The silence on the other end of the call stretched just long enough to make me hold my breath.
I stared at the wall in front of me, its pale paint chipped slightly near the corner, as if the answer might appear there first. My fingers tightened unconsciously around the phone. The screen felt warm against my palm now, warmer than it had a moment ago, like it had absorbed my hesitation.
The ceiling fan continued its slow rotation above me.
Click.
Whirr.
Click.
Each sound felt exaggerated in the pause.
For half a second, I regretted asking.
Not because I didn't want to know—but because wanting suddenly felt exposed. Like I had stepped forward without checking how close the edge was.
Then Jayson spoke.
"Her name is… Nikita."
The word landed softly.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just… clearly.
And something inside me shifted.
It was subtle at first, like the way your body adjusts when you finally sit down after standing too long. A release I hadn't realized I was holding onto. The space in my mind where a question had lived for days suddenly emptied—and in its place, something warmer settled.
Nikita.
I repeated it silently, letting it move through me, testing how it felt.
Nikita.
It fit.
I didn't know why. There was no logic to it. But the name aligned with the image I carried of her—the calmness, the steadiness, the quiet strength. It didn't clash. It didn't surprise.
It made sense.
"Okay," I said out loud, my voice steadier than I expected. "Nikita."
Jayson continued talking, probably adding something casual after that, but for a few seconds, I didn't hear him properly. The room felt slightly distant, like I had stepped back half a pace from reality.
My mind was busy.
Rearranging everything I knew.
She wasn't the girl beside me anymore.
She wasn't the one with the calm voice.
She was Nikita.
A person with a name. A weight. A presence that now had a word attached to it.
"Nikita," I murmured again, quieter this time.
"What?" Jayson asked.
"Nothing," I replied quickly. "Just… okay."
There was a faint smile in my voice despite my effort to keep it neutral.
We spoke for a few seconds about something trivial—exams, schedules—but my attention drifted again when Jayson said something that pulled me back sharply.
"She studied with me in ninth," he said. "But after some incident… she shifted to another school."
Something in his tone changed.
Not dramatically.
But noticeably.
The casual ease softened. His voice lowered slightly, like he was stepping carefully around something fragile.
"Incident?" I asked, frowning. "What happened?"
The word felt heavier now that it had been spoken.
There was a pause.
Longer than before.
I sat down slowly on the edge of my bed, the mattress dipping beneath my weight. The room suddenly felt smaller, quieter. Even the fan seemed to fade into the background.
Jayson exhaled.
"Her parents," he said, voice subdued, "are no more."
The words didn't hit immediately.
They entered slowly.
Like cold air seeping into a warm room.
I stared at the floor, my vision blurring slightly as my mind tried to process what he had just said. The pattern of the tiles seemed suddenly too detailed, too sharp.
"No more?" I repeated quietly.
"Yes," he confirmed. "Both."
Silence swallowed the line.
I didn't know what expression was on my face. I couldn't feel it. My chest tightened in a way that was unfamiliar—not sharp pain, not fear—something heavier, slower.
Everything rearranged itself in that moment.
Her calmness.
Her maturity.
Her lack of unnecessary words.
They weren't just personality traits anymore.
They were armor.
I thought of the way she waited patiently for her father on the first exam day. The gentleness of that memory twisted slightly now, taking on a new shape.
I thought of her confidence, her independence, the way she didn't hesitate to help anyone—how she carried herself like someone who had learned early that control came from within.
And behind all of it—
loss.
A kind I had never known.
I admired her instantly, deeply, painfully.
Not in a romantic way.
In a human way.
In the quiet, respectful way you admire someone who has walked through fire without announcing the burns.
I didn't speak for a long moment.
Jayson's voice reached me again, careful now.
"Bro? You there?"
"Yes," I said quickly, though my voice sounded distant even to me. "Yeah. I'm here."
I didn't trust myself to say anything else.
Because everything inside me felt different now.
He didn't push.
We stayed quiet together for a second, connected only by the low hum of the call and the weight of shared understanding.
Then a thought surfaced—one that had been sitting in the back of my mind, unnoticed until now.
"But…" I began slowly, choosing my words. "On the first exam day… she called someone 'father'."
Jayson sounded confused. "I don't know about that. After she left town, I didn't really hear much. It's been four or five years."
That made sense.
Life didn't pause after loss. It scattered people. Rearranged families. Created new definitions.
I nodded to myself, even though he couldn't see it.
"And her sister?" I asked. "The girl she's always with?"
He sighed softly. "That I really don't know. I only remember she had one younger brother."
"Oh," I whispered.
So many gaps.
So many unknowns.
Yet somehow, knowing this much already felt like a responsibility.
Jayson added one more detail, almost as an afterthought.
"She's from Sahirirajpur," he said. "About four or five kilometers from the college."
The name settled into place beside hers.
Nikita.
Sahirirajpur.
The picture became clearer—and somehow more distant at the same time.
We spoke a little longer after that. About work. About exams. About random things that helped ease the weight of the conversation. Eventually, the call ended naturally.
The screen went dark.
And I sat there, unmoving.
The room felt quieter than before. The fan continued spinning, but its sound felt far away now. Outside, someone laughed. A door closed. Life went on.
But inside me, something had changed permanently.
Nikita.
A girl who smiled calmly.
Who studied sincerely.
Who helped without hesitation.
And who carried a loss deeper than anything I had ever imagined.
I didn't know what she was doing at that moment.
I didn't know how she spent her evenings.
But I knew something else now.
I respected her more than I ever had before.
And respect, I realized, was heavier than attraction.
Knowing her name had brought her closer—but knowing her story had made me step back in quiet awe.