The sound of water.
That's how it began.
Arjun was a boy again — barefoot, standing on the edge of a wooden dock. The air smelled of rain and pine. The lake shimmered under a pale, bruised sky.
He heard laughter — soft, ringing like a chime in the wind.
A girl stood at the other end of the dock, her shoes abandoned on the grass. Her white dress fluttered, her arms spread as if she was trying to balance on a tightrope made of air.
Then the laughter broke into a scream.
The wood creaked. A splash.
Without thinking, he ran — knees scraping, heart hammering — and dove into the water.
It was cold. Heavy. Pulling.
He saw her — pale face, wide eyes, sinking.
He reached out, caught her wrist, pulled.
The surface broke open with their gasps. She clung to him, shivering, coughing, her voice trembling between sobs.
"Don't let me forget this," she whispered, her voice so faint it almost blended with the rain.
And then she was gone — fading into the fog, leaving him with only the echo of her words.
Arjun woke up gasping.
Sweat beaded at his temples, his heart still trapped in the rhythm of that old fear.
The ceiling above him blurred, the sound of his own breath overlapping the echo of water slapping against the dock — a memory or a dream, he couldn't tell.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
The girl's voice lingered. Don't let me forget this.
But he had. Until now.
The next morning, everything felt off-kilter.
The coffee at the studio tasted too bitter. The hum of the city outside the window felt louder than usual. Even the soft whir of the editing software grated on his nerves.
He sat at his desk, fingers drumming against his notebook — the one filled with old jottings, phrases, and half-remembered fragments of childhood.
He flipped through it absently until he found a page near the middle.
The heading, written in his ten-year-old handwriting, made his pulse skip.
"The Girl by the Lake."
The words below were barely legible — just scattered thoughts. She had brown eyes. She fell. She smiled after crying. Said something I can't forget.
He ran a thumb over the ink, smudged and old, the kind of memory that refuses to die quietly.
And then Suhana's voice from last night echoed in his head — "After a near-drowning accident when I was a kid…"
He closed the notebook slowly, as if afraid it might vanish if he moved too fast.
Across the city, Suhana dipped her brush into blue paint.
She hadn't touched her easel in years. But this morning, something in her had cracked open — the kind of quiet ache that begged to be turned into color.
The canvas bloomed with ripples. Water. Light. A shadow beneath the surface.
Without realizing, she painted a silhouette of a boy — standing at the edge of the lake. The same image that had haunted her since childhood.
Her chest tightened. She brushed over it quickly, blurring the figure until it was nothing but water again.
It's just nostalgia, she told herself. A trick of memory.
But her hands trembled as she cleaned the brushes.
> "It's strange," she thought, "how you can miss someone you've never met…
or maybe — you did."
When she arrived at the studio that afternoon, Arjun was already there — his sleeves rolled up, his expression unreadable.
The air felt different between them.
Not charged, not heavy — just aware.
They began recording the next episode, but Suhana stumbled over her words. Arjun wasn't his usual sharp, composed self either. He kept glancing at her between takes — not studying her, but searching.
When the sound engineer left, the silence stretched.
Arjun spoke first, his tone almost hesitant.
"Where did you grow up, Suhana?"
She blinked. "Why?"
He shrugged lightly. "Just curious."
"Birmingham," she said after a moment. "My grandparents had a small cottage near a lake. I spent most summers there."
The faintest pause.
Arjun nodded, but his pulse jumped. "Near a lake?"
"Yeah," she said. "It was… quiet. Kind of eerie sometimes. I almost drowned there once."
He managed a small, careful smile. "I see."
But inside him, something clicked — a soft, definite sound, like the lock of fate turning.
That night, Arjun sat on the floor of his apartment, surrounded by an open box of old photos.
The rain outside tapped gently against the window, rhythmic, insistent.
He shuffled through images — birthdays, trips, school plays — until one caught his eye.
A boy, about ten, standing beside a lake.
Beside him — a girl.
The photo was old, faded, the edges curled with time. The sunlight had washed out most of her features, but her eyes — even in that blur — were unmistakable.
He traced the photo with his thumb, breath caught.
"It's her," he whispered. "It's always been her."
Across the city, Suhana sat cross-legged on her bed, her laptop open to an old folder of family photos.
She scrolled lazily at first — childhood birthdays, her grandparents' cottage, the lake.
And then she stopped.
In the corner of one image — a boy.
Out of focus, smiling, sunlight glinting off dark hair and curious eyes.
Her breath caught. Her hand froze on the mouse.
She zoomed in, her heart thudding against her ribs.
That smile — she'd seen it before. Recently.
"No," she whispered. "It can't be…"
But the truth sat there in pixels and memory, refusing to fade.
The world outside was asleep, but in two different corners of London, two people stared at pieces of the same photograph — at echoes of a moment that had tied them long before they'd met again.
Suhana ran her fingers over the image, whispering to herself.
Who were you?
Arjun closed his eyes, holding the photo like something sacred.
Who are you now?
Their thoughts collided in narration — soft, overlapping, like a song:
> "Sometimes the universe doesn't bring two people together.
It simply reminds them they were never apart."
The rain continued outside — gentle, endless — as if the city itself was remembering.
---
The past had finally caught up — not with noise, but with a whisper that sounded a lot like fate.