Chapter 7 – Love Interrupted

 

            The school did not announce its ending.

            There was no bell for it, no assembly, no speech reminding anyone that some doors, once closed, do not reopen. It ended quietly…the way certain places do…by remaining exactly the same while the people inside were forced to change.

            The building stood as it always had. Pale walls softened by years of sun. Windows holding dust like memory. Corridors echoing with footsteps that never asked where they were going next. The neem tree near the boundary wall shed its leaves without drama. The playground lines faded slowly, as if even chalk understood that nothing stayed forever.

            For ten years, the school had been a complete world.

            Now it revealed its true shape…finite, contained, ending at Class Tenth.

            Kamal learned this not through announcement, but through absence.

***

            The notice appeared near the staff room one ordinary morning. A single sheet of paper, curling slightly at the edges, as if unsure of its authority.

Admissions for Classes Eleventh and Twelfth are not available.

            Nothing more.

            Students gathered around it briefly, then dispersed. Some laughed. Some shrugged. A few looked thoughtful for a moment before returning to their conversations. The future arrived unevenly…important to some, irrelevant to others.

            Kamal did not move closer.

            He already knew what the notice meant.

            He had always known, somewhere quietly inside, that this school would not carry him beyond a certain point. What he had not known was how much it would cost him.

            In the classroom, lessons continued as usual. The teacher spoke about examinations, certificates, procedures. Her voice was careful, as if she too sensed that words could bruise.

            “After this year,” she said, pausing slightly, “you will move on.”

            Move on to where, she did not say.

            Kamal stared at his desk, tracing an old scratch with his fingertip. Initials carved by someone long gone. A reminder that people left, even if desks remained.

            Across the room, Monica sat near the window.

            She understood immediately.

            Monica did not react outwardly.

            She had learned long ago that reactions invited questions, and questions demanded answers she was rarely prepared to give. So she let the knowledge settle quietly inside her, heavy and undeniable.

            So this was how it would happen.

            Not through confession.  Not through argument.  Not even through choice.

            Just time, stepping in without permission.

            She watched Kamal from the corner of her eye. Not directly. Never urgently. Just enough to notice what had changed. He looked at familiar things longer than usual. The clock. The blackboard. The corridor outside the door.

            He was memorizing.

            That hurt more than the notice itself.

***

            They did not speak about it on the road.

            They walked side by side as they always had, bicycles rolling beside them, dust rising gently around their feet. The road curved ahead, familiar and unbothered, lined with trees that had watched their silence grow over the years.

            Everything looked unchanged.

            That was the betrayal.

            The corner shop still displayed sweets in glass jars. The stray dog slept beneath the bench. Children played nearby, shouting with careless certainty.

            Kamal wanted to speak.

            He wanted to say he was leaving.  He wanted to say he did not know how to place her in the life ahead.  He wanted to ask questions that frightened him.

            Instead, he said, “Tomorrow there’s the science test.”

            Monica nodded. “Yes.”

            Tomorrow.

            They had lived inside that word for years, stretching it thin, pretending it was endless.

            She sensed his restraint and matched it…not because she lacked courage, but because she understood timing. Some truths needed silence more than bravery.

***

            At home, Kamal’s father read the newspaper with practiced seriousness.

            “You’ll apply elsewhere,” he said. “Better facilities. Better exposure.”

            Kamal nodded.

            His mother stirred the pot slowly. “Change is good,” she added. “You’ll make new friends.”

            Good.

            The word landed without weight.

            No one asked how he felt. Perhaps they believed emotions adjusted automatically, like uniforms altered by tailors who never asked whether the cloth remembered its previous shape.

            That night, Kamal lay awake listening to sounds he had never noticed before…the uneven rhythm of the ceiling fan, the distant bark of a dog, the soft creak of a door when the wind passed through.

            This house would remain.

            The school would not.

            And Monica would no longer be part of his days.

            The thought pressed into him quietly, firmly.

***

            Monica sat by her window that night, watching the road dissolve into darkness.

            She did not cry.

            She told herself this was not an ending, only an interruption. That love, once formed, did not disappear simply because geography intervened.

            But imagination betrayed her.

            She saw him in unfamiliar corridors, sitting beside strangers, laughing at jokes she would never hear.

            Her chest tightened…not enough to break, just enough to ache.

