SERENDIPITOUS|✓

Chapter 14

"I should go,"

The words hung like a sun, in Radha's ears, making her throat dryer than a desert, not expecting them to be leaving Krishn's mouth this soon.

"Oh," she breathed to herself and Krishn didn't miss the sadness lingering in her voice neither did she.

It shouldn't have been this difficult. Shouldn't affect them as it did, they were strangers after all but the truth was just too evident. Their situation was no different from each other. Breathing calmly felt like a challenge to both of them, and clearing up their clogged throat was no less than a task, too tedious to be performed smoothly, by both of them.

This was not how strangers should feel when they part ways, not according to them at least.

Yet here they were, seceding with stinging eyes and sulking faces, anyways.

A small, shaking bye was what Radha heard last before Krishn went away for a week leaving her here, in the midst of people, alone.

*
The sun had set down and empty, empty was what she felt.

Radha, for one, never understood how someone could feel empty.

It wasn't like all the blood would flush out of a person making them empty neither was it the case where all the bones would disappear into the atmosphere leaving nothing but emptiness behind.

No nothing like that ever happened to her or anyone for that matter and so this statement made absolutely no sense to her.

Until today, that is.

Today, emptiness had found a place in Radha's dictionary.

She could unmistakably describe the feeling, she had felt since morning.

Her whole day went quite normally.

Talking to Mr Rathore, avoiding Abhi's curious gazes, learning cooking from the sweet lady worker and listening to the very polite accusations leaving Mrs Rathore's mouth.

Pretty normal.

Just that, the whole day her chest kept paining. Not a 'rock-crushing-the-palm' pain but a 'vacuum-sucking-the-air' pain.

It was as if a void had been created in her chest, continuously brimming it with hollowness.

There were no other feelings just. . .it was, empty. The feeling was weird so weird, confusing Radha till no end but still, she didn't want to go deeper and dig out the reason behind this uncomfortable feeling because maybe, just maybe she knew what had caused it, maybe she remembered what had happened this morning and God, was she terrified to voice it?

*

"Here, have some water," these considerate words came from none other than Abhi himself.

Seconds ago, Radha had been peacefully eating the breakfast on the table when suddenly a piece of bread decided to stick in her throat, making her cough frantically.

She had immediately covered her mouth seeing the grimacing expression on Mrs Rathore's face, momentarily ignoring Mr Rathore's worried ones, her eyes too busy scrunching, from the cough.

"C'mon, drink it." Abhi insisted and shifted the glass closer to her and she took the glass from his hand and gulped down the water. The fluid worked immediately and stopped her coughing, the questions in her mind though, kept itching her throat.

Why was Abhi being so normal with her?

Maybe he wasn't lying when he said he didn't want to hurt her in the past.