The stairs were a blur of grey concrete and the smell of stale incense. Ishani didn't wait for the lift; it was too slow, too mechanical. She took the steps two at a time, her bare feet slapping against the stone, a sharp contrast to the suffocating silence she'd left in 4B.
She burst through the main gate of the apartment complex just as the sun caught the chrome of Kabir's old Splendor.
He was already at the end of the narrow lane, his duffel bag strapped precariously to the back with a frayed bungee cord. The engine was a low, rhythmic thrum—the heartbeat of a machine ready to leave.
"Kabir!"
Her voice was swallowed by the morning roar of Delhi—the honking of school buses, the distant whistle of the station, the hum of a city that didn't care about a girl in a rumpled kurta.
He didn't hear her. He kicked the bike into gear.
Ishani didn't think about the library. She didn't think about her mother standing on the balcony like a statue of the past. She just ran. She ran until her lungs burned with the cold February air, until the brass compass in her pocket bruised her hip with every stride.
He stopped at the main road, waiting for a gap in the chaotic flow of trucks and rickshaws.
Ishani reached him just as he twisted the throttle. She didn't grab his arm; she grabbed the back of the bike, her fingers catching on the cold metal of the luggage rack.
Kabir jolted, the bike stalling with a violent jerk. He spun around, his helmet visor up, his eyes wide and bloodshot from a night of not-sleeping.
"Ishani? What are you—you're not wearing shoes."
"The call," she panted, her breath coming in ragged, jagged gasps. "I shut the laptop. I told him… I told him his house had no wind."
Kabir stared at her. The traffic surged around them like a river, but for a second, they were an island. The smell of exhaust and roasting coffee from a nearby stall hung between them.
"Your mother," Kabir said, his voice thick.
"The degree. The 'Plan.' Ishani, what are you doing here?"
"I'm rewriting the map," she said, finally pulling the compass from her pocket and pressing it into his grease-stained palm.
"You're going to Bangalore. You're going to fix those wings. And I'm going to finish my haveli. But not for Sameer. And not for my mother."
She stepped closer, ignoring the stares of the commuters. "I'm building it for me. And it's going to have the biggest windows you've ever seen. Just in case a pilot needs a place to land."
Kabir looked down at the compass, then back at the girl who had finally stopped looking at the floor. He didn't offer her a seat on the bike. He knew she couldn't leave—not yet. She had her own structures to finish, her own foundations to pour.
But he reached out, his hand cupping her cheek, his thumb tracing the charcoal smudge she'd missed that morning.
"Six months," Kabir whispered over the roar of a passing truck. "The contract is six months. Then I'm coming back to see those windows."
"I'll have the blueprints ready," Ishani promised, a fierce, human smile breaking through the exhaustion.
Kabir nodded, clicked his visor down, and kicked the engine back to life. This time, when he pulled away into the Delhi traffic, he wasn't escaping. He was just traveling.
Ishani stood on the curb, her feet dusty and her heart hammering a rhythm she finally recognized. She watched the taillight of the Splendor disappear into the morning haze, then she turned back toward the apartment.
She had a final project to finish. And for the first time in her life, she knew exactly where North was.