***

            The days that followed were painfully ordinary.

            Classes continued. Homework was assigned. Teachers scolded students as if the future were evenly distributed. The bell rang with its usual authority.

            Endings disguised themselves as routine.

            During a free period, Kamal and Monica sat on the back bench, sharing a notebook filled with careless sketches.

            “Remember,” Kamal said, pointing at a drawing of the playground, “when we thought this place was endless?”

            Monica smiled faintly. “I thought everything important would happen here.”

            “Did it?”

            She looked at him then, steady and unafraid.

            “Yes.”

            They did not promise letters.  They did not speak of visits.

            Those belonged to people who believed distance could be managed.

            They believed only in truth.

***

            The final day arrived without ceremony.

            No assembly. No farewell. Kamal’s name was not separated from the rest.

            At the last bell, students rushed out, celebrating freedom. For Kamal, it felt like exile disguised as relief.

            Monica waited near the gate.

            “So this is it,” she said.

            He nodded. “I thought it would feel heavier.”

            “It will,” she replied. “Later.”

            They stood facing each other, the road stretching behind them in both directions.

            “I’ll remember,” he said.

            She nodded. “That’s enough.”

            They did not hug.

            They did not cry.

            Some goodbyes refuse spectacle.

            Kamal turned and walked away.

            Months ago, Kamal had lent Monica a film magazine.

            It was an ordinary thing. A thin bundle of glossy pages passed across a desk during a free period, done casually, without ceremony.

            “You can keep it,” he had said. “I’ve already read it.”

            She had nodded, careful with it from the very beginning. She liked reading interviews slowly, returning to lines she felt were honest. Sometimes she paused over photographs longer than necessary, studying expressions rather than faces.

            After that day, the magazine became part of her routine. It slipped into her bag, rested beside her books, traveled the same road she did.

            Kamal forgot about it.

            Monica did not.

            On the last day, just as Kamal reached the road outside the gate, he heard footsteps behind him.

            “Kamal…wait.”

            He turned.

            Monica was walking quickly, almost running, her bag slipping off her shoulder. She stopped in front of him, slightly breathless, and held out the magazine.

            “You forgot this,” she said.

            He took it without thinking. “You could’ve kept it.”

            She shook her head gently. “No. It was always yours.”

            There was something in her voice…final, but not heavy.

            Before he could say anything more, she stepped back.

            “I should go,” she added.

            And then she turned away.

            Kamal stood there for a moment, watching her walk back toward the gate. He did not open the magazine immediately. It felt wrong to do it there, in the open, as if the pages deserved privacy.

            Later that evening, alone in his room, he picked it up again.

            The cover was slightly bent at the edges. The pages smelled faintly of dust and familiarity.

            He opened it.

            And then he stopped.

            On the top right corner of the first page, written neatly in small letters, was Monica.

            On the top left corner, just as quietly written, was Kamal.

            He turned the page.

            Again…Monica on the right. Kamal on the left.

            Page after page.

            Not hurried.

            Not careless.

            As if she had wanted to make sure they appeared together, even on paper.

 

            His chest tightened.

            She had not underlined sentences.

            She had not marked photographs.

            She had only written their names…side by side, again and again…without knowing when he would notice, or if he ever would.

            Kamal closed the magazine slowly.

            For the first time since leaving the school, something inside him gave way.

            Not loudly.

            Not completely.

            Just enough to understand that some people leave behind proof—not of love declared, but of love preserved.

***

            They had both finished the same class.  But Kamal left immediately…carried forward by decisions already made for him.  Monica remained behind, not because her journey was different, but because it had not yet been decided.  Delay, she would learn, could make absence feel heavier than departure.

            The road noticed first.

            It had grown used to two shadows moving together. Now there was only one.

            Monica stood for a long moment after he disappeared, pretending to search inside her bag, waiting for something dramatic that never came.

            The world did not stop.

            She turned back toward the school gate.

            The building stood unchanged.

            For the first time, she understood that places outlive people—but not memories.

***

            That night, Kamal packed his books into a new bag. Different covers. Different labels. Same handwriting.

            Elsewhere, Monica lay awake listening to the road breathe.

            Neither knew what shape the future would take.

            They only knew this:

            Somewhere between a school that ended at Class Tenth and a road that remembered their steps, something real had begun.

            It was interrupted.

            Not ended.