Rahul Shukla
1
The night was quiet, with only the occasional hum of crickets breaking the stillness, when Rivan Malhotra and Aaryel Sen sneaked out of their homes to meet beneath the old banyan tree at the edge of their neighborhood. They were twelve then, armed with nothing but a pocketknife borrowed from Rivan’s uncle and the unshakable certainty that childhood often gifts. The tree stood massive and eternal, its roots crawling across the ground like veins, its branches spreading out wide enough to hold their secrets. With fumbling hands and suppressed giggles, they carved their names into the bark—clumsy, crooked letters that seemed sacred once etched. Under the soft glow of a distant streetlamp, Aaryel whispered, “Almost, Always. No matter what.” And Rivan, with a grin that carried both sincerity and defiance, repeated the words as though they were an oath. In that moment, the world shrank to just the two of them, a pair of best friends who believed their bond could outlast everything else life might throw at them.
Years later, the memory of that night lingered like a comforting echo. Their lives had grown busier, tangled in studies, family expectations, and the first hints of adulthood, yet whenever they sat together—on the cracked rooftop of Rivan’s house, or sharing street food under the neon lights of the local market—the phrase returned like a talisman. Almost, Always. It wasn’t just a promise; it was a shield against loneliness, a reminder that neither was truly alone, no matter how much the world shifted. They laughed over inside jokes no one else understood, pulled each other out of scrapes, and shared the kind of silences that didn’t need to be filled with words. Rivan, with his quiet eyes and thoughtful sketches in the margins of his notebooks, often grounded Aaryel’s impulsive streaks, while Aaryel, with his effortless humor and restless energy, pushed Rivan to embrace moments instead of overthinking them. Their differences made them whole, their bond a careful balance of stillness and movement.
But beneath all the laughter and light-hearted bickering, there were unspoken fears neither had the courage to name aloud. Rivan sometimes wondered if promises like theirs could survive the inevitable pull of growing older—new friends, new loves, new responsibilities. Aaryel, though outwardly confident, felt a flicker of dread whenever he thought about being left behind, his jokes masking an ache he never admitted. Yet under the vast expanse of the sky, sprawled on rooftops with the stars as their only witnesses, they always found their way back to that banyan tree night, to those carved letters that refused to fade with time. The pact was more than a memory—it was a thread tying them together, invisible yet unbreakable, a fragile certainty in a world that was slowly teaching them that nothing truly lasts forever.
2
College opened like a door to a larger, louder world, one that neither Rivan Malhotra nor Aaryel Sen had truly anticipated. The campus was sprawling, filled with sunlit courtyards, old stone buildings, and bustling cafés where students argued over everything from philosophy to politics. For Rivan, the architecture department became both sanctuary and battlefield—his days consumed by design studios, sketching models, and the long hours bent over drafting tables. He loved it, though; the symmetry of buildings spoke to his need for structure, for the possibility of shaping spaces that might outlive him. Aaryel, on the other hand, thrived in the chaos of the photography program. With his camera slung casually around his neck, he wandered through campus, capturing fleeting moments—the laughter of a group of friends, sunlight bouncing off a windowpane, the tired smile of a professor. Where Rivan sought permanence in lines and structures, Aaryel chased impermanence, storing emotions in pixels that could never truly be replicated. Their paths were different, yet at the end of each day, they found each other again, trading stories and teasing each other about who had worked harder.
This new chapter in life also brought new people into their orbit. Group projects and workshops forced them to mingle, and slowly their circle widened. Rivan began forming bonds with fellow architecture students who admired his quiet precision, while Aaryel became the heart of almost every gathering, his sharp wit and effortless charisma pulling people toward him. Small triumphs began to add up: Rivan receiving his first commendation from a notoriously harsh professor, Aaryel winning a college photography contest with a candid shot of a street vendor. Yet with every achievement came the awareness that their childhood world was shifting. The pact remained, though, a silent reassurance that amid all the changes, they still had each other. But for the first time, they were learning how to stand on their own feet—not only as best friends but as individuals with ambitions that stretched beyond shared rooftops and banyan tree oaths.
