After Kapil left, the silence that rushed back into my room was different. It was no longer the suffocating, absolute void it had been before. It was a quiet space, filled with the echo of his presence.
I looked at the cheap, thin mattress he had slept on, now rolled up and leaning against the wall. I could still see the indentation his head had made on my spare pillow. For a week, this small, cramped room had housed two people. For a week, I hadn't been alone with the crushing weight in my chest. He had been there, a silent co-conspirator in my survival, and his departure had left a tangible void. But it wasn't a painful one. It was a reminder. A proof of life.
The first few days were a strange, disorienting fog. I was a ghost who had been reminded he had a body. I went to my classes, but this time, I was aware of the pen in my hand, the hard plastic of the chair beneath me. It was as if Kapil's intervention had dragged my soul back into my skin. The world was still muted, the colors still washed out, but I was in it again, not just observing it from a great, lonely distance.
The exhaustion was still there, a bone-deep weariness that clung to me like a wet coat. But now, it felt different. Before, it was the exhaustion of giving up. Now, it was the exhaustion of fighting back.
I lived in fear of my phone ringing. I was terrified that Kapil, in a well-intentioned panic, had broken his silence. I imagined the calls from my parents, their voices tight with a fear they wouldn't know how to name. I pictured concerned texts from mutual friends, their words laced with a pity I couldn't bear to face. Every buzz of my phone was a potential judgment, a reminder of my weakness.
But the calls never came. The concerned texts never appeared. The world kept spinning, oblivious. It took me three days to realize what this meant: Kapil had kept his word. He hadn't just saved my life; he had saved my privacy, my dignity. He had given me a gift more precious than intervention: his trust.
On the fourth day, I was the one who made the call. My hand trembled as I pressed his name on the screen. I didn't know what to say. How do you start a conversation with the person who stopped you from ending your own life? "Hey man, thanks for not letting me jump off that roof the other day" felt a little too casual.
He picked up immediately. "Hey! I was just about to text you. Did you finish that stupid Mechanics assignment?"
His voice was normal. Completely, utterly, blessedly normal. There was no trace of the terrified, furious friend from the rooftop. There was no hint of the worried guardian who had watched over me for a week. It was just Kapil.
"Uh, yeah, I finished it this morning," I managed, my voice hoarse.
"Liar," he said instantly. "You're a terrible liar. You haven't even started it, have you?"
A small, weak laugh escaped my lips. It felt like a foreign sound. "No. Not yet."
"Knew it," he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. "Well, get on it. It's a monster."
We talked for another ten minutes about nothing. About a terrible movie he had watched, about the questionable quality of the mess food, about a professor who had a habit of falling asleep mid-lecture. He was steering the conversation with expert skill, keeping it in the shallow, safe waters of everyday life. He was giving me an out, a chance to pretend that everything was normal.
But I had to know.
"Kapil?" I said, cutting him off mid-rant about a textbook.
"Yeah?"
"Did you…?" I trailed off, the words getting stuck in my throat. "Did you tell anyone?"
His response was immediate, firm, and devoid of any hesitation. "No."
"Not even…?"
"No one, Arjun," he said, and his voice had a new seriousness to it. A quiet intensity. "I'm not going to. That night… that was for us. That was about you. It's not a story for me to tell. It's your life, man. Not a piece of gossip."
I closed my eyes, a wave of gratitude so powerful it almost knocked me over washing through me. He understood. He wasn't treating me like a problem to be solved or a fragile object to be monitored by a committee. He was treating me like his friend.
"This is our thing," he continued, his voice softer now. "Your thing. I'm just here. That's it. Okay?"
"Okay," I whispered, the word thick with unshed tears.
"Good," he said, his normal, cheerful tone returning instantly. "Now seriously, get on that assignment. And call me tomorrow. Or I'll call you. And it will be annoying."
I hung up the phone and sat in the quiet of my room, the weight of his trust settling on me. It wasn't a burden. It was an anchor. He hadn't just pulled me back from the ledge; he had built a wall of silence around that moment, protecting it, protecting me. He had given me the space to heal, free from the prying eyes and whispered concerns of others.
He had trusted me to get better on my own terms. Now, I had to prove him right.
I looked around my room. It was a mess. Clothes were piled on the chair. Textbooks and loose papers were scattered across my desk. Empty noodle cups formed a small, sad monument on my windowsill. The room was a perfect physical manifestation of my internal state: chaotic, neglected, and suffocating.
You can't fix your head in one day, I thought. But you can clean your room.
It was a small thought. A simple, actionable idea in a mind that had been filled with overwhelming, formless despair.
I stood up. I started with the clothes, picking them up one by one and putting them in the laundry basket. Then I moved to the desk, gathering the scattered papers, stacking the books, throwing away the trash. I swept the floor. I wiped down the dusty surfaces.
It was slow, methodical work. Each small act of order felt like a victory. Sorting my papers felt like sorting my thoughts. Wiping away the dust felt like clearing a small patch of the fog in my brain. It was the first time in months that I had exerted control over my immediate environment, the first time I had made a conscious choice to create order instead of just surviving in chaos.
Two hours later, I was done. The room was clean. It was still the same small, impersonal dorm room, but it was clear. It was calm. I could breathe.
I sat on my bed, the sheets freshly changed, and looked around. The pain was still there. The hollow ache where Parveen used to be hadn't vanished. The love I felt for her was still a heavy, secret stone in my gut. Cleaning my room hadn't magically healed me.
But it was a start.
It was a promise. A quiet, unspoken pact I made with Kapil and with myself. I wouldn't just survive. I would fight. I would take it one day, one assignment, one clean room at a time. I didn't know if I would ever be happy again. I didn't know if the ache would ever go away. But as I sat there, in the quiet, orderly space I had created for myself, I knew one thing for sure.
I was going to get through tomorrow.