Bonus Epilogue Two
Khushi
FOURTEEN YEARS LATER
I was nameless for the first two years of my life. Or so I was told.
Then they started calling me Chhutki—“the small one.”
I can’t even argue with that. I was small for a two-year-old, apparently.
Now I know it’s because I was born premature—somewhere, to a girl who couldn’t afford to have a child.
So yes, I was small. But I’ve never once been curious about finding her.
Why would I?
I have a mother. And she’s everything I could ever need. Mumma and Papa told me the full story when I was fourteen. It happened after I asked the question—casually, over dinner—like it was no big deal.
Aarambh had already passed out like the over-energized little tornado he was.
He was four then—just two years into being my brother. Two years since we brought him home from Sunrise Home.
I had spent months after his adoption searching for similarities between me and my parents. My eyes, my nose. My mumma’s smile didn’t match mine. Papa’s eyes were poles apart from mine.
But it didn’t matter. Not for a while. I was simply mesmerized by my new brother. Because the moment we’d met him at the orphanage, I knew.
I knew he was mine. Ours.
I loved him immediately—just like my parents. Hopelessly, endlessly.
And when he called me didi for the first time, I cried. I was twelve. (Didi = Older sister)
Papa held me the whole night.
So, one night at dinner, when I was fourteen, the question just slipped out—without warning.
“I’m adopted too, aren’t I?”
I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. But once I said it, I couldn’t take it back. I remember the way both of their faces went still—my parents.
The way they looked at each other, eyes full of dread and love and memory.
And then they sat me down. No sugarcoating. No delay. They told me the truth. That, yes, I was adopted when I was three. Surprising because I don’t remember a life without them in it.
I was a nameless child who never stopped crying. The wardens used to call me Rotli Chhutki—the crying small one.
I thought I was being mature, handling it all so well at fourteen. But then I broke.
Right there. Right in their arms.
They held me through it. Every second of it.
And then asked gently, if I ever wanted to find her—my birth mother. I said no. Not now. Maybe not ever.
Because the life I was given... the love I was raised with... it makes the idea of “what could’ve been” feel like a shadow I never want to chase.
When I look at Aarambh, I sometimes wonder—what if they hadn’t adopted him? What if he was still there, in that old musty room with peeling paint and too many crying children?
That could’ve been his life.
That could’ve been mine.
It actually was mine—until they chose me. But since that day two years ago, when I learned the truth—they keep telling me that I chose them.
So no. I don’t need to go searching. Not when I’ve already been found.
Not when I’ve already been named.
Loved. Raised. Claimed.
Not when I already have a mumma who smells like jasmine and chai, who holds me like the world could fall apart and she’d still protect me with her life.
Not when I have a papa who taught me to ride a bicycle and then held me when my crush made fun of me.
I know who I belong to.
“What’s going on?”
I hear Papa’s voice as he returns from the kitchen.
My fingers freeze above the open box—sleek black and silver handles glinting under the sunlight from the window.
It’s a throwing knife set.
My birthday present.
From Mumma.
Our tiny little secret.
I’d walked in on her a year ago—in her home office—mid-throw, blades thunking into a wall-mounted wood plank like she was playing darts… except, well, lethal darts. I wasn’t allowed in that room, but the grunts were too hard to miss.
She hadn’t heard me at first. Her brows were furrowed, breathing even, like it was meditation. Or therapy.
And me? I was a wreck, almost fifteen and spiraling over the whole I-was-adopted thing.
She let me try once I promised not to tell Papa.
I’d begged, pleaded, used every tactic in the book—including fake crying.
Worth it.
And now, I’m sixteen. Officially deserving of a dagger set of my own.
Apparently not.
“What’s that?” Papa’s voice cuts in, laced with suspicion.
“Uh...”
“Vik,” Mumma tries, her tone warning.
“No.” He’s already shaking his head while in a comical mid-meltdown. “That’s—no. Gree!”
He looks at her like she’s betrayed him by throwing his malai kofta leftovers in the trash.
But all I want to do is laugh.
Before I can explain or lie or do anything, Aaru zooms around the corner, yelling something about a T-Rex, and screeches to a stop in front of me.
“What’s that, Didi?”
I slam the box shut faster than he can blink.
“Amma,” I whisper, eyes wide. Help me.
But she’s smirking.
Smirking!
“You gave her... daggers?” Papa gapes like his wife just admitted to robbing a bank. “Actual daggers?!”
“She...” Mumma clears her throat. “It’s therapeutic, baby.”
“Gree,” he groans, rubbing his forehead like he’s aged ten years in the last ten seconds. Then he swivels on the carpet toward me. “You will not use them outside this home. Got it?”
Okay. So now’s probably not the time to tell him I’ve been teaching my best friends after school. In a park. With trees.
Mumma picks up Aaru and settles him with crayons and a half-colored T-Rex page, giving me a wink like she knows I won’t say a word.
Sneaky.
I grin, practically vibrating.
“Thank you!” I launch at her, wrapping my arms tight around her neck. The box still clutched in my hands.
“Careful with the daggers, beta,” she teases, hugging me back.
Then I turn to Papa—who’s still sulking—and wrap him in a tentative hug.
“C’mon, Papa. Your wife does it. I can too. I’m sixteen now.”
Mumma mutters under her breath, “Well, you started when you were fifteen.”
He whips his head toward her. “Fifteen?”
She freezes. “I mean—”
“FIFTEEN?”
There’s so much despair in his voice you’d think someone told him India lost the ICC World Cup—again.
“Baby,” he sighs. “This could’ve waited until she was eighteen.”
She shrugs like it’s no big deal, which only makes me love her more. “She wanted to, Vik.”
She’s on my side!
I glance between them, the question bubbling up before I can stop it. “Why did you learn to throw daggers, anyway?”
They share a look. It’s weird and knowing, and slightly amused.
Mumma tilts her head, pretending to think. “It was... therapeutic. Like I said. Just like it is for you.”
I squint at her. “Yeah, but... why daggers? Like, seriously. It’s not exactly yoga or painting.”
“She’s right,” Papa mutters. “You could’ve picked... running.”
Her face twists with disgust, but then she looks at me and smiles sweetly. “Well. Sometimes a woman’s gotta throw sharp objects to feel better.”
I blink. “That is not a real answer, Mumma.”
She leans closer to me, dropping her voice to a dramatic whisper.
“Fine. I was a secret agent in the government. I sort of had to.”
Silence.
I stare. And then I burst out laughing.
Like actual wheezing, clutching-my-stomach, full-blown cackles. Papa snorts, then starts laughing too, like he’s shaking his head in disbelief.
“I can’t with you guys,” I say between laughs, wiping my eyes. “You’re both insane.”
Papa leans in, presses a kiss to Mumma’s cheek—then her lips.
“Gross,” I mutter, mock-gagging, even as a wide smile stretches across my face.
Papa lifts an eyebrow, still chuckling. “If you were a secret agent, baby...”
Mumma raises her chin, dramatic as ever.
He grins. “Then I was... hmm...” He pretends to think, eyes squinting like he’s solving a case. “Let’s say I helped bring down a crime ring.”
She gasps, hands on her chest. “You? Advik Sharma, who once cried because a pigeon flew into our balcony?”
“It was a crow. And it was aggressive, Gree,” he defends, deadpan. “You didn’t see its eyes.”
I laugh even harder, collapsing onto the couch as they start mock-arguing about crows versus daggers.
And in that moment—watching my dad tease my mumma, my mumma laugh so freely, and my little brother now drawing on the old, chipped coffee table instead of paper—I don’t see blood ties or DNA.
I see a family.
My family.