The monsoon finally arrived three days late.
Rain fell the way grief does—quietly at first, then all at once.
Dev walked to school beneath his mother's umbrella, the streets running silver around his sandals. The smell of wet earth filled everything. Vendors were setting up stalls, smoke rising from tea kettles, voices carrying through the rain in short bursts. To anyone else, it looked like life returning to normal.
But Dev felt something different in the rhythm of the morning.
Every now and then, the world seemed to breathe wrong. A rickshaw wheel turned half a rotation slower than it should. The temple bell across the canal rang twice, then again—two identical notes, separated by a pause that shouldn't have existed.
He looked up at the cloudy sky. The rain appeared steady, yet in certain spots it seemed to hang for a fraction longer before falling again. Tiny hesitations, so brief he doubted himself.
At school, nothing felt out of place at first. Desks, chatter, the smell of chalk and damp uniforms. Meera sat two rows ahead, her sling gone now, her left arm still stiff when she moved. When she noticed him enter, she offered a small nod—one of those silent agreements not to speak of what had happened.
During math class, Dev caught sight of the wall clock. The second hand ticked forward, paused, ticked back half a step, then continued as if correcting itself. No one else reacted. The teacher kept writing equations. The whisper of chalk never broke rhythm.
By lunch break, the air in the classroom felt too still. Dev walked to the corridor, gripping the railing as he watched the rain in the courtyard. Children ran across the puddles, splashing. For an instant, every drop hanging from the roof stopped mid-fall—just for him, only for a blink—then resumed.
He closed his eyes, exhaled slowly.
When he opened them, Meera was beside him, holding two paper cups of tea from the canteen.
"You look like you're counting raindrops," she said.
"Trying to," he answered.
"You'll run out of numbers before you get to lunch."
Her small grin was exactly as it had always been, and somehow that steadied him.
They drank their tea in silence, watching the rain. Behind them, the school bell rang to end the break. The sound came half a second later than it should have. Dev felt it—like the world was remembering its cue after forgetting the line.
He didn't tell anyone. Not yet.