Inaya.
I look like I've got my life together but I cried over a misplaced pen cap last night. Letters between RT and me have become frequent by now. Every night, I write a letter to him, and by the next evening, I have the reply in my inbox. But not every phase continues for more than a few days. Boom! Yesterday my college dropped the schedule for upcoming exams followed by a bunch of assignments and my argument with Kavya is a cherry on top! Such a lovely day, huh, Aya? 10/10. Would not recommend it. As days passed the distance between me and Kavya increased, and I found myself buried in my books, the letters long forgotten. As my exam week approached I became more and more restless one of the reasons was the stress and secondly the lack of communication between me, Kavya, Arnav, and well Rabin. Over the past few weeks, he became my 3 am friend who I did talk to about any shit without the fear of being judged. "I wish I could talk to Rabin about this." is what I often found myself thinking when things got too much for me to handle. Trust me talking to him helped, his calm and composed demeanor was a complete contrast to my chaotic and messy self. Once again I found myself drafting an email for him writing my thoughts even before I gave things a second thought.
Dear RT,
Sorry for almost ghosting you like some toxic bitch am not. Life got too much to handle for me once again, everyday occurrence isn't it? My exams are approaching at the speed of light and I am a tortoise who's forgotten how to read, I can't cope with literally anything. I keep reading and rereading the same notes for the nth time unaware if that's helping. Me and my best friend usually study together and we got into an argument a few weeks back and have been distant since and i lowkey feel like a second option to her now when I often spot her with her oh-so-very nouvelle friends which she spoils to death! Sucks right? You better say yes. The anxiety is getting the best of me lately. Imagine me going to bed before 4 am! Sounds like hell right? But you know what the worst part is? Even though I go to bed early which my elder brother is proud of me about, I end up crying myself to sleep which is not a very me thingy to do. But with you things sometimes feel different, It's weird, isn't it? How someone you've never met can make you feel seen. Or maybe that's the trick — it's easier to be honest with someone who doesn't know who you are. I hope you get what I'm trying to say. Or at least feel it. Even if the words are messy. Anyway, thank you for reading through my rants.
Annoyingly yours,
IM.
I sent the email before going out and typing another one to Rabin. Classic Inaya thing to do.
Dear RT,
Hello! Lmao second letter, dumb of me right?? I dont know why I decided to write this one out of the blue. trust me, my trust issues are insane but I dont get why I am trusting you so easily to the point where am thinking about sharing some facts about me. I write poems to express myself and use my beloved Tea as my only emotional support, I kind of lack emotional stability which is due to my abandonment issues. I genuinely dont get why I am telling all this to you as you do not even know who I am, or what I look like but I feel I can trust you with things, I hope you aren't planning on using things against me. Anyways continuing with the facts romance fiction is my life! A word against my favorite fictional character and I can kill anyone. I suffer from Main Character Syndrome and I have no shame in accepting it. I try fitting into people to avoid the feeling of being left out, I know it's a bad attitude, to begin with, but I can help well who does like belonging to a group well I know this habit of mine gets me into trouble cuz people I made adjustments for later replace me and I am left behind questioning where I went wrong. But you know the greatest part?? It's not just that my peers replace me, the same happens in my family as well. Funny right? Well RT trust me you still have time, run! Ghost me and run who would want to be with my emotionally unstable ass! Take a chance block me and forget you ever had this whole pen pal thing.
Annoyingly yours,
IM.
Rabin.
I sat in my classroom with my best friend Hideya Yoshida beside me listening as the professor chattered about some of his stories as a studying architecture, stories that he had already told us a hundred times before. At this point, I can hear Hideya mumble the same words, we knew those stories by heart now. My phone pinged twice within a span of half an hour, "Someone's getting repeated messages now huh??" Hideya whispered with a teasing glint in his voice. I rarely get messages and most of them are spam text. I opened my phone to check the rare sender. IM??? She's alive?? I thought she ghosted me to the afterlife.?? Two letters?? Classic her.
"Who is it??" Hideya asked him and his curious ass. Oh, a correction is needed! overly curious, nosy, should-have-been-a-journalist ass.!!! As the lecture ended and we entered the cafeteria, Hideya constantly looked at me with expectant eyes, curious to know who the person was. "She writes like she's on fire, but all I see is someone trying not to burn. She's chaos dressed in metaphors — loud in the way silence longs to be. She is the kind of person who hands you her pain disguised as a punchline — and hopes you read between the lines. She's not gentle, not quite, not simple. But she's honest. And somehow, that feels safer than silence. She thinks she's too much. But all I see is someone who feels more than most people dare to." I narrated to him looking at him with expectant eyes expecting him to understand.
"Who is she tho??" "She? IM is what the initials say! The pen pal thingy from NYU you were dragged into it too right??" I told him. "OH yes, that shit! Am talking to this AK girl and bro she is hyperactive but lowkey adorable. But looks like you already have something for this IM girl of yours!! Dude. The way you just talked about her? That wasn't a Rabin thing. That was a falling thing." He said leaving me to think about the words he said.
I read the first letter slowly.
Then again.
Then again.
By the time I was done with the second one, my hands were still.
The cursor blinked at me like it was waiting for something—like she was waiting for something.
But I didn't type.
I couldn't.
Not yet.
My breath caught — like my body knew something before my brain did
"She's unraveling." Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just… quietly falling apart in lowercase sentences and tea metaphors. And she trusted ME with that.
ME. A stranger.
"She thinks she's too much." And the worst part? She said it like she meant it. Like she was daring me to leave so she wouldn't have to pretend to be surprised when I did.
I leaned back in my chair, eyes scanning the same line for the tenth time.
"Ghost me and run." It would've been easier to do that. So much easier. But something in me shifted. An old door creaked open.
Because she was scared. And honest. And hurting so loudly through quiet words that he could feel it in my bones.
And because for the first time in a very long time…I didn't want to be silent.
"IM."
He whispered it like a name I'd only ever seen written in ink. Like something breakable.
Dear IM,
It's been so long since you last texted I almost thought you died.
I thought about you and your letters for days when you didn't show up — I honestly thought the whole pen pal thing had been quietly shut down or that you'd moved on. But when I saw your name in my inbox today, I don't know… it felt like a window opening.
Exams? You've got this. Truly. Even if your brain's doing that thing where it pretends to forget everything you've ever learned the second you open a book. You're smarter than you think, and more resilient than you admit. I hope you know that.
And about your best friend — I won't pretend to know the whole story, but I do know this: distance doesn't always mean it's over. Sometimes people drift. Sometimes they come back. But either way, you're allowed to feel hurt. You're allowed to miss her and be mad at her at the same time.
Friendships are precious, yeah. But so are you. So while you're worrying about her — don't forget to protect your own peace too.
As for everything else you said…
You told me you cry yourself to sleep sometimes. You said it like it was embarrassing. Like you shouldn't. But if you didn't cry, I'd be more worried.
You feel so much, girlie. That's not a flaw. That's a strength. You carry emotions the way some people carry music — all rhythm and chaos and raw sound. And honestly? I don't think the world deserves that kind of honesty, but I'm glad you haven't stopped offering it anyway.
You're not "too much." You're just surrounded by people who've never learned to hold anything heavy.
And me? I don't know why you trust me. But I'm not running.
So send your chaos. Send your rants. Send your midnight poems and your tea-spilled metaphors. I'll keep reading.
No pressure. No expectations.
Just… space.
—RT