A week later, Kajal boarded a flight from Bangalore to Kolkata. As she settled into her window seat, she let out a slow breath, watching the city lights blur beneath her as the plane ascended. The higher they climbed, the heavier her heart felt.

She and Lata had once been inseparable. Not just best friends—more like sisters bound by something even deeper than blood. When Kajal lost her mother as a child, it was Lata’s mother who had taken her in, who had wiped her tears and placed extra food on her plate without a word. Lata had been her shadow, her safe place, the one person who understood her without explanations.

But now? Now, she wasn’t sure.

She stared at the clouds outside, fingers gripping the armrest. Has time changed things between them? It had been years since they last sat together for hours, laughing over nothing. Their calls had grown shorter, their conversations more formal. There were things she had wanted to say, but somehow, she never did. And now, Lata is getting married.

Kajal should have felt happy. And she was—wasn’t she? But beneath that happiness, a strange unease lurked.

Would Lata still be the same? Would she still look at Kajal with that familiar warmth, or had something shifted between them, something Kajal hadn’t noticed before?

As the plane cruised through the night, a thought crept into her mind, uninvited.

What if things were already different?

What if she was returning to a home that no longer felt like hers?

To be continued…