A Short Novel by Fariha Guncha
Chapter 1: The Night After the Sunset
“Do you remember,” Elina asked quietly, “that night we thought this would be easy?”
She was stirring her tea absentmindedly, eyes on the gulmohar tree shedding its last red leaves outside the kitchen window. Her voice wasn’t accusatory—it was tired, like it had been folded too many times.
Zayan looked up from the newspaper. His face was still the one she’d memorized in a thousand ways, but it had changed. Softer, lined, gentler around the edges.
“I don’t think we ever thought it would be easy,” he replied. “Just that it would be... us.”
She smiled faintly. Not at him—just at the irony.
“And now it’s only halfway us.”
The silence that followed was familiar. Not cold, not cruel. Just… known. Like a closed book you still keep by your bedside.
---
They had been the story everyone admired. The quiet girl with poetry on her fingertips and the boy who built futures with his bare hands. They had chosen love over comfort, meaning over convenience. Their wedding had been small, sincere. People said it looked like the start of a dream.
But nobody tells you what happens after the dream.
Because after the vows come grocery lists. After the honeymoon, hospital bills. After the storybook kiss, dishes in the sink.
It wasn’t that they stopped loving each other.
They just… forgot how to see each other.
---
Chapter 2: The Quiet Unravelling
In the first year, Elina used to wait for his knock at the door like a prayer.
Zayan would come home smelling of city dust and cinnamon tea, grin crookedly, and pull her into a hug that fit better than any home.
They talked for hours. About dreams. About nonsense. About the way the moon looked lonelier from their apartment balcony.
She cooked badly. He praised every burnt roti like it was gourmet.
They called it love.
But years passed. Years have a way of gathering in corners, like dust you keep meaning to clean.
Now he came home quieter, his forehead creased from office noise and unfinished numbers. She stopped waiting by the door. She waited instead for silence—when the children slept, when the news was off, when the world outside stopped spinning fast enough to hear her own heartbeat again.
They still shared a bed, but rarely a conversation.
---
It wasn’t a fight. It was the lack of one.
They had become efficient. Smooth in the way strangers are when they don’t want to cause friction.
“Did you pay the school fee?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you eat?”
“Later.”
And that was it. No I missed you. No why are you so far when you’re right here.
Just the ritual of being present without really being 'together'.
One night, Elina stood by the mirror, brushing her hair. Her reflection startled her.
Who was this woman with hollow eyes and silent shoulders?
She used to write love letters in the margins of grocery lists. Now, she barely touched her journal.
She whispered to the silence, “Have I disappeared?”
And from the bed, Zayan murmured, “What did you say?”
Elina turned. “Nothing. Just thinking aloud.”
But what she didn’t say was louder:
"I miss the version of us that laughed more than we planned. I miss me".
---
Chapter 3: The Space Between Breaths
The morning began like any other—milk on the stove, uniform buttons missing, one child with a fever, another refusing socks. The rhythm of chaos she knew by heart.
But something was different.
Elina didn’t rush.
Instead, she let the milk boil over. Watched it foam and hiss and spill like a protest. And for the first time in years, she didn’t apologize for the mess.
Later, when the house had quieted and Zayan had left for work, she stood in the doorway of the balcony—barefoot, holding a cold cup of tea, wind curling into her hair like memory.
She whispered a verse from a poem she had written years ago.
“I am not made of silence.
I am the scream buried beneath it.”
And for a moment, her breath caught—not from sorrow, but from recognition.
---
That evening, she found her old journal.
The pages were yellowed and tired, like her. But they waited. Like they knew she’d return.
She wrote:
‘Today I let the milk boil over.
And it felt like I was coming back.’
---
Zayan noticed the change. Not in big, dramatic ways. But in the scent of paint under her nails. In the soft humming in the kitchen. In the way she started saying "no", to overcommitments, to family dinners she didn’t want to attend, to being the only one holding their world up.
“You okay?” he asked one night, watching her from the doorway.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I’m breathing. For the first time, deeply.”
