Chapter 11: The One Who Always Knew

There are days when silence feels heavier than noise.
And then there are nights �" like this one �" when the quiet doesn't just settle; it stalks.

Ira and Aarav sat on her rooftop, shoulder-width apart, close enough to share warmth but too far to borrow comfort.

The city below blinked and buzzed in a language of restless insomnia.

Aarav’s fingers tapped against the cold railing. No rhythm, just memory.

> “My brother used to tell me stories,” he said, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Not bedtime tales. More like… psychological tricks. How to redirect blame. How to build a narrative that can’t be questioned.”

The air around them seemed to hold its breath.

> “Was he older?” Ira asked gently.

> “Five years. He was… golden. Teachers loved him. Parents paraded him. The kind of person who enters a room and people straighten their backs.”

He didn’t smile. That wasn’t pride in his voice. That was a man mourning someone still alive.

> “He ever meet Meera?”

The pause was brief �" too brief.

> “Once. Shimla.”

> “And Kiara?”

A sharper silence.

The kind that wasn’t empty, but cauterized.

> “She was Meera’s friend,” he said. “Mine too, once. For a while.”

> “What happened to her?”

Aarav blinked, once. Slowly.

> “She left. Some people don’t wait for the truth to be told. They run before it ruins them.”

Ira’s skin prickled. Not from cold �" from something else. Something unsaid.

He said nothing more.

---

When he left, he didn’t say goodbye �" he rarely did. He just looked at her like someone memorizing a face before disappearing.

Ira stayed on the rooftop after he’d gone, heart knotted.

The word “Kiara” echoed like a faint bell underwater.

She hadn’t noticed it before.
Hadn’t connected it.
But now…

---

Back inside, she flipped to the final pages of Meera’s journal �" the section she’d skimmed past too quickly in the early days. A list. Three initials scribbled in pencil, barely legible under the shadow of the spine:

A.
K.
Me.

No full names. No explanations.

Just that.

It looked like a confession. Or a countdown.

And now, she couldn’t stop seeing Kiara in that “K.”
Couldn’t stop wondering how close she had been to the heart of it all.
---

She moved to her desk and reopened Aarav’s printed therapy transcripts, suddenly scanning them like someone searching for a forgotten detail in a crime scene.

And there it was. She must’ve missed it the first time. Session 5.

> “It wasn’t my hand on the camera, but I still hear the shutter click when I close my eyes.”

She froze.

What did that mean? Who took the picture?
What picture?

She scribbled in the margin:

> Who took the photo?
What was he watching?
What was he protecting?

But even more unsettling was the new question rising in her chest:

> What if Aarav isn’t hiding what he did?
What if he’s hiding what he knows?

---

She closed the notebook slowly. Her reflection in the window stared back, warping slightly with the pane’s tremble.

Somewhere in Aarav’s world, someone had done something that left a scar across three lives �" Meera. Kiara. And him.

And maybe, just maybe…

> That someone wasn’t him.