For three years after his parents died, Suny learned how to be invisible. He learned that if you walk with your head down, people forget to hate you. They just forget you exist. That was better. Hate was loud. Being forgotten was quiet.
He was 13 now. The Verma Mansion was still his cage. His uncle and aunt still lived there, still spent the money, still told everyone he was "difficult." He believed them. If everyone says you are a problem, you start to believe it.
He didn't go to school anymore. "Waste of money," his uncle had said. So Suny stayed in his room, or in the wild garden. He read old books his father had left behind. He learned that books don't hate you for being quiet.
One day, his aunt threw a train ticket at him. "Go to your grandmother's village for a week. We have guests coming. We don't want you here."
He didn't argue. He packed one bag. He had never been on a train alone. He had never been anywhere alone. The station was loud and scary and full of people who didn't look at him. He liked that.
He got off at a small station called Dharampur. His grandmother's village was 2 kilometers from there. He started walking. The road was dusty. The sun was hot. The fields on both sides were green and endless.
That was when he saw her.
She was standing by a small tea stall, arguing with the shopkeeper. She was not beautiful like movie stars. She was simple. Her hair was in a loose braid. She wore a plain yellow kurta that had a small ink stain on the sleeve. She was not trying to be anything. She was just... there.
And she was laughing. Loudly. With her whole body. Like she had never been told that being loud was bad.
Suny stopped walking. He had not heard real laughter in three years. Not the polite, fake laughter of his aunt's guests. Real laughter. It sounded like a song he had forgotten.
The girl, Kiran, was her name, he learned later, was telling the shopkeeper that his tea had too much sugar. "Uncle, are you trying to make me diabetic at age 16? I just want to taste the tea, not the sugar factory."
The shopkeeper was laughing too. No one was hating her. No one was calling her difficult.
Suny wanted to keep walking. Invisible boys don't stand and stare. But his feet didn't move.
Kiran noticed him then. Most people looked at Suny and saw his old, expensive shoes and his empty eyes and looked away. Kiran looked at him and tilted her head, like she was solving a puzzle.
"You're lost, aren't you?" she asked. Her voice was not soft. It was not careful. It was direct.
Suny didn't know what to say. No one had asked him a question in months. Not a real question. "I... I am going to my grandmother's village," he mumbled.
"Which one? I know everyone here. I come here every summer to my nani's house." She said it like it was the most normal thing in the world. To know everyone. To have a nani.
"Kumhar village," Suny said. The name felt like a stone in his mouth.
"Oh! That's on the way to my nani's place. I'm going there too. Come on, I'll show you. It's a 20-minute walk, but if we go through the fields it's 10."
She just... decided for him. She picked up her small bag, paid the shopkeeper for her tea, and started walking. Then she turned back and looked at him, waiting.
Suny had a choice. Keep being invisible. Or follow the girl with the ink stain and the loud laugh.
He followed.
They walked through the fields. Kiran talked the entire time. She didn't ask him sad questions. She didn't say "bechara." She talked about how the cows in this village were lazy, how the mango tree near the pond had the sweetest mangoes but you had to fight the monkeys for them, how she hated math but loved drawing.
Suny didn't say a single word for the first 9 minutes. On the 10th minute, Kiran stopped walking. She turned to him, hands on her hips.
"You are very quiet, you know that? Are you a spy? Did my nani send you to check if I'm eating vegetables?"
And for the first time in three years, Suny felt something crack inside his chest. It wasn't sad. It was surprised. He let out a sound. It was short and rusty from not being used. It was a laugh.
Kiran's eyes went wide. Then she grinned. "There he is! I knew you were in there somewhere. What's your name, Spy Boy?"
"Suny," he said. His own name sounded strange to his ears.
"Suny. I'm Kiran. And we are now friends. No arguments." She said it like it was a law of nature. Like the sky is blue and Suny and Kiran are friends.
No one had ever decided to be his friend before. People decided to hate him. People decided to ignore him. No one decided to like him.
They reached his grandmother's house. His grandmother was old and her memory was weak. She cried when she saw him and called him by his father's name for the first hour. Kiran stayed until his grandmother stopped crying. She made tea for all three of them. She didn't have to. She just did.
For the next seven days, Kiran came to the house every morning. "To check on the spy," she'd say. She would bring him drawings she made of the village. She would teach him how to climb the mango tree and fight the monkeys. She would sit with him in silence and it wasn't a heavy silence. It was a comfortable one.
She never asked him why he was so quiet. She never asked him why his clothes were old but his shoes were expensive. She never asked him why he flinched when someone raised their voice.
She just... was there. Every day. At 10 AM. Like the sun.
On the seventh day, when his train ticket was for the evening, Kiran was quiet for the first time. They were sitting by the pond.
"You're leaving," she said. It wasn't a question.
Suny nodded. He looked at his hands. He didn't want to go back to the mansion. He didn't want to go back to being invisible.
Kiran picked up a small, flat stone and skipped it across the pond. It jumped five times. "My nani says people who meet by the water are meant to meet again. So I'll see you again, Suny. Okay?"
It wasn't a request. It was a promise. And for the first time, Suny believed a promise someone made to him.
He didn't know then that Kiran would keep that promise. He didn't know that she would find him again when he was 18. He didn't know that the girl who didn't hate him would be the girl he would marry one day.
All he knew on that day was that for one week, he was not completely alone.
And that was enough to keep him alive.....
The end...
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