The mirror didn’t feel like hers anymore.
Meher stared at her reflection—lips parted, eyes rimmed with kohl, red sindoor like a wound in her hair.
But all she could see…
Was Sana.
The girl in the photograph. The girl Kabir couldn’t save.
The girl she had become without ever knowing it.
Behind her, the room was silent. But in her mind, it roared.
Was she ever truly Meher? Or had she always been shaped, softened, molded by Kabir’s guilt?
She gripped the edge of the dresser, knuckles white.
“You’re not her,” she whispered to herself. “You’re not her.”
But the mirror didn’t answer.
The door creaked open behind her.
Kabir’s voice came quiet. “You haven’t spoken to me in two days.”
“Because I don’t know if what we are is real.”
He stepped forward. “You think I see her when I touch you?”
She didn’t turn. “I think you see her when you need to.”
Silence.
Then: “I buried her. I mourned her. But you—Meher—you burn differently. You bite back. You look me in the eyes like you’d rather kill me than kiss me.”
“And yet,” she said, “you still kiss me.”
“Because you’re not a ghost,” he whispered. “You’re my punishment. And my only salvation.”
She looked at him in the mirror. Not a girl. Not a shadow.
Something stronger.
“Then maybe it’s time I stop being both.”
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