[POV: Rajesh]
The city outside the car windows wasn't Delhi. It was a maze of wrong turns, every neon sign a taunt, every crowded sidewalk a place where Amit wasn't.
My hands were at ten and two on the steering wheel, knuckles white. Control. I had to maintain control. The urge to floor the accelerator, to scream at the crawling traffic, was a physical pressure in my throat. Beside me, Divya was a live wire of frantic energy, her bare feet planted on my expensive car mat, her phone screen casting a blue ghost-light on her face.
"Left here," she commanded, not looking up from her map.
"I know this route," I snapped, the words coming out sharper than intended. "He and I took it to get momos every Thursday for two years."
"Then drive like you remember it! This isn't a scenic tour, Rajesh!"
I swung the car left, cutting off an auto-rickshaw that blared its horn in a furious protest. "I am driving. Your constant navigation isn't making us move faster through spacetime, Divya."
"Just drive to the café! 'Chai & Choices.' It's his favorite."
"I know what his favorite café is called!" The frustration boiled over. "He named it! He said it was the only place that understood the existential dilemma of choosing between ginger and cardamom chai!"
We lapsed into a seething silence. The air conditioner was on full blast, but the car felt like a pressure cooker. Every second was a grain of sand in an hourglass that had already run out. I could feel it. Something was wrong. Not just late-wrong. This was a tectonic shift in the universe wrong.
We pulled up outside 'Chai & Choices.' The shutters were down. A hand-scrawled sign read 'CLOSED FOR FAMILY EVENT.'
Divya let out a sound that was half-groan, half-scream of pure frustration. She slammed her fist against the dashboard. "Of course! Of course it's closed! Why wouldn't it be?"
"Breaking my car won't find him," I said, but there was no heat in it. I was already pulling back into traffic. "Metro station. Next."
"The Rajiv Chowk one? That's where his phone last was."
"I know what his last location was, I'm the one who showed you!"
"Stop saying 'I know' like you're the only one who knew him!"
"I knew him longer!"
"Knowing someone longer doesn't mean you knew him better!"
We were screaming now, the words ricocheting off the glass and leather. But it was empty. Hollow. The usual venom was diluted by the sheer, overwhelming terror that was the subtext of every syllable. We were fighting because fighting was the only script we had left.
The metro station was a chaos of too many people. I double-parked, hazards on. "You check the west entrance, I'll take east. Look for the security head he always joked with—Balvinder Singh. Ask him."
We spilled out of the car. For twenty minutes, we were two separate storms of anxiety, pushing through crowds, showing pictures on our phones. Have you seen him? Tall, dimples, probably looking lost? The answers were a symphony of shrugged shoulders and shaken heads.
I found Balvinder. His face fell when he saw Amit's photo. "Beta Sharma? He came through around 5:30. Seemed normal. Happy even. Said he was going to a big party. Haven't seen him since."
My heart sank. He made it out of the metro. He was on the last leg.
We reconvened at the car. The look on Divya's face told me she'd learned nothing. "Nothing," she confirmed, her voice thin. "He just… vanished between the metro exit and… wherever."
"Parks," I said, my voice robotic. "He liked to walk through Lodhi Garden to clear his head."
"He wouldn't! Not in a tux! Not tonight!"
"You don't know that! He did irrational things when he was nervous!"
"Don't tell me what he'd do! You think your spreadsheet of his habits tells you more than I know?"
We were driving again, aimlessly now, the purpose bleeding out of us. We checked two parks. We stopped at the dhaba where we'd had our last birthday dinner for him. We even, in a moment of shared, desperate insanity, drove to our old school and shone the headlights at the football field where the three of us used to play.
Nothing. Emptiness. A city of twenty million people, and the one person we needed had been erased from it.
The silence in the car was worse than the fighting. It was a living thing, thick with dread. Divya had stopped giving directions. She was just staring out the window, her fingers tracing the outline of her phone.
"He has that flat," she said, so quietly I almost didn't hear her.
"What?"
"Amit. He has that flat. In the Gurugram outskirts. The one his grandparents bought as an investment. He used it as a painting studio sometimes. Said the light was good. He called it his 'escape hatch.'"
I knew the one. A barren, distant suburb still under construction. "Divya, that's an hour and a half away. In this traffic? It'd be midnight before we got there. It makes no sense. Why would he go all the way out there before your debutante ball?"
"I don't know! I don't know anything right now!" she cried, turning on me, her eyes wild. "But we've checked everywhere else! Everywhere logical! Maybe he… maybe he got cold feet? Needed space? Went there to psych himself up? It's the only place left!"
"It's a waste of time. He's not there."
"You don't know that!"
"It's illogical!"
"Since when is Amit logical?!" she shouted, her voice breaking. "He's the guy who once took a train to Jaipur because he dreamed a fort was calling his name! He's the guy who tried to adopt a monkey! LOGIC IS NOT IN HIS VOCABULARY!"
She was right. Damn her, she was right. Amit followed feelings, not reason. The flat was a feeling-place, not a logic-place.
The GPS on the dashboard estimated arrival time: 11:47 PM. My stomach twisted.
"There's a shortcut," Divya said, her voice dropping again. She was already typing on the car's screen. "Through the old industrial zone. Past that… that abandoned school building. The St. Martin's one. No one uses it. It's all broken roads and empty lots. We could shave off forty minutes."
A cold trickle, unrelated to the AC, went down my spine. I knew that area. Everyone did. It was a urban legend. A place where the city's growth had stalled and died. "That road is a wreck. It's not safe. It's pitch black."
"Do you want to find him or not?" The challenge in her voice was absolute.
I looked at her. At the girl who climbed down trellises barefoot. At my enemy. At the only other person searching for the same lost star. The CEO in me calculated risk vs. reward. The friend in me was just desperate.
I swore under my breath, wrenched the wheel, and took the next exit towards the industrial zone. "If we blow a tire, you're walking."
"If we blow a tire, you're carrying me."