My first day back at the office was a hollow victory. Dad and Vinay had arranged a welcome, but Arohi had stayed behind. When I asked her to come, she gave me one of her polite, distant smiles.

"No, you go ahead. I have some things to take care of here."

The hug she gave me goodbye felt different. It was tight, almost desperate, as if she were memorizing the feel of me. A finality. All day, a cold dread coiled in my stomach, a primal fear I couldn't shake.

I rushed home that evening, my heart pounding with a single, desperate need: to see her, to tell her everything I now understood. But the house was silent. It didn't just feel empty; it felt bereft, as if its very soul had been ripped out.

"Dad?" I called out, my voice echoing in the stillness.

I found him in his study, sitting in the dim light, an old photograph in his hands. It was of Radhika Aunty, Arohi, Vinay, and me, from a happier time. He looked up, and his eyes were red-rimmed.

"She's gone, Vikram."

The words were simple, but they carried the weight of an avalanche.

"No," I whispered, denial my first, futile defense. "Where? For how long?"

"She only stayed to see you well," he said, his voice thick with an emotion I couldn't place. "Her work is done."

I don't remember the drive to her house. I remember the sight of the locked gate, the dusty windows, the absolute stillness. It was the home of a ghost. Frantic, I hammered on the neighbor's door.

Mrs. Iyer opened it, her face softening with a pity that made my blood run cold. "Beta, Vikram... you didn't know?"

"Know what?" I begged, my voice cracking.

"Radhika... she passed away. Almost a year ago now. The shock of your accident, they said. It gave her a massive stroke."

The ground vanished beneath my feet. Radhika Aunty. The woman who had fed me, scolded me, loved me as her own. Gone. And for an entire year, Arohi had carried that cataclysmic grief alone, while tirelessly nursing the man who had inadvertently caused it. I fell to my knees on the cold pavement, the sobs tearing from a place so deep inside me I didn't know it existed. I wasn't just crying for Aunty; I was crying for Arohi's unimaginable strength, for my own breathtaking stupidity, for a loss so profound it felt like the end of everything.

A hand settled on my shoulder. Vinay. He didn't say anything, just sat beside me on the curb, sharing the weight of my collapse.

When I could finally breathe, he spoke, his voice low and heavy with shared grief. "The news of your accident... it was too much for Aunty. She was gone in two days. Arohi... she was torn between her mother's last rites and your hospital bed. She handled everything with a strength that terrified us. And the moment the last ritual was done, she walked straight to the hospital. She forbade anyone from telling you. She said your recovery was the only thing that mattered, that the grief would break you."

He looked at me, his eyes holding no blame, only a profound sadness. "She was always clear, Vikram. The moment you were back on your feet, she would leave. She told us to be happy for you, to accept Nisha. She never wanted your gratitude. She only ever wanted your love, and you... you had already given that to someone else. Let her go. She's left India to find a life for herself, one where she isn't just living for others."

I sat there, hollowed out. The pain was no longer sharp; it was a vast, endless ocean, and I was drowning in it. She was gone. And she had taken with her the last remnants of the man I could have been.

The three years that followed were a monochrome existence. I was a ghost in my own life, a shell going through the motions. I ended things with Nisha definitively; her attempts to rekindle what was never a fire felt like a mockery of the inferno I had lost. The business thrived, my father and I rebuilt our relationship brick by painful brick, but my heart was a vacant room where only memories lived.

I learned to cook. I started with her favorite dishes—the same ones she used to bring me, the ones I had so often taken for granted. I would stand in my kitchen, the aromas of spices filling the air, and it was the closest I could feel to her. It was a penance and a prayer. I was building a better man, a man worthy of her, for a future I feared would never come.

The pain of Arohi's absence was a constant, dull ache, a phantom limb that never stopped throbbing. It was a different universe from the pain I felt when Nisha left. That had been a bruise to my ego. This was an amputation of my soul. She had taken the colors, the music, the very oxygen from my world.

(Next to be continued with the emotional reunion three years later... follow me to get the access to the complete story)