In which Anjali moves to Misayur, a small town in Western Tamilnadu to live with her grandmother and ends up running into her childhood crush Karthik, who is not the unserious boy she knew him as anymore.
Anjali was finishing up her daily log in school when Shalini walked into the staffroom, waving a piece of paper with a creepy smile. She stood right before Anjali's desk and fanned her face with the paper. "Guess who sent this for you!" she sang off-key and Anjali's eyes widened.
She sprang from her desk and reached for it, snatching it off her hands immediately. "Did you read it?" she narrowed her eyes at Shalini.
"Do I have no better thing to do than die by the hands of Karthik of all people?" she asked, stepping back and leaning onto Malini's desk which was empty today. She was caught up in wedding preparations.
Anjali sat down and opened the paper slowly. It was another crayon drawing. It was a picture of the matching keychains that they had bought together during their last school trip. The misshapen heart and the detailing inside was captured exactly as it was, as if he'd looked at it and drawn it rather than from memory. Did he still hold onto the keychain?
The picture had the following words:
Just before you bought this keychain, you told me you were leaving school. While I was preoccupied with matchmaking Vishal and Layla, I never paused to realise how close you had become to me. But that moment, when you dropped that bomb on me, I felt a sinking sadness in my heart. It spread like slow poison and every time I looked at you after that, it killed me an inch. I said nothing, of course, the feeling was too strange to articulate into words. Now, I know what that feeling was. Its the same one that's killing me right now but ten times worse now that I've held you in my arms. I miss you, Anjali. Badly. I miss you so much that every part of me aches. Please don't stay mad at me forever.
Yours always,
Karthik.
"Oh my god, you're crying. What did he write in that paper?" Shalini asked, coming to Anjali's side with concern.
She smiled, almost a laugh amidst her tears and said, "What I wanted to know."
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Papers after papers found Anjali. Crayon drawings of the pictures they took in the photobooth, their annual day performance together, the slam book that she begged him to write in, the last time he saw her in school. They were all accompanied with beautiful words, words that made it very difficult for her to keep away from him. Every time she visited his house to spend time with Tanya, he would stay in his room and sit in the dining area instead of joining them in the living room. The distance was killing her.
"It's been almost a week since I spoke to him. How much space is enough space? I don't want to torture both of us anymore," she told Layla.