It was in the college library that Rivan first noticed Liora D’Costa. She sat near the poetry section, her long hair falling carelessly over her shoulders as she scribbled lines into a battered notebook. There was something about the way she read—leaning forward as though words were secrets spoken only to her—that drew him in. Liora radiated a quiet intensity, the kind that didn’t demand attention but commanded it all the same. She studied literature, but more than that, she lived it, carrying verses in her eyes and metaphors in her laughter. For Rivan, who often struggled to articulate emotions beyond sketches and blueprints, she became a mystery worth unfolding. Aaryel, ever the observer, caught his best friend’s stolen glances and smirked knowingly, though he kept his thoughts to himself. In that moment, an unspoken shift began—subtle, almost imperceptible, but real. A new name had entered their story, and with it came the beginning of a change neither Rivan nor Aaryel could fully understand. The “new beginning” wasn’t just about college anymore; it was about the delicate balance between past promises and future possibilities.
3
Aaryel had always been quick to notice the subtleties others overlooked—the nervous tapping of Rivan’s pencil when he was deep in thought, the way his friend’s sketches grew softer when he was in a good mood, or how his voice changed ever so slightly when something mattered more than he dared to admit. So, when Rivan’s eyes began to wander toward Liora D’Costa in the library, or across the cafeteria, or even in passing conversations, Aaryel caught it instantly. The glances weren’t obvious; they were fleeting, restrained, but to someone who had known Rivan since childhood, they spoke volumes. Outwardly, Aaryel laughed it off, teasing Rivan lightly about his “newfound interest in poetry,” or nudging him when Liora walked by. Beneath that easy grin, however, something tugged sharply at him—a quiet ache he struggled to name. It wasn’t jealousy in the simple sense, nor was it resentment. It was more like a shadow creeping across a bond he had always assumed was unshakable, a reminder that perhaps their world of “Almost, Always” was more fragile than he had ever wanted to believe.
That shadow deepened with each passing week. Aaryel found himself withdrawing in subtle ways, retreating into long walks with his camera, disappearing from group gatherings, and claiming assignments or shoots as excuses for his absence. Fatigue began to cling to him, more persistent than before, yet he brushed it off with humor whenever Rivan asked. He would shrug, crack a joke, or change the subject, never allowing his friend to see beyond the mask. But when he was alone, Aaryel could feel the weight pressing heavier—the secret he carried tightening its grip, turning laughter into effort and quiet moments into battlegrounds. He worried that if Rivan ever saw the truth, pity would replace friendship, and that thought terrified him more than anything. Better to be distant, better to pretend, better to keep the shadows tucked away where they belonged. Still, the distance was noticeable, and though Rivan was distracted by the pull of his growing feelings for Liora, he could not ignore entirely the strange silence where Aaryel’s voice used to be.
The rooftop, once their sacred place, began to feel different too. They still went up there sometimes, stretching out under the night sky, but the conversations were shorter, less raw, less full of the unfiltered honesty that had always defined them. Rivan would find himself sketching absentmindedly while Aaryel stared through his camera lens, framing stars as though trying to capture something that refused to stay. When their eyes met, both smiled, but the smiles no longer carried the same weight. The banyan tree pact lingered in the back of their minds—Almost, Always. No matter what—but for the first time, it felt as though time itself was testing its strength. Rivan sensed a distance but couldn’t name its cause, while Aaryel, caught between protecting his secret and silently watching his best friend fall into the orbit of another, carried the ache in silence. And so, the shadows grew—not in dramatic ruptures, but in the quiet, almost invisible shifts that change everything long before anyone dares to admit it.
4
It was during a late afternoon photography exhibition on campus that Devansh Kapoor first crossed paths with Rivan and Aaryel in a way that mattered. Older by a couple of years, with the easy confidence of someone who had already stumbled through the chaos of college life, Devansh carried himself with a mix of charm and quiet wisdom. He had once been where they were—tangled in friendships, ambitions, and emotions too large to contain—and perhaps that’s why he noticed the tension neither of them admitted. He caught Aaryel watching Rivan and Liora with a fleeting sadness, caught Rivan glancing at Aaryel as if searching for words, and saw Liora caught in between with a kindness that could either heal or complicate. Over coffee one evening, Devansh leaned back in his chair, strumming absent-mindedly on his guitar, and told them, “Friendships don’t break, boys. They… bend until someone lets go. The trick is to know how much they can bend before you lose the shape of them.” His words, half-casual and half-warning, sank deeper than any lecture. Aaryel laughed, brushing it off, but Rivan carried it with him like a stone in his pocket, heavy and impossible to ignore.
