Chapter 4: The Edge of the Mirror

Aarav Verma had received countless emails over the years.
Some congratulated.
Some requested.
Some demanded.
This one unsettled.

It was short. Precise. Polite.
But every word pressed somewhere soft in his chest.

> “Your words wouldn’t let me go.”
“If you’d like to meet…”
“The one with the guilty expression and a pen.”

He read it once.
Then again.

And again.

His coffee sat untouched. His phone buzzed with calendar reminders, vibrating quietly against the wood of his desk like a distant engine of a train he hadn’t boarded.

Who was she?

He’d searched the email domain �" a Gmail, nothing corporate. Nothing official. Just ira.sen91@. No real clues.
But the name stuck.

Ira Sen.

It sounded... literary. Or like someone who knew how to turn vulnerability into character arcs. Someone who annotated margins. Someone who shouldn’t have been reading his therapy notes.

And yet �" she had.

And she hadn’t used them to mock him.
Or expose him.
She’d simply said: Your story deserves to be heard.
---

He rose, moved to the window.

Kolkata below him was as alive and dissonant as ever �" cars honking without cause, clouds gathering for a storm that might never come. But Aarav felt still. Like the moment just before glass shatters.

> “Shimla was the last time I was honest,” he had told Dr. Rehm.

But even in therapy, he hadn’t been fully honest. Not really. He circled things. Worded his pain like puzzles. He dissected himself in pieces, then tucked the scalpel neatly away before ever hitting bone.

But she �" Ira �" had seen something. Not the whole truth, maybe. But a flicker of it.

And now she wanted to meet.
---

“Rehan,” Aarav called, stepping into his partner’s office.

Rehan looked up from a skateboard, eyebrow arched. “You’re using my name like someone announcing a fire drill. Should I be worried?”

“I got an email,” Aarav said.

Rehan stood, already smirking. “From your mystery fan?”

Aarav blinked. “How did you�"”

“You’ve been checking your inbox like it owes you money. Figured something weird was going on.”

Aarav handed him the phone.

Rehan read silently. Then whistled low. “Damn. She’s got good grammar. And guts.”

“She read my transcript, Rehan.”

“Yeah,” he said, slowly. “And instead of selling it to a tabloid, she asked to meet. That’s not guts. That’s... curiosity with a moral compass.”

Aarav shook his head. “I don’t know what she wants.”

“Maybe she just wants to understand,” Rehan said. Then added, more gently, “When’s the last time someone wanted that from you?”

---

That night, Aarav didn’t sleep.

Not well, anyway. He lay in bed, arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling fan. It spun like it had secrets. He counted each slow rotation.

He remembered snow. Her back turned.
The silence.
The storm.

> “She thought I was cold.”
“I was afraid if I told her everything, she’d look at me differently.”

But Ira already had.
And she hadn’t flinched.

---

Thursday came.

He arrived at the College Street Coffee House ten minutes early �" a habit he hadn’t grown out of. The place smelled like history and roasted beans. A ceiling fan clicked overhead. The furniture creaked when you moved, like it had opinions.

And there, near the window �" a girl. Mid-twenties. Pen in hand. Wide eyes that tried not to look anxious and failed spectacularly.

Their eyes met.

She stood.

“Aarav Verma?” she asked.

“Ira Sen,” he replied.

She looked almost embarrassed. “Thank you for not sending a cease and desist.”

He offered a small, tired smile. “I thought about it. Then I got curious.”

They sat.

Neither reached for the menu.

Between them lay a fragile, delicate quiet �" not awkward, but charged. Like the air in a room right before someone says something important.

“So,” he said finally. “What exactly do you want?”

She didn’t look away. “To write a story.”

“About me?”

“About the version of you that only existed in that transcript.”

Aarav leaned back, studying her. Most people �" even the closest ones �" leaned out when he got like this. Cold. Guarded. But she stayed still.

“I don’t know if I want to be written,” he said.

“That’s fair,” Ira replied. “But you already were.”

He frowned slightly.

She smiled �" not arrogantly, but kindly. “You put yourself on the page. I just... noticed.”

A silence followed.
And for once, it didn’t scare him.

---

Outside, a storm was building in the sky.
Inside, two strangers sat across a table, sipping warmth between sentences.

Not quite trust.
Not yet a story.
But something had begun.

And for the first time in years, Aarav didn’t feel like he was performing.

He felt like someone might actually be listening.