The hospital room had transformed. The sterile, clinical scent of antiseptic was now fighting the fragrance of fresh lilies Rohan brought in every morning. Blueprints were scattered across the thin white sheets of Asha's bed, and the hum of a high-end laptop replaced the lonely drip of the IV.
Asha looked alive. There was a flush in her cheeks that hadn't been there for years—not the flush of fever, but the glow of purpose.
"Look at this, Roy," she whispered, her fingers flying across the trackpad. "Vanguard wants me to consult on the atrium for the central tower. They actually care what I think about the load-bearing glass."
Roy sat by the window, a guitar in his lap, softly plucking strings to create a soundtrack for her ambition. He forced a smile, though every time Asha coughed—a dry, hacking sound that she dismissed as "hospital air"—his heart stuttered.
"They'd be fools not to," Roy said, his voice a steady anchor. "Your designs aren't just buildings, Asha. They're stories."
Rohan entered the room, carrying a bag of expensive takeout. He paused at the door, watching her. To anyone else, she looked like a girl on the rise. But Rohan saw the way her wrists looked thinner every day. He saw the way she had to pause for breath after explaining a design.
"If you're going to be a big-shot architect, you have to eat like one," Rohan drawled, setting the food down on the only corner of the table not covered in sketches. "The CEO called me. He complained you're working too hard. He doesn't want his star designer burning out in the first week."
Asha laughed, a sound that Rohan wanted to bottle up and keep forever. "I've spent ten years waiting to work this hard, Rohan. I'm not stopping now."
She looked at him, her expression softening. "I don't know why my luck changed so fast. The job, the recovery... even the pain is manageable with the medicine the doctor gives me."
Rohan's grip tightened on the back of a chair. The "medicine" was a heavy cocktail of palliative painkillers and steroids designed to mask the rot inside her. It wasn't a cure; it was a curtain.
"Maybe the universe realized it owed you an apology," Rohan said, stepping closer.
"I used to think the world was just dark," Asha said, looking out the window at the city. "But now... I want to build something that catches the light. I want to see the Skyline Tower finished. They say it'll take two years. I can't wait to stand on the top floor."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Two years.
Roy's fingers slipped on the guitar string, creating a jarring, dissonant note. Rohan turned away, pretending to check his phone so she wouldn't see the devastation in his eyes.
"Two years is a long time," Rohan managed to say, his back to her. "Let's just get you through the first month, okay?"
"I'll be there," Asha said with a quiet, fierce certainty. "I've survived Gautam, I've survived the streets, and I survived that monster with the knife. I'm not going anywhere."
She went back to her blueprints, tracing the line of a spire that would reach for the heavens. She was building a future she would never inhabit, drawing lines for a sun she would never see rise in 2028.
Rohan walked out into the hallway, the mask finally dropping. He leaned his head against the door, his chest heaving. Every time she talked about the future, it felt like a knife twisting in the old wound.
Roy followed him out, closing the door softly. "How much longer can we do this, Rohan? She's planning a life that doesn't exist."
"As long as she's smiling," Rohan hissed, his eyes fierce and bloodshot. "If she's going to leave, she's going to leave thinking she's a queen. She's going to die an architect, not a victim. Do you understand?"
Roy looked at his friend—the playboy who had become a guardian of a dying flame. "I understand. But God help us when the lights go out."