When Absence Became Madness - The Girl Everyone Feared - Part 6

Love, when denied balance, changes its face.

What once looked like softness began to harden inside her.

People now measured mornings by her mood.

If Arjun appeared, she was gentle.

If he smiled at someone else, she became sharp.

If he was absent, she was dangerous.

Her classmates learned quickly.

One girl casually mentioned, “That quiet man outside looks handsome.”

The slap came before anyone understood why.

Silence fell across the corridor.

Even she stared at her own hand in shock.

The girl held her cheek, stunned and tearful.

“Have you gone mad?”

Yes.

But no one said it aloud.

Rumours spread within days.

She was unstable.

She had anger issues.

She was strange.

Some said heartbreak.

Some said family problems.

No one guessed the truth—that a man who did not know her existence was governing the storm.

Her friends stopped sharing secrets with her.

Stopped inviting her out.

Stopped waiting after class.

She did not care.

She had Arjun.

Or rather, the shadow of him.

One afternoon she saw him standing near the tea stall, laughing with a woman in a yellow dress. The woman spoke confidently, touching his arm while laughing again.

Something tore inside her.

She crossed the road recklessly, nearly hit by a rickshaw.

By the time she reached there, they had moved on.

She searched every lane like a hunted person.

Gone.

That evening she smashed the mirror in her room.

Her mother screamed at the sound.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing!”

“Then why are you destroying everything?”

Because something inside me is already destroyed, she wanted to say.

Instead she cried until her throat hurt.

The next day she waited only to see if the woman returned.

She did not.

Arjun came alone.

Relief flooded her so intensely she almost laughed.

This was no longer affection.

It was possession without ownership.

Claim without consent.

Devotion mixed with fury.

At night she wrote his name repeatedly in a notebook, then beneath it:

He is mine.

She stared at the sentence for a long time.

Then fear crept in.

Mine?

How?

He had never promised a word.

Never asked her name.

Never offered anything except one handkerchief and accidental glances.

Yet in her mind, he belonged more to her than to himself.

Weeks later, another outburst came.

A teacher scolded her for missing assignments.

She screamed in class, overturned a chair, and walked out while everyone watched.

By the gate, she saw Arjun passing.

Instantly she became calm.

She smoothed her hair.

Wiped tears.

And smiled softly.

Her classmates, watching from windows above, whispered in disbelief.

“She’s normal now.”

No.

She was only medicated by his presence.

But medicines that control madness can also create it.

And soon, life would give her news no medicine could heal.