06-03-2026, 01:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-03-2026, 05:13 PM by shailu4ever. Edited 1 time in total. Edited 1 time in total.)
Present Day
That morning, his apartment smelled of stale coffee and regret.
The walls, once bright with the promise of new beginnings, now felt like they were slowly closing in, heavy with unspoken words and unfinished stories. The faint hum of Mumbai outside struggled to penetrate the thick quiet of the room.
Arjun stood in front of his computer, his eyes fixed on three glowing monitors.
The images scrolled past with mechanical precision.
Wedding photographs.
Not his.
Someone else’s.
Strangers.
People he would never meet.
He had been collecting them obsessively ever since Rhea left six months ago.
The images were perfect, almost too perfect. Frozen moments of joy captured in sharp focus. Smiles glowing with anticipation and love. Fingers intertwined. Foreheads touching. Laughter caught in mid-motion.
Each frame was a slice of someone else’s life.
Arjun’s collection had grown into the thousands, carefully organized into folders on his hard drive and backed up to the cloud. The folders were meticulously cataloged, by date, by location, even by emotion.
One folder held his attention more than the others.
“Engagements.”
He scrolled through the photographs slowly, pausing on each image long enough to study the expressions, the body language, the subtle moments between people.
Faces he would never know.
People who would never remember this exact glance or this particular touch.
Arjun stared at them and wondered quietly, was their happiness real?
Or was it simply another performance for the camera?
Strangers’ happiness had become both a comfort and a wound. Their laughter, their closeness, their effortless intimacy, proof that connection existed somewhere in the world.
Just not for him.
Arjun himself stood tall, taller than most, with a lean frame that still carried the restless energy of a boy. His dark hair fell untamed across his forehead, giving him an air of boyish charm even when he was deep in thought.
But it was his eyes that people remembered.
Dark brown, almost black, always observant.
Eyes that seemed to notice everything.
The way sunlight fell across a wall.
The hesitation in someone’s smile.
The scent of rain just before it arrived.
Arjun had always been the kind of person who walked into a room and quietly absorbed its details. When he spoke about something he loved, his words came quickly and enthusiastically, his hands moving animatedly as if trying to shape the ideas in the air.
But beneath that enthusiasm lived something quieter.
A restlessness.
A sadness that followed him like a shadow.
Growing up, Arjun had always been the curious child. The boy who asked endless questions and dismantled toys simply to understand how they worked. He would sit beside his grandmother in the kitchen for hours, fascinated not by the cake she baked but by the process itself, the invisible moments that slowly built something beautiful.
He loved exploring. Discovering. Understanding.
But as he grew older, life slowly buried that curiosity beneath layers of expectation.
Photography became his refuge.
Through the lens, he could observe life without fully stepping into it. He could capture emotions, relationships, and moments of joy without exposing himself to the risks they carried.
It was the perfect profession for someone who had quietly learned to stand just outside the world.
Yet even now, beneath the exhaustion and heartbreak, the curious boy inside him still remained, still searching, still wondering what lay beyond the next horizon.
That morning, his apartment smelled of stale coffee and regret.
The walls, once bright with the promise of new beginnings, now felt like they were slowly closing in, heavy with unspoken words and unfinished stories. The faint hum of Mumbai outside struggled to penetrate the thick quiet of the room.
Arjun stood in front of his computer, his eyes fixed on three glowing monitors.
The images scrolled past with mechanical precision.
Wedding photographs.
Not his.
Someone else’s.
Strangers.
People he would never meet.
He had been collecting them obsessively ever since Rhea left six months ago.
The images were perfect, almost too perfect. Frozen moments of joy captured in sharp focus. Smiles glowing with anticipation and love. Fingers intertwined. Foreheads touching. Laughter caught in mid-motion.
Each frame was a slice of someone else’s life.
Arjun’s collection had grown into the thousands, carefully organized into folders on his hard drive and backed up to the cloud. The folders were meticulously cataloged, by date, by location, even by emotion.
One folder held his attention more than the others.
“Engagements.”
He scrolled through the photographs slowly, pausing on each image long enough to study the expressions, the body language, the subtle moments between people.
Faces he would never know.
People who would never remember this exact glance or this particular touch.
Arjun stared at them and wondered quietly, was their happiness real?
Or was it simply another performance for the camera?
Strangers’ happiness had become both a comfort and a wound. Their laughter, their closeness, their effortless intimacy, proof that connection existed somewhere in the world.
Just not for him.
Arjun himself stood tall, taller than most, with a lean frame that still carried the restless energy of a boy. His dark hair fell untamed across his forehead, giving him an air of boyish charm even when he was deep in thought.
But it was his eyes that people remembered.
Dark brown, almost black, always observant.
Eyes that seemed to notice everything.
The way sunlight fell across a wall.
The hesitation in someone’s smile.
The scent of rain just before it arrived.
Arjun had always been the kind of person who walked into a room and quietly absorbed its details. When he spoke about something he loved, his words came quickly and enthusiastically, his hands moving animatedly as if trying to shape the ideas in the air.
But beneath that enthusiasm lived something quieter.
A restlessness.
A sadness that followed him like a shadow.
Growing up, Arjun had always been the curious child. The boy who asked endless questions and dismantled toys simply to understand how they worked. He would sit beside his grandmother in the kitchen for hours, fascinated not by the cake she baked but by the process itself, the invisible moments that slowly built something beautiful.
He loved exploring. Discovering. Understanding.
But as he grew older, life slowly buried that curiosity beneath layers of expectation.
Photography became his refuge.
Through the lens, he could observe life without fully stepping into it. He could capture emotions, relationships, and moments of joy without exposing himself to the risks they carried.
It was the perfect profession for someone who had quietly learned to stand just outside the world.
Yet even now, beneath the exhaustion and heartbreak, the curious boy inside him still remained, still searching, still wondering what lay beyond the next horizon.
![[+]](https://xossipy.com/themes/sharepoint/collapse_collapsed.png)