Lost Between Two Worlds

Chapter 2: The Shift

The rain hadn’t stopped for hours.

It clung to the glass of Ayeshi’s bedroom window like the weight she carried in her chest—persistent, unrelenting. She sat cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in her favorite blanket, a dim lamp casting soft light over the half-read book beside her. Another love story. Another fictional man with wounded eyes and a heart that beat only for one woman.

She used to believe she’d find someone like that.

But now? Four years into a marriage that was supposed to be a fairytale ending, she was more lost than ever. Rihan had changed—she saw that. But the ghost of who he once was haunted her more than his presence now could heal.

She hugged her knees tightly. "Why couldn't you be like them?" she whispered. "Why did I have to fall in love with you first?"

The book slipped from her lap and landed on the floor with a soft thud. It flipped open to a highlighted line:

“Sometimes, love finds us in the wrong lifetime.”

She closed her eyes, her lips parting in a prayer she hadn’t whispered since she was a teenager. “If there's a way... let me try again. Let me live it differently. Let me choose better... or help him become the person I believed he was.”

That night, lightning tore the sky open like a wound. A deafening crack, then silence. Darkness.

And then—nothing.

No sound. No pain. No light. Just the soft fluttering sensation of falling. Her body felt like air, weightless and drifting, and then—

She gasped.

Her eyes flew open. Sunlight poured in through cream-colored curtains. A radio played some old Hindi song. Her walls were plastered with posters from high school days — and her phone buzzed with a ringtone she hadn’t used since she was a teen.

“What...?” she muttered, sitting up.

She blinked. Her bed. Her room. But not the one she shared with Rihan. This was her old room. The one she lived in before she fell in love, before college, before heartbreak.

Her heart thundered. She stumbled to the mirror — and gasped.

She looked younger. No fine lines from stress. No dark circles from overthinking. Her hair was longer, like it was back in her college years. She touched her face in disbelief.

It wasn’t a dream.

She had gone back.

Her phone buzzed again. A text notification.

“Hey! Guess who just transferred into our class? Rihan!!!"

She dropped the phone.

"No way..." she whispered.

---

The day felt surreal. Like walking through a movie she had already watched. She saw him—Rihan—standing with a group of boys, laughing, his old-school charm glowing like the sun. Her heart ached.

He didn’t know her.

Not yet.

And he was still in love with someone else. Her name lingered in the halls — his first love. The one who would leave him. The one whose absence would turn him cold.

Ayeshi watched from afar.

This time, she didn’t approach him with a shy smile. She didn’t confess first. She stayed in the shadows, watching the pieces fall the way she remembered them.

And then it happened.

One afternoon, she walked back home from the library when she heard a crash. A bottle rolled on the street. A figure slumped against a wall near the roadside shop.

Rihan.

His eyes were red. His breath thick with alcohol. His shirt was unbuttoned, and his knuckles scraped. A broken boy—again.

She stood still. Everything in her screamed to walk away. To not fall into the same pain.

But then he looked at her—just for a moment.

And in that moment, even though he didn’t recognize her, she remembered everything.

Ayeshi rushed to him.

"Hey—hey, you okay?" she said softly, kneeling beside him.

He looked at her, squinting. “Who are you?”

She smiled faintly. “Just someone who’s seen this scene before.”

He chuckled dryly. “You a fortune teller or something?”

“No,” she said. “Just... someone who cares.”

She took him home that day. He didn’t ask her name. She didn’t offer. But slowly, over days and weeks, they became friends.

Not lovers. Not yet.

Just two broken souls—one falling, the other trying to catch him before he hit the ground.

Ayeshi never confessed. She didn’t have to.

Because this time, she wasn’t chasing love.

She was rewriting the story.