The chalk hopscotch squares stayed on the driveway for four more days.

Riya noticed Arjun glancing at them every morning on his way to the car. He never said anything. He never washed them away. On the fifth day it rained, and the squares dissolved quietly into the concrete, and something about the way Arjun looked at the blank driveway that evening made Riya think she should draw them again sometime.

But not yet. Some things needed to be missed before they could be welcomed back.

It was on a Wednesday morning — ordinary, unhurried — that the walls shifted again. Not because of something said. Because of something dropped.

Arjun Malhotra was not a snoop.

He wanted that established clearly, at least in his own mind, as he stood in the hallway outside Riya's room holding a small, cloth-bound journal with a broken clasp — dark blue, worn at the corners, smelling faintly of the rose attar she kept on her dresser.

It had fallen from her dupatta when she rushed out the door that morning to catch Kabir before he could pour an entire bottle of coconut oil on Motu "because Motu's hair was dry."

Arjun had picked it up to set it on the side table.

That was all he had intended.

Except the fall had cracked the clasp open to a page somewhere in the middle, and his eyes — entirely without his permission — had snagged on a single line before he could close it.

Papa cried again today. I told Mama I'd do it. I told her yes.

He should have closed it.

He was aware, with complete clarity, that he should have closed it.

He turned the page.

I met him today. Arjun Malhotra. He shook my hand like I was a business proposal. Maybe I am. He looked at me the way people look at solutions — useful, temporary, to be filed away once the problem is solved. I don't blame him. I looked at him the same way.

He has sad eyes though. The kind that used to know how to laugh.

His son wasn't there. I keep thinking about the son.

Arjun sat down on the hallway bench. He hadn't meant to do that either.

Everyone keeps saying I'm sacrificing myself. Bua called it noble. Mama called it duty. I don't think it's either. I think it's just — math. Papa's debt is real. My sister's school fees are real. Sentiment is not a currency. So I said yes.

But I want to write this down somewhere, just once, just for myself:

I wanted to fall in love. Properly. The stupid, inconvenient, butterflies-in-the-stomach kind. I had a whole plan for it. I was going to be very calm and modern about it and then fall apart completely anyway, the way everyone does.

I'm allowed to want that. Even if I don't get it.

I'm allowed to write it down.

Arjun stared at the page for a long time.