The room felt quieter after she left.
Not empty.
Just… reset.
Sagnik didn't move immediately from the floor.
The Ludo board was still there, pieces slightly misaligned, dice resting near the edge of the table like they hadn't decided where they belonged yet.
He stared at it for a few seconds longer than necessary.
Then he reached forward and started gathering the pieces back into the box.
Carefully.
Not because it needed care.
Because it gave his hands something to do.
Aanya's laugh still felt slightly suspended in the room—not audible, not real anymore, just… remembered in fragments.
He closed the box.
And for a moment, didn't stand up.
This was the part of the day that usually didn't have a label.
Not class.
Not conversation.
Not anything that required structure.
Just after.
His phone buzzed once.
He glanced at it.
Didn't pick it up immediately.
A message. Something trivial. He read it without really processing it, then set the phone down again.
His attention drifted back to the empty space where she had been sitting.
It was not absence that stood out.
It was the difference in rhythm.
When Aanya was there, everything had a pace—even silence had movement. There was always something small happening: a comment, a shift, a reaction, a pause that meant something.
Now the pauses meant nothing again.
That was the simplest way he could put it, if he had to.
He leaned back slightly against the chair.
He didn't think of her in dramatic terms.
Not "missing."
Not "wanting."
That wasn't how his mind framed things.
It was more subtle than that.
Like noticing a sound that had stopped without realizing it had been there in the first place.
His fingers tapped once against the edge of the table.
Then stopped.
A second passed.
He exhaled lightly through his nose, almost like a half-laugh he didn't fully allow to form.
Ridiculous.
That word came first, without context.
Not directed at her.
At himself.
At the way a simple board game had stretched longer than it should have felt like anything at all.
He stood finally, picking up the box and placing it back on the shelf.
Everything returned to its place.
Except the feeling of the room not matching itself anymore.
His phone buzzed again.
This time he picked it up.
A normal message. Nothing important.
He replied quickly.
Efficient.
Then set it down.
But he didn't immediately leave the room.
Instead, he stayed standing there for a moment, looking at nothing in particular.
Not replaying events.
Just holding onto a very quiet realization he didn't name:
When Aanya was here, he didn't think about time.
And when she wasn't—
He noticed it again.
He picked up his bag.
Paused.
Then left the room.
The door clicked shut behind him.
And the space went fully still.