BOX OF MEMORIES
ANAMIKA
Long after Sara falls asleep, I stay awake.
The room is quiet except for the soft rhythm of her breathing, and I lie there staring at the ceiling, replaying the last two days for what feels like the hundredth time.
The fair. His wallet. The photographs. The word soulmate.
Then the bookshop. The old paperback. The way he'd looked at me and somehow seen straight through every excuse I'd been hiding behind.
I've spent two days running in circles. I'm tired. Tired of pretending reorganising books counts as thinking. Tired of inventing reasons to avoid him. Most of all . . . tired of carrying questions that only one person in this palace can answer.
I still don't know what I'll say when I see him. I don't have a speech prepared. I don't even know if I'm brave enough to ask him what he really meant that afternoon at the fair. But I know one thing with complete certainty.
I don't want to run anymore. The decision settles quietly inside me. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just . . . firmly.
I slip carefully out from beneath the blanket, pausing to make sure Sara doesn't stir.
She shifts once, sighs softly, then settles again with one arm wrapped around her stuffed rabbit.
I adjust the pillows around her in case she decides to go on a walk in her sleep and ends up covering the whole bed.
I brush a loose curl away from her forehead before quietly leaving the room.
The marble floor is cool beneath my bare feet.
At this hour the palace feels like an entirely different place.
The bustle is gone.
The corridors stretch out in soft pools of golden light from the wall sconces, shadows gathering in the corners. Somewhere far away I hear the measured footsteps of a night guard making his rounds before silence settles over everything again.
My heart beats a little faster with every step toward Yuvaan's study. I rehearse sentences. Discard them. Try again.
What did you mean . . . ?
No.
Can we talk . . . ?
Too formal.
Yuvaan . . .
Even that feels impossibly difficult. By the time I reach the study door, I've managed to convince myself of absolutely nothing. I knock anyway. No answer. After waiting another moment, I push the door open. The room is empty.
Only the desk lamp is on, casting a warm pool of light across neatly stacked files and papers arranged with the same impossible precision he seems to bring to everything in life. "I'll just wait," I murmur to myself. Anything is better than losing my nerve and walking back.
I wander slowly around the room instead, my fingers trailing absentmindedly along the spines of books.
I've been in this study countless times over the years.
Strange how little I've ever really looked.
There are framed photographs on one shelf.
Old trophies. Books that have clearly been read more than once.
My eyes drift lower . . . and stop at the small wooden box that sits tucked behind a stack of ledgers. Plain. Simple. Almost hidden.
Recognition hits me instantly.
My breath catches. I know that box. I bought it during my first summer internship. I remember standing at a tiny handicraft stall for nearly twenty minutes because I couldn't decide whether I could really afford it. Half of my first salary disappeared that afternoon. I never regretted it.
I'd wrapped it carefully and mailed it to him without a letter because eighteen-year-old me had been far too embarrassed to write down everything she wanted to say.
I don't remember deciding to pick it up.
One moment it's sitting safely on the shelf.
The next it's resting in my lap. My fingers hesitate only briefly before lifting the lid.
The air leaves my lungs. A pressed daisy.
Fragile now. Its petals browned with time, carefully preserved between sheets of wax paper.
Underneath it lies a stack of birthday cards.
My handwriting. Crooked. Messy. Some of the words misspelled so spectacularly that I almost laugh through the sudden sting behind my eyes.
I couldn't have been older than nine or ten.
Beneath those . . . Candy wrappers. Actual candy wrappers. I stare at them in disbelief. The cheap milk toffees I'd used to buy from the market whenever I managed to save enough coins.
I'd always broken one in half before eating it. One piece for me. One for him.
He kept . . . the wrappers. My throat tightens.
There's more. A tiny clay elephant. One ear larger than the other.
Its trunk crooked. I pick it up carefully.
Memory rushes back so suddenly I can almost smell wet clay.
I'd made this during an art workshop. Only because he'd begged me to come with him after insisting pottery looked "easy. "
It wasn't. Mine looked terrible. I'd laughed so hard at it that I'd handed it to him as a joke. "You keep it."
"I don't want this disaster." Apparently . . . He had. All these years.
I sit there on the study floor with the open box resting in my lap and something inside me quietly gives way.
Not because of expensive gifts. Not because of grand gestures.
Because of this. Because he'd kept every tiny, forgettable thing I'd ever handed him without a second thought.
The sort of things no sensible person would ever think to preserve.
Not displayed. Not shown off. Just . . . protected. Tucked safely inside a wooden box. As though ordinary pieces of my life had become precious simply because they'd once belonged to me.
I don't hear the study door open. Only the soft click as it closes again.
"Anamika." His voice makes me look up. He's standing just inside the doorway.
His gaze drops immediately to the box in my lap.
For the briefest second . . . His expression changes.
Not panic. Not annoyance. Something quieter.
Like a man who's just realised someone has found the most private corner of his heart.
"You kept all this . . . " The words barely make it out.
I look back down at the contents. "The birthday cards .
. . " I pick one up carefully. "The clay elephant .
. . " Then another. "The wrappers . . . " A watery laugh escapes me.
"You actually kept candy wrappers." I shake my head slowly, unable to understand it. "Why?"
He doesn't answer immediately. Instead he walks over and quietly lowers himself onto the floor opposite me. Close enough that our knees almost touch. Neither of us speaks. The open box sits between us. He looks at it for a long moment before finally lifting his eyes to mine.
"Because they were yours." His voice is barely above a whisper. "You gave them to me without thinking." A faint smile touches his face. "You probably forgot half of them before the day ended."
His fingers brush lightly over one of the old birthday cards. "I couldn't." He looks down again. "I never wanted to throw away anything that came from you." His voice grows softer. "The little things especially." A quiet breath leaves him."You never knew you were giving me something important."
"You were just . . . being you." He smiles sadly. "But every one of those things reminded me that you were here." His eyes meet mine again. "I think . . . " He pauses. Searching. "I just wanted proof."
"Proof that those years actually happened."
"Proof that you were real."
My vision blurs. I carefully set the box beside me before my shaking hands drop it altogether. My chest hurts. Not painfully. Just . . . Too full.
"Yuvaan . . . " His name breaks apart somewhere between my heart and my throat. I shake my head slowly. "What is all this?"
I gesture helplessly toward the box. "The photographs in your wallet . . . " I pause. "The things you've kept . . . " My breath stutters. "The way you called me your soulmate like it was the most ordinary thing in the world . . . "
My voice trembles.
"No more showing me." I hold his gaze. "Please.
" My throat tightens around the next words.
"I need you to tell me." Silence settles between us.
I watch him do something achingly familiar.
The same thing I've watched him do since we were children.
He grows still. Not because he doesn't know what to say.
Because he cares too much about saying it right.
He always has. When Yuvaan speaks carelessly, it's about weather or meetings or dinner. When he falls silent first . . . Whatever comes next matters. His jaw shifts once. He draws a slow breath. Then he looks directly into my eyes. "I love you."
Everything inside me stops.
No speeches. No dramatic declarations. No rehearsed confession.
Just three simple words. Steady. Certain. True.
He lets them exist between us without rushing to fill the silence afterward. "I have loved you . . . " His voice softens. " . . . for as long as I can remember." A tiny smile appears. "I just didn't have the vocabulary for it when we were children."
He glances briefly toward the open box. "It wasn't something that started when you came back."
"It never stopped while you were gone." His eyes return to mine. "I loved you when I put that chain in your palm at twenty-three and convinced myself I was only giving you something to remember home by." A quiet laugh escapes him. "I wasn't fooling anyone."
"Least of all myself." He shakes his head. "I loved you every year after that."
"In every proposal I turned down."
"In every birthday I quietly wondered where you were."
"In every festival that felt just a little too quiet."
His gaze flickers toward the box again. "This .
. . " His fingertips brush the lid. " . .
. was never about refusing to let go of the past." his lips trembles.
"It was because you never became my past." My breath stills.
"You were simply . . . " He searches for the right words.
" . . . missing." My tears spill before I realise they're falling. I don't wipe them away. I can't.
Everything I'd spent seven years carefully burying rises all at once. Every lonely train ride. Every birthday. Every night I'd convinced myself he'd forgotten me. Every single one suddenly feels different. Different because he hadn't forgotten. Not once.
"Why?" The question comes out broken. Small. Almost frightened. He looks at me immediately.
"Why me?" I whisper. "I left." An ache blooms in my heart. "I walked away."
"I came back carrying a life you knew nothing about." My voice shakes harder now. "I came back tired."
"So tired." I repeat.
"I'm not the girl you grew up with anymore." I look down at my own hands. "They're different."
"So am I." I laugh once through the tears. Humourless. "I don't even recognise myself some mornings." My chest feels unbearably heavy. "I came back with scars you still haven't seen."
"A past I still can't tell you."
"A daughter."
"So much fear."
"So much damage."
I lift my eyes to his again. They're overflowing now. "What is there left to love, Yuvaan?" The words crack apart as they leave me. "What could possibly still make me worth loving . . . like this?"