The boy looked at the girl sitting in front of him. He grabbed her hands softly and said, “Am I boring? Why don’t you want to be my friend anymore?”
The girl freed her hands and said, “You are just overthinking; there is nothing like this.” Her voice was hollow, stripped of any warmth she had.
The boy stared down at his trembling hands and said, “You think that I do not observe? I observe everything, even the minute details. I have observed changes in your behaviour towards me.”
“Again, I am saying, you are overthinking,” she sneered, her eyes scanning the room for an exit.
The boy chuckled, “Earlier, we used to talk so much. We used to share how our day went along with our problems. First, you started shortening our conversations, and now you have stopped talking to me.”
“It’s not what you are thinking. It’s just that I don’t get time at home. I don’t call or talk to anyone due to my busy schedule.”
The boy grabbed the glass. “Really? You think you would say anything and,I would believe? An hour ago, you were laughing with Agam about your conversation last night. And that too in front of me.”
The girl’s facial expression changed. “Oh, that? Well, he called me.”
“But you told me not to call on weekends as you are busy with family during weekends.”
The girl stood up, “You are just overthinking. Everything is the same as it was.”
“No! I am not. Why are you lying to me? Earlier, we used to talk regularly. We cared about each other. But now you don’t.”
The girl didn’t say anything. The boy looked at her, expecting a rep, but she didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes and opened them. The girl was not in front of him anymore. A frigid weight pressed onto his left shoulder. A dark, suffocating shadow sat beside him. “Are you alright, Ankit?”
“I am not feeling good. I feel like I have no friends.”
“Why are you thinking like this?” the shadow said.
“You are the only one who talks with me now.”
“Ankit? Ankit? Hello?”
Ankit’s eyes suddenly opened, and the girl was sitting in front of her. He looked to his side, where no one was sitting.
“You suddenly zoned out.”
“No! No! It’s just I don’t know what I did wrong, and why are you behaving differently?”
“I think there is nothing to discuss. You are just overthinking,” the girl stood up and walked away.
Ankit could feel his heart rate accelerating. He wanted to forget everything. He couldn’t process what was happening. His vision got blurry as tears filled his eyes. He felt as if he was being shot. He closed his eyes and thought, “Life is not fair. Why is it happening to me? I never had bad intentions; I never did anything wrong; I just wanted a genuine friendship. Was I just a parasite to her?”
“Will you ever move on? You were not boyfriend and girlfriend. You were an affliction.”
Ankit saw the shadow sitting on his side, “You won’t understand. I cared. I poured my soul into her.”
The shadow looked at Ankit, “You devoured her! You bled your poison onto her every single day and never once asked if she was drowning! You used her as a dumping ground for your broken mind, and now you bleed because she finally saved herself.”
Ankit was exasperated, “What wrong did I do? Why was she so friendly in the beginning and then suddenly stopped talking to me?”
“She wanted a good friend, and you never became one because you never respected the friendship.”
Ankit chuckled, “I didn’t respect the friendship? I was the most sensitive and caring in the whole group. And if you are saying that I mostly told her my problems, that was because she asked me to tell her whenever I had a problem.”
“And did you ask her if she had any problems?”
Ankit didn’t say anything.
“Did you?” the shadow asked again.
Ankit remained silent.
The shadow chuckled, “I think you got your answer.”
“Answer? What answer?”
The shadow slapped Ankit. “Are you fucking asleep?”
Ankit was startled.
The shadow raised its voice, “She tried to be your good friend. She always listened to your problems. She did everything to keep you happy, and what did you do? You never respected the friendship. You were just addicted to telling her your problems. You were never interested in listening to her problems. You never made her feel happy. All you wanted was her call asking you about your problems. And when she stopped caring, of course, everyone has a limit; you started caring about her feelings. Now, as you are addicted to her voice and her presence, you are having problems because she has started maintaining distance from you.”
Ankit was petrified.
“You need to forget everything now. The past is over, and you need to stop thinking about it.”
He felt a tap on the shoulder. He shook his head and found a waiter standing in front of him. “Sir, the restaurant is closing. The lady has left and paid the table’s bill.”
He stood up and started walking. As he was walking on the footpath, he looked at the stars and thought, “What did you used to say? Whenever you feel sad, just look at the stars.”
Ankit walked under the streetlights. The stars above seemed colder now. He repeated her old advice under his breath like a prayer that had lost its god.
“Look at the stars. That’s what you said, right? Whenever it hurts, just look up.”
The sky only stared back, empty. He walked to the empty playground and sat on the bench.
“You never asked,” the shadow said, “You never listened. You only needed her to exist so you could empty yourself into her.”
Ankit’s hands began to shake. He pressed them against the cold wood of the bench. “I did care,” he said aloud to the darkness.
“You told her everything,” the shadow interrupted, “And you never once asked what she was carrying. You called it friendship. She called it endurance.”
He stood, spinning in a slow circle. “I only wanted her to stay in my life. Was that so wrong?”
Silence answered him. Then, from the fountain pond, his own reflection in the water watched him with hollow eyes.
“You are pathetic,” the reflection mouthed, though the words reached him clearly. “You weren’t her friend. You were a wound that learned to speak.”
Ankit stepped closer to the water. “Then why did she smile at me in the beginning? Why did she say she would never leave? Why did she say that we would be friends forever?”
The reflection’s lips curled, “Because kindness has a limit. And you kept taking until there was nothing left to give.”
He turned away and sat back down on the bench. The hallucinations slowly thinned, like smoke dispersing. No more shadows. Just the ordinary night, the distant sound of a scooter, the first birds beginning to stir.
He stayed there until dawn. When the first commuters began drifting across the park, laughing about night stories and day plans, Ankit stood up. His legs felt heavy. He walked home without looking at the sky again.
One year later, the girl texted, “Belated happy birthday, Ankit.”
“This is the first time that she didn’t call to wish me and also wished me one day late,” Ankit chuckled.
He started typing, “Hello. How are you? Hope you are fine. Thanks for the wish. Please tell me one last time. Why have you stopped talking to me? Can’t we just restart our friendship? Please give me one more chance. I never understood what went wrong.”
The girl replied, “See, Ankit, I think we have talked about this a lot. Let’s be honest, you know our friendship was never that strong. Everything started getting worse by the end of the degree. Now, I have good friends, including Agam. They are like my family. Whatever you are asking is not going to happen. It is too late now.”
Ankit looked at the chat and lay on the bed. He replayed every moment, searching for the exact second he had become too much. He never found it. The question simply stayed with him, unanswered, growing quieter but never leaving.
The shadow, his inner darkness, looked at Ankit. “Remembering her again, and he lets his heart ask just one more time, knowing it’s the sentence that he will serve forever.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJv3NKIO29g
and then Add to home screen.