One year later, the rain returned to Bengaluru not as a storm, but as a rhythm. Familiar. Steady. Kind.
Aanya stood in the doorway of her new design studio, sipping filter coffee, watching the drizzle paint the city in soft greys. Her team was reviewing a campaign pitch inside, but she lingered outside, letting the quiet settle around her.
Vihaan arrived minutes later, umbrella tucked under his arm, a leather-bound journal in hand. His poetry collection Letters Never Sent had just been published. It wasn't about Meera. It wasn't even about grief. It was about becoming.
"You're early," Aanya said, smiling.
"I missed the traffic. And you."
He handed her the journal. Inside were verses about mornings, coffee, bridges, and a woman who taught him how to stay.
They didn't live together. Not yet. But they shared weekends, bookstores, and the kind of silence that felt like home. They had built something not perfect, not always easy, but real.
Later that evening, they walked to Blossom Book House, hand in hand. The awning still stood. The rain still whispered.
And beneath it, they paused not to remember, but to begin again.
"Love," Vihaan once wrote,
"isn't the thunder.
It's the quiet after.
The part where you stay."