He nodded slowly. “I miss you. The old you.”
She met his gaze. “I don’t. She was always bending to be loved. This one… she’s learning to love herself.”
---
Chapter 4: The Return of Something Real
Zayan couldn’t place the moment he started missing her.
Maybe it was the night he reached out for her hand in the dark and she didn’t reach back.
Or maybe it was when he heard her laugh...
truly laugh..
on a phone call with an old friend, and realized it had been months since that sound had belonged to him.
He stood at the threshold of the study one evening, watching her. She was seated on the floor, surrounded by pages, a pencil tucked behind her ear, sleeves rolled up like she was rebuilding herself from scratch.
He didn’t say anything. Just watched. As if afraid his voice might scatter the moment.
She noticed him eventually, looked up.
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt.” He stepped inside slowly.
“What are you writing?”
She smiled, politely and softly. But it was formal, not intimate.
“Nothing that makes sense yet. But it’s mine.”
Zayan sat beside her, cross-legged, like they used to when their first apartment had no furniture.
“I used to know your every sentence,” he said, half a joke, half ache.
“Now I don’t even know what’s on your mind.”
“You never asked.”
There was no blame in her voice. Just truth. And that hurt more.
---
That night, he sat in the balcony alone. The sky was clear. The silence louder than ever.
He remembered the girl who had once cried over a sunset, saying it looked like a story burning slowly.
He had held her then, not understanding her words but knowing her heart.
He missed that connection—the one that didn’t need translating.
---
Days passed. And Zayan started asking again.
Not about bills or homework or groceries but about her.
“What did you dream of last night?”
“What scares you these days?”
“What did you write today?”
At first, she was cautious, like someone who’s been forgotten and doesn’t trust remembrance.
But slowly, she answered. Softly. Sincerely.
Their conversations returned like rain returns after a long drought. Awkward at first, but bringing healing.
---
One Sunday morning, Elina handed him a folded page.
“I wrote this last night,” she said.
“It’s not finished. But maybe you’ll understand it.”
He opened it. It was a poem. Simple. Raw.
One line stood out:
"Love is not what saved me.
Love is what let me save myself."
He looked at her. This time he really looked at her.
“You’ve changed,” he whispered.
“I had to,” she replied.
“But, do you know? I never stopped hoping you’d catch up.”
And in that moment, something returned.
Not the past. Not what they once were.
But something new.
Something Grown.
Something Earned.
Something Real.
---
Final Chapter: Learning to Breathe
There was no grand moment. No cinematic kiss in the rain. No sweeping gesture to undo years of distance.
But there was this:
Zayan pouring her tea before she asked.
Elina resting her head on his shoulder without flinching.
Them laughing over an old inside joke at 1 a.m. while folding laundry.
Breath by breath, they returned to each other.
Not as the people they once were, but as two souls who had survived becoming strangers and chose, deliberately, to become friends again.
---
One afternoon, Elina received an invitation to speak at a local women’s gathering.
The topic was a session on rediscovering identity after marriage. She hesitated. She thought for seconds and then accepted the invitation.
At the event, someone asked her, “Would you say your marriage has a happy ending?”
She paused. Smiled thoughtfully. Then answered:
“No. It has a ‘true’ middle.”
The audience waited. She continued:
“The ending is just a phrase. But the middle–that’s where you learn.
Where you bend, break, rebuild.
Where love is not petals and poetry, but patience and presence.
Where you fight not each other, but for each other.”
She didn’t cry as she spoke. She didn’t need to. Her voice held something steadier than tears. Her voice held clarity.
Her voice was a clear night sky after the Sunset.
---
That night, she found Zayan asleep on the couch, one of her old poems in his lap. His glasses had slid down his nose. The lamp glowed soft on his face, worn but gentle.
She sat beside him.
She was careful to not wake him up. She extended her hand and picked up the poem and read the last line he’d underlined:
'Even when I forgot who I was,
Love stayed. Waiting. Listening.'