Despite the weight of that warning, life found its rhythm, and soon the three of them—Rivan, Aaryel, and Liora—began spending more time together. It happened naturally, almost effortlessly: group projects that turned into late-night study sessions, coffee runs after long classes, shared lunches under the shade of campus trees. For Rivan, those moments were quietly blissful. Liora’s laughter lit up spaces, and her easy understanding of his reserved nature made him feel seen in ways he hadn’t expected. For Aaryel, it was a paradox—he cherished the time with them, grateful for the warmth of inclusion, but each shared glance between Rivan and Liora, each subtle brush of hands, pressed against the tender wound he carried. He forced himself to smile wider, to crack sharper jokes, to play the part of the carefree friend, all while a storm churned just beneath his skin. Devansh, watching from the outside, recognized the act for what it was but knew better than to interfere too soon. Some lessons, he believed, had to be learned through the ache of experience.
Still, Aaryel couldn’t help but cling to the fleeting comfort those moments brought. He photographed Rivan sketching quietly in the library, Liora reading poetry with her lips moving silently, and the two of them laughing together under fairy lights at a campus festival. The camera allowed him to be present yet hidden, an observer in a world where he wasn’t sure how to belong anymore. Rivan noticed the fatigue around his friend’s eyes, the times he excused himself earlier than usual, but he convinced himself it was just the workload or the pressure of competitions. He didn’t ask too many questions, afraid of what the answers might reveal. Liora, though new to their story, sensed the fragile balance between them. She admired Aaryel’s humor but often felt the undercurrent of something unsaid. And in those shared silences, in the fragile space between three people trying to hold onto something precious, the shadow of Devansh’s warning lingered. Friendships bend, he had said—and though none of them admitted it, each could feel the bend beginning, slow and subtle, like the first crack in a mirror.
5
Rivan never realized how quickly Liora had become a part of his everyday life until her absence on certain days left the hours strangely hollow. It started innocently enough—study sessions in the library where her notes brimmed with underlined lines of poetry and his pages filled with intricate sketches of buildings. She read aloud to him sometimes, her voice soft but carrying a weight that made words feel alive, and he found himself lingering on her pauses, on the way her eyes lit up when a metaphor struck her deeply. Outside the campus walls, their connection continued through messages that stretched late into the night, conversations wandering from books to dreams, from fears of failure to whimsical plans for the future. For Rivan, whose thoughts often stayed bottled inside, Liora became the one person who coaxed them out gently, never pushing too hard but always pulling him closer. Their friendship remained undefined in words, but in the way her hand sometimes brushed his, or in the way his chest tightened when she smiled at him, it was undeniable: Rivan was almost in love, teetering on the fragile edge between confession and silence.
Aaryel saw it all through the lens of his camera. He caught them laughing in the courtyard when Liora leaned in to whisper something only Rivan could hear, captured the quiet intensity of Rivan sketching while Liora rested her chin on her hand, and froze forever the stolen glances they shared when they thought no one was looking. The photographs were beautiful, undeniably so, but each click of the shutter felt like pressing down on a bruise. He smiled when he showed them the images, joked about how they looked like the poster couple for some indie romance film, but behind every jest was a slow unraveling he couldn’t stop. At night, when he reviewed the pictures alone, he wondered if his camera had become a cruel reminder, forcing him to witness the very shift he dreaded most—the bending of a friendship that once seemed eternal. He tried to bury his unease in humor, in charm, in late-night editing sessions, but the cracks beneath the surface grew deeper, shadows stretching longer than even he could disguise.
It was Nyra, Rivan’s younger sister, who noticed first. Though only seventeen, she had an uncanny ability to see through facades, and while she teased Rivan endlessly about his not-so-subtle infatuation with Liora, she couldn’t ignore the way Aaryel’s laughter didn’t quite reach his eyes anymore. One evening, when Aaryel visited their house, she caught him staring out the window in silence, his shoulders tense in a way that made her frown. He quickly brushed her off when she asked, turning the question into a joke, but the unease lingered in her mind. Nyra didn’t yet understand the full picture, didn’t know about the secret Aaryel carried or the storm that brewed inside him, but she sensed enough to know that something was wrong. To her, the bond between Rivan and Aaryel had always seemed unshakable, something permanent and unchanging, and the idea of cracks forming between them unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. She kept her observations to herself for now, unsure of how to put them into words, but she carried them quietly, a seed of worry that would only grow with time.
6
The argument began over something laughably small—a misplaced notebook during a group project meeting—but by the time Rivan and Aaryel exchanged words, the air between them was sharp with unspoken frustration. Rivan, tired from long hours in the studio, snapped at Aaryel for being careless, while Aaryel, already carrying the weight of his own exhaustion, retorted with a bitterness that surprised even himself. The words tumbled out faster than either could stop them—about priorities, about distractions, about who had time for whom anymore. Rivan accused Aaryel of pulling away without explanation, of making excuses instead of showing up like he once did. Aaryel shot back that maybe Rivan was too busy gazing at poetry and perfect smiles to notice anything else. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating, as both realized they had exposed pieces of themselves they never meant to reveal. The fight fizzled quickly, ending not with resolution but with the uncomfortable distance of two people retreating into their corners, nursing wounds too raw to acknowledge aloud.
In the days that followed, Aaryel buried himself behind a wall of excuses. “Busy with assignments,” he would say, or “working on a shoot,” but beneath those casual explanations was a deeper truth he dared not confess. His body was betraying him more often now—fatigue that clung to him no matter how much he slept, headaches that blurred his vision, a heaviness in his chest he couldn’t shake. Each day was a balancing act between holding himself together and pretending to the world that nothing was wrong. To reveal it would mean surrendering to pity, to the possibility that Rivan might see him as fragile instead of equal. And so, Aaryel smiled wider when people asked, laughed louder at jokes that weren’t funny, and forced himself into roles that drained him more with every passing day. Yet the solitude he once sought for comfort now pressed in like a cage, and every time he saw Rivan with Liora—so alive, so hopeful—it reminded him of the widening gap he couldn’t control.
Rivan, meanwhile, found himself torn in ways he had never anticipated. He couldn’t deny the pull he felt toward Liora, the warmth she brought into his life, the way she understood him in quiet, steady ways. But every smile with her seemed to echo against the silence growing between him and Aaryel. He replayed the argument in his mind, wondering if he had been too harsh, if he had missed the signs his friend was trying to hide. Yet whenever he reached out, Aaryel’s responses were brief, distracted, cloaked in that vague word—busy. The banyan tree pact haunted Rivan during those long nights: Almost, Always. No matter what. How could he honor a promise that demanded all of him when his heart was slowly beginning to lean toward someone else? The choice wasn’t clear, and perhaps it was never meant to be a choice at all. But caught between the past that anchored him and the future that called to him, Rivan felt the first true fracture of forever—a crack that, once formed, could never be unseen.
7
That night was meant to be just another late study session, but the air in Aaryel’s room felt heavy, the silence punctuated only by the clicking of his camera lying abandoned on the desk. Rivan had stopped by unannounced, carrying packets of instant noodles, but what greeted him was not the sight of his best friend hunched over books or fiddling with lenses. Instead, he found Aaryel crumpled on the floor, breath shallow, sweat trickling down his temple. Panic shot through Rivan as he rushed forward, shaking him, calling his name until Aaryel’s eyes fluttered weakly open. In that moment, the world felt brutally fragile, and all the years of laughter and promises seemed to hang precariously in the balance. Rivan managed to get him onto the bed, fumbling for water, for words, for answers he didn’t have. But when he demanded to know what was happening, Aaryel turned away, as though silence could shield him from the truth that was already spilling out in the cracks of his strength.
Later that night, after coaxing and quiet persistence, the dam broke. Aaryel’s voice was trembling, not with weakness but with the weight of fear—fear of pity, fear of being seen as fragile, fear of being left behind. He admitted, haltingly, that he had been living with a chronic illness for years, one he had carefully hidden beneath layers of humor, photography, and deliberate evasions. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Rivan—it was that he couldn’t bear the thought of being looked at with sympathy, of their bond shifting under the weight of something neither of them could control. But for Rivan, the revelation landed not as sympathy but as betrayal. Not because of the illness, which he could have accepted and fought alongside his friend, but because of the walls Aaryel had built, the trust that had been withheld. All those sudden disappearances, the unexplained fatigue, the excuses of being “busy”—the puzzle pieces rearranged themselves into a truth that stung deeper than any argument ever could.
As dawn crept through the curtains, their friendship felt more fragile than it ever had before. Rivan sat at the edge of the bed, torn between anger and sorrow, between the instinct to protect and the hurt of being shut out. Aaryel, drained from the confession, drifted into uneasy sleep, leaving Rivan with the silence of unanswered questions and the memory of their childhood pact echoing in his mind. For years, they had promised each other forever, and yet here was a truth so heavy it threatened to break them apart. The bond that had once felt unshakable now dangled by a thread, stretched thin by secrets, by unspoken fears, and by the quiet ache of betrayal. And though Rivan’s heart longed to forgive, he knew that something had shifted irrevocably—that their friendship, like glass under strain, was dangerously close to shattering.
8
Rivan found himself drifting further into Liora’s world, almost unconsciously at first, then with a growing certainty that it was easier than staying near Aaryel. He told himself he wasn’t abandoning his best friend, only giving him space, but late-night texts dwindled, shared sketches and photographs went unanswered, and the silence between them thickened like an unspoken accusation. With Liora, life felt simpler—poetry recitals in dim cafés, whispered conversations about dreams and regrets, laughter in libraries when their books toppled in unison. Yet even in these moments of warmth, Rivan felt a hollow ache whenever he remembered the way Aaryel’s voice had cracked the night he confessed his illness, the way betrayal and hurt had coiled around Rivan’s chest. He wanted to forgive, but part of him still wondered why Aaryel hadn’t trusted him enough, why the pact of “Almost, Always” hadn’t been strong enough to hold. The contradiction tore at him—guilt lacing every smile he shared with Liora, every step he took away from the boy who had once been his shadow.
Meanwhile, Aaryel drifted in the opposite direction—downward, inward, into a silence no one else could fully penetrate. He went through the motions of college life, camera slung over his shoulder, capturing stolen glimpses of light through cracked windows or strangers’ smiles he could never quite replicate in himself. His laughter, when it came, was brittle, quickly fading into long stretches of absence. He skipped meals, skipped classes, skipped entire days, hiding behind excuses no one believed. His illness—part physical, part emotional—clawed at him in private, and the distance from Rivan made each pang sharper, as though he was being punished not only by his own body but by the universe for daring to hope that he could keep both his secret and his friendship intact. Devansh, perceptive in ways that unnerved Aaryel, tried to tether him back, sitting with him during empty evenings and reminding him in quiet tones that loneliness wasn’t meant to be carried alone. But even Devansh’s words felt like temporary scaffolding against a collapsing wall. Aaryel missed Rivan not just as a friend, but as a compass, and without him, every direction felt skewed, every day a little harder to survive.
It was Nyra who finally broke through the growing storm, her presence sharp yet tender as she confronted Rivan one evening in their quiet home. She had noticed the shadows under Aaryel’s eyes, the way his smile no longer reached beyond politeness, and she had seen her brother’s growing ease with Liora juxtaposed with his withdrawal from the boy who once felt like family. “Almost, Always wasn’t supposed to mean until it’s hard,” she said, her voice trembling not with anger but with disappointment that cut deeper than any argument could. “You promised him forever in your own way, Rivan. Don’t tell me forever only counts when it’s easy.” Her words struck like a mirror being held up to his soul, reflecting the cracks he had been trying to ignore. In that moment, Rivan realized that love and friendship weren’t competing truths—they were tangled threads of the same promise, both demanding honesty, loyalty, and courage. As Nyra’s words echoed in his mind, the weight of what he was losing—both Aaryel’s trust and his own sense of who he was—pressed down on him, forcing him to confront the painful question of whether “Almost, Always” could survive this breaking point, or whether it had already fractured beyond repair.
9
The silence between Rivan and Aaryel had stretched too long, like a taut string threatening to snap. Rivan had been living in two worlds—one orbiting around Liora’s presence, luminous and comforting, the other weighted by the absence of the boy who had once been his anchor. In the quiet corners of the library, he could still hear Aaryel’s laugh echo faintly, memories intruding where words had grown scarce. When he finally sat with Liora, guilt pooled in his chest like an immovable stone. He told her everything—not in rehearsed fragments, but in the raw honesty that trembled in his voice. About the illness, about the pact, about how he felt like he was betraying Aaryel even while falling for her. He braced himself for rejection, for Liora to recoil from the tangled web of emotions he had spun. Instead, she reached for his hand with the calm certainty of someone who had already chosen her answer. Her words—soft yet unyielding—cut through his turmoil: “If you love me, you can’t abandon him. That’s part of loving me too.” In that moment, Rivan realized love wasn’t a replacement, wasn’t a subtraction, but an expansion.
With Liora’s conviction grounding him, Rivan began to understand that the fracture with Aaryel wasn’t irreparable—it was waiting for him to make the choice he had been running from. The choice to stay. To not let fear or confusion dictate the story of their bond. He had seen the weight Aaryel carried, not just the illness, but the constant need to appear unbreakable. And Rivan knew now that his silence had been its own kind of betrayal, not because he didn’t care, but because he hadn’t been brave enough to prove it. Liora’s words lingered like a lifeline: love doesn’t demand abandonment; it demands presence. The two of them—Rivan and Liora—decided, quietly but firmly, that they would not let Aaryel spiral alone again. They wouldn’t become another reminder of everything he feared losing. Love, in its truest form, meant choosing to stand beside someone even when it was inconvenient, even when it hurt, even when the path was heavy.
That night, Rivan walked through the campus with a clarity he hadn’t felt in weeks. The air was cold, the streetlamps casting long shadows, and yet the weight on his chest had begun to lift. For the first time since the cracks began to form, he wasn’t torn between friendship and love, because he finally saw how deeply they were intertwined. His love for Liora didn’t diminish his bond with Aaryel—it deepened it, demanded he protect it. Aaryel had once said that friendships don’t break, they bend until someone lets go. Rivan knew he had been the one loosening his grip, but tonight, he chose to hold on again. He wasn’t sure how Aaryel would receive him, whether anger or silence would greet him first, but he was ready to step back into the space where they had once been almost unbreakable. Almost, Always—those words no longer felt like a fragile promise, but a reminder that love and friendship, when chosen together, could become a shield strong enough to withstand even the sharpest fractures of life.
10
The rooftop was quiet, almost eerily so, as if it too had been waiting for this moment of reckoning. The same rooftop where Rivan and Aaryel had once stood together, wide-eyed dreamers, making a pact of friendship that felt unbreakable. Tonight, the air was heavier, the silence denser, carrying all the words left unsaid and the fractures that had grown between them. Aaryel sat near the edge, his silhouette caught against the flickering city lights below, shoulders hunched as though the weight of his secrets and his fears had finally bent him down. His breaths were shallow, uneven—every inhale carrying the ache of vulnerability he had kept hidden for far too long. When Rivan approached, he didn’t speak right away; instead, he let the silence stretch between them, remembering every moment they had almost lost and almost found again. Finally, it was Aaryel who broke the quiet, his voice fragile yet sharp with confession: “I wasn’t afraid of dying, Rivan. I was afraid of being left behind. Afraid that once you had something—or someone—you loved more, there wouldn’t be room for me anymore.”
The words lodged deep into Rivan’s chest, burning with both guilt and recognition. He thought of Liora, of the poems they exchanged and the lightness she brought into his life, and then of Aaryel, the boy who had stood by him through the storms, through laughter, through pain. He crouched beside his friend, not with pity but with the raw honesty of someone who had finally untangled what love and loyalty really meant. “Aaryel,” he said, his voice steady but thick, “love changes things, yes. But it doesn’t erase us. You were never a placeholder. You are the reason I believe in loyalty at all. Almost, Always wasn’t about choosing one person over another—it was about knowing that no matter how life shifts, we don’t let go.” Aaryel’s eyes glistened, not with weakness but with the relief of being seen fully for the first time—illness, fragility, fear, and all. For the first time in months, maybe years, he allowed himself to lean into someone’s presence without the dread of eventual abandonment. The distance between them shrank, not erased by grand promises, but by the quiet recognition that imperfection could still hold something unbreakable.
As the night deepened, the two of them sat together in that liminal space between past and future, watching the city pulse with its restless lights. They didn’t speak of guarantees, nor did they try to resurrect the innocence of their younger pact. Instead, they forged something stronger, something truer: the understanding that love—in its many forms—wasn’t about permanence or perfection, but about showing up even when things fractured. When Liora’s message lit up Rivan’s phone, he didn’t hide it from Aaryel; instead, he showed it, proof that she too had chosen not rivalry but shared strength. Aaryel smiled faintly, exhausted yet lighter, and whispered, “Almost, Always. Maybe that’s enough.” Rivan placed his hand over his friend’s, answering softly, “It’s not almost anymore. It’s always.” And though the night offered no promises of forever, what it did give them was something more precious: the imperfect, beautiful truth that love and friendship could coexist, not untouched by pain, but strengthened by it. The rooftop, once a place of reckless vows, now became a sanctuary of imperfect honesty—a reminder that their story didn’t need to be flawless to be real.
End
