Untill I Met You
The chase was a lie. He knew it, and they knew it. Yet still, they ran—a spectral pack of wild animals, their forms shifting like shadows, their teeth glinting with a hatred born of collective judgment. They were not real, but the terror was. Every footfall on the pavement was a drumbeat against his sanity, a grim rhythm of a mistake he hadn’t committed. The specters of blame and venomous whispers were an old, familiar poison in his veins.
Run, Gyan. Don’t look back. The words, his mother's voice a fragile anchor in the storm of his mind, echoed the very terror that drove him. But how could he not look back? The six-year-old girl’s face was seared into his memory, a perpetual stain on his soul. He had not hurt her, but he was blamed all the same. The rumor had grown its own fangs, and now it hunted him.
He rounded a corner, gasping for air, his lungs burning. The pack was closing in, a low growl rising in the humid air. He could feel their phantom breath on his neck, the cold press of a lie. Desperate, he crashed through an ornate wooden gate, the hinges screaming in protest. He stumbled into a small, manicured courtyard, the scent of jasmine and rain-soaked earth a sudden, jarring calm.
And then, he saw her.
She was a sanctuary in the center of the chaos, a woman sculpted from stillness itself. Her eyes, a startling shade of serene gray, were fixed on him. She was in her thirties, her dark hair a fluid cascade over a simple, elegant dress. The chaos he was running from seemed to dissolve in the cool, distant luminescence of her gaze.
A voice, soft as a sigh, pulled him from the edge of his panic. "Gyan… Gyan."
His head snapped up. It was his mother, her face etched with a familiar despair. “A bad dream again?” she asked, her voice trembling. She sat beside him on the worn sofa, her hand gently tracing the lines of his face. He blinked, the vision of the courtyard fading, the feral scent of the chase replaced by the clean smell of his childhood home.
He nodded, the phantom chase finally releasing its grip.
"The girl was coming to see you again," his mother continued, her voice heavy with a worry he knew all too well. "I told her you were sleeping."
His heart clenched. The girl. Not the one from the past, but the one his mother kept trying to set him up with. The daughter of her old friend.
"Mom," he said, his voice flat. "I've told you. I have no interest in any girl, let alone someone who wants to talk about that place and those… events."
His mother sighed, her blue eyes, so much like his own, filled with a sadness he couldn't stand. "You can’t run from it forever, Gyan. You can't let a decade of hate ruin the rest of your life. The girl... she just wants to help."
Gyan looked away, his jaw tight. Help? How could she help him escape a chase that was all in his head, a nightmare that felt more real than his own life? How could she see the phantom pack that ran just behind him, their teeth bared, waiting for the day he finally tripped and they could tear him apart?
He felt a new kind of dread settle in the pit of his stomach. They were getting closer. He knew it. And this time, they weren't the only ones closing in.
