. Of being like you. Of loving like that and ending up wrecked."

I blinked. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because I watched you fall alone, and I didn't know how to catch you. And I thought maybe if I avoided your pain, it'd go away on its own."

He took a breath.

"But it didn't. It grew. And now you're here. Broken. And I can't ignore it anymore."

There was a long silence.

But not the awkward kind - the real kind. The one where two people finally let their guards down.

I looked at him.

"You've always been my brother," I said. "Even when you didn't understand me."

He gave a tired smile. "And you've always been the heart of us, even when yours was falling apart."

We sat there for hours.

No grand confessions. No dramatic tears.

Just shared grief. Mutual regrets. And quiet loyalty.

At one point, Reyan looked at me and said:

"You still love her, don't you?"

I nodded.

"But maybe not the same way I used to."

He nodded too. "That's growth, Aarin. Painful, slow, but real."

As the sun dipped behind the trees, I wrote something in my notebook, with Reyan beside me.

"He didn't save me.

But he stayed -

and sometimes, that's what saving looks like."