By 10 PM, the coach had settled into that particular rhythm of an Indian sleeper train at night. The Sardar ji couple had drawn their curtains and gone to sleep. The college boy above was watching something on his phone with the brightness turned all the way down. The overhead lights had been dimmed to that pale blue that makes everything feel like an aquarium.
Arjun couldn't sleep. He lay on his berth, staring at the underside of the upper bunk, listening to the train's heartbeat — that steady thak-thak, thak-thak over the joints of the rail. Every sound reminded him of every train journey he'd taken with Nandini. That trip to Goa during monsoon. The overnight to Varanasi when she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder and drooled on his shirt and they'd laughed about it for days.
He sat up quietly, swung his legs over the side of the berth, and looked at the dark window. His own reflection stared back — hollow eyes, two-day stubble, the same grey t-shirt he'd worn since yesterday.
"Can't sleep either?" Meera's voice, soft, from the opposite lower berth.
He could see her outline in the blue dimness. She was sitting cross-legged, her camera bag in her lap, doing something with her hands — maybe adjusting a lens, maybe just holding it.
"No," he said.
"Want to sit by the door? The air is better there."
He hesitated. Social interaction was the last thing he wanted. But the berth felt like a coffin, so he nodded.
They made their way to the vestibule between coaches — that clattering, rattling space where the floor shifts under your feet and the world outside is visible through the thick glass of the door window. Meera sat on the metal floor, her back against the wall. Arjun stood, hands in his pockets.
"You can sit," she said. "The floor's not that bad."
He sat. The metal was cold through his jeans. The noise was louder here — the wheels, the wind, the endless percussion of movement.
For a while, they said nothing. Just two people sitting in the space between coaches, watching the occasional light from a village flash past like a fallen star.
"I just ended a seven-year relationship," Arjun said.
He didn't know why he said it. Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe it was the train — something about being in a metal box hurtling through the night made confessions easier, like the words could be lost in the noise.
Meera didn't react with surprise or sympathy. She just let the words settle, the way you let a stone sink to the bottom of a pond.
"Was it your choice?" she asked.
"No. She —" He stopped. Swallowed. "She'd been seeing someone else."
"That's a terrible thing to carry."
"The worst part isn't the betrayal. The worst part is that I keep thinking about what I did wrong. Like somewhere along the way, I stopped being enough. And I can't figure out when."
The train rocked. A station name flashed past too quickly to read.
