Author pov
The room was cold.Not physically but emotionally.The kind of cold that settled in your bones when lies finally ran out of places to hide.
Rakshit sat across the table, wrists cuffed, head slightly tilted like he was revisiting memories instead of crimes. The officer clicked the recorder on.
“You said you didn’t start this,” the officer said. “Then start from the beginning.”
Rakshit exhaled slowly.“The first day I saw Ruhi,” he said, “she wasn’t crying.”
Behind the one way glass, Ruhi stiffened.
“She was quiet,” Rakshit continued. “Too quiet for a child who was being screamed at in public.”
The room blurred.
A younger Ruhi stood in the corner of a school corridor, her bag clutched to her chest. Her mother’s voice cut through the air sharp, humiliating.
“Why are you like this? Useless. Always causing trouble.”
Other parents stared. Teachers looked away.
Ruhi didn’t react. She had learned not to.
From the end of the corridor, a boy watched.Rakshit.Something in her stillness fascinated him.
“She didn’t flinch,” Rakshit said softly. “That’s when I knew.”
The officer frowned. “Knew what?”
“That she was already broken,” Rakshit replied. “And broken things are easy to shape.”
Rakshit approached Ruhi later that day, offering her water, speaking gently.
“Are you okay?” “You can sit here if you want.”
No shouting. No orders.Just concern.
Ruhi hesitated… then nodded.
“I didn’t scare her,” Rakshit said. “I cared for her.”
Behind the glass, Aayansh’s jaw tightened.
“I listened. I stayed. I made her feel safe,” Rakshit continued. “And slowly… she depended on me.”
The officer’s voice hardened. “That’s grooming.”
Rakshit smiled faintly. “I call it protection.”
Ruhi laughed for the first time quiet, uncertain.
Rakshit watched like he’d won something.
“Then Vikrant came,” Rakshit said.
The room shifted.
Vikrant stood between Ruhi and Rakshit, defending her when boys teased her.
“Leave her alone.”
Ruhi smiled at Vikrant. A real smile.
Rakshit watched from afar.Something dark settled in his chest.
“He took her from me,” Rakshit said calmly. “Not physically. Worse.”
The officer leaned forward. “How?”
“He gave her strength,” Rakshit replied. “And I hated him for it.”
Ruhi talking to Vikrant. Laughing louder.Sharing secrets she once told only Rakshit.
“That’s when I stopped touching her directly,” Rakshit said. “I didn’t need to.”
The officer’s stomach dropped. “Explain.”
Rakshit looked almost bored.
“Her mother needed support. Money. Validation. Power.” He shrugged. “I had an influence. My parents did too.”
Behind the glass, Ruhi’s breathing became uneven.
“I never hit Ruhi,” Rakshit said. “I never raised my voice.”His eyes darkened.
“I just told her mother when Ruhi had been ‘disrespectful.’ When she was ‘too close’ to Vikrant.
When she needed ‘discipline.’”
A door slamming. Ruhi’s mother yelling. Bruises hidden under sleeves.
Rakshit watched from a distance.Satisfied.
“Every time I saw Ruhi smile with Vikrant,” Rakshit said quietly, “she paid for it at home.”
Vikrant punched the glass behind the mirror.“You monster,” he whispered.
“And then,” Rakshit continued, “Vikrant made his biggest mistake.”
The officer swallowed. “Which was?”
“He told her father.”
Hiten Raichand stood frozen as Vikrant spoke.“She’s not safe there, uncle. She’s being hurt.”
Hiten’s face hardened. Decision forming.
“Hiten took her away,” Rakshit said. “Cut her mother off. Took my Doll away from me.”
The word Doll echoed in the room.
“That’s when I decided,” Rakshit continued, voice sharpening, “that he didn’t deserve to live.”
A late night. A staged meeting. A planned accident.
Rakshit’s hands are steady.Hiten stepped forward to protect Ruhi.
Too late.
“He died thinking he failed her,” Rakshit said. “But I made sure she forgot.”
Silence swallowed the interrogation room.
“You killed him,” the officer said, voice hollow. “Because he protected his daughter.”
Rakshit nodded.“Yes.”
Behind the glass, Ruhi collapsed against Aayansh, sobbing silently every unexplained bruise, every panic attack, every lost memory finally making sense.
“And Vikrant?” the officer asked. “Why send him away?”
Rakshit smiled.
“I told his father everything,” he said. “Fear does wonders.”
Vikrant closed his eyes.
“I made sure he was gone,” Rakshit finished. “And when Ruhi forgot us both…”
He leaned back.“I waited.”
The officer stood abruptly. “Get him out.”
As officers dragged Rakshit away, he turned one last time toward the mirror.
Toward Ruhi.
“I never stopped loving you,” he said calmly. “I just hated everyone who taught you to live without me.”
The door slammed shut.
And in that moment, Ruhi finally understood Her childhood wasn’t stolen in one day.
It was systematically destroyed.
………
The interrogation room disappeared.Not all at once slowly. Like reality was peeling away layer by layer, leaving Ruhi exposed to something far older and far crueler.
Her ears rang.
A dull, high pitched sound filled her head as if someone had pressed a finger hard against her skull from the inside. She blinked once. Twice. The faces behind the one way glass blurred into shadows.
Aayansh’s hand was still around her wrist.Warm. Real.
She focused on that warmth like it was the only anchor keeping her upright.
Then the pain hit.
It wasn’t sudden. It spread.
From behind her eyes. Down her neck. Through her spine.
Ruhi sucked in a sharp breath and brought both hands to her head, fingers digging into her hair as if she could physically hold herself together.
“No…” she whispered.Her knees trembled.
Something cracked open.
Not a memory.A door.And everything rushed in.
She was small again.
Too small for the fear she carried.
A school corridor stretched endlessly in front of her yellow walls, peeling paint, the smell of dust and sweat. Her bag hung heavy on her shoulder, not because of books, but because she was already tired.
Her mother’s voice sliced through the air.
“Why are you standing like that? Useless. Do you want everyone to stare at you?”
People stared anyway.
Ruhi remembered keeping her eyes on the floor. Remembered how still she had gone. How not reacting hurts less than fighting back.
Then a presence.Eyes on her.
She lifted her head in the memory.
Rakshit.
Standing at the end of the corridor. Watching. Smiling not kind, not cruel. Curious.
Her chest tightened violently.
“No… no, no…” she whispered aloud, swaying where she stood in the present.
The memory shifted.
A hand holding out a bottle of water.
A voice that didn’t shout.“Sit here. You don’t have to go back yet.”
She remembered how relieved she had felt. How her shoulders had loosened for the first time that day.
“I trusted you,” Ruhi whispered, tears streaming down her face now.
Another memory crashed in before she could breathe.
Laughter.Her own.Soft at first. Then louder.
Vikrant.
Standing too close. Smiling too easily. Fighting boys who teased her.
“Leave her alone.”
She remembered the way her heart had felt lighter around him. The way she had talked more. Laughed more.
The memory twisted.
Her mother’s hand gripping her arm too tightly.
A slap.A door slamming.
Rakshit’s voice somewhere in the background not angry. Calm.
“She was disrespectful today.”
Her body jerked violently in the present.
“No ” Her breath broke. “You did this.”
Bruises bloomed under sleeves.Sleeves she always wore.
Rakshit standing at a distance. Watching.Satisfied.
Her breathing turned ragged, sharp gasps tearing in and out of her chest.
“Stop it,” she begged she didn’t know who she was begging anymore.
Then her father.
Hiten Raichand.
Standing in the living room, his face pale as Vikrant spoke.
“She’s not safe here, uncle.”Her father’s jaw tightening.
Decision hardening in his eyes.The memory blurred
A car at night. Rain. Headlights.
Glass exploding.
Her father’s hand pushing her back
“Papa!” Ruhi screamed.Her knees finally gave out.
The pressure in her head spiked, unbearable now, like her skull couldn’t contain everything it was being forced to remember.
Her vision went white at the edges.She felt hands grabbing her arms.
Heard her name shouted once, twice, desperately.But it all sounded far away.
Distant.Unimportant.
Because inside her mind, the past had caught up with her.
Not gently.Not slowly.All at once.
And Ruhi Raichand collapsed, her body shutting down under the weight of a childhood she had been forced to forget just to survive.
As she fell, darkness rushed in.
Not peaceful.Not quiet.But merciful.
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