Midnight didn't come suddenly. It slipped in, slow and quiet, settling into the house like it belonged there, like everything was supposed to be asleep by now—even though some people never really were.

He was one of them.

The house was still. Too still. Doors shut, lights off, the kind of silence that made even small sounds feel loud. From the outside, anyone would've said he looked calm, just standing by the window, staring into nothing.

But nothing inside him was calm.

He wasn't still. He couldn't be. Something inside him was breaking, not all at once, not loudly—just slowly, piece by piece, the kind of breaking you don't notice until it's already too late. And the worst part was that only she could stop it.

Only her.

She didn't even know she had that kind of power over him.

A cigarette hung between his fingers. He didn't remember lighting it. Didn't remember the first drag. The ash had grown too long, the smoke rising and disappearing somewhere he wished he could follow. Time didn't make sense anymore. It could've been minutes. It could've been hours.

He didn't care.

All he could think about was her.

The way she walked past him earlier without looking. The way she ignored him like he wasn't there, like he hadn't ever been there. It hurt in a way anger never could.

And what made it worse was that he remembered.

He remembered her standing up for him in front of Rohan, voice steady, eyes firm. The way she spoke like he mattered. Like he was worth defending.

No one had ever done that for him before.

And now she wouldn't even look at him.

He knew why. He wasn't stupid.

He had told his sister. And things like that never stayed private. Somehow, they always found their way to the person they were never meant for.

Gauri knew now. About him. About how he felt.

He had expected something—anything. Anger, discomfort, even rejection. He could've handled that. He would've handled that.

What he couldn't handle was this.

The silence.

Her not talking to him felt like being slowly suffocated. Like something essential had been taken away without warning. Her voice—soft, familiar—had become something he needed more than he ever wanted to admit.

Without it, he felt dry. Empty.

Like a crow stranded somewhere it didn't belong, knowing water existed but not knowing how to reach it.

He had never been like this. He had never cared so much if someone stopped talking to him. People came and went. That was normal. That was life.

But her?

One day. Not even a full day.

And he was ruined.

It scared him how easily it had happened. How deep it had gone. How there was no logic to it, no way out of it.

This wasn't attraction. He knew that much.

Attraction didn't hurt like this. It didn't make silence feel unbearable. It didn't hollow you out from the inside.

This was something else.

Something he couldn't explain. Something no one else would understand even if he tried.

He would do anything for her. The thought came quietly, but it stayed. It felt true in a way nothing else ever had.

For the first time in his life, Zaid was sure of something.

The aimless one. The lazy one. The one who never tried hard enough—

had found someone worth burning for.

And maybe that's what he was meant to do.

Because what was a Zaid, really,
if he didn't burn for his Gauri?

''Main Kurbaan Hua.....''

Deewangi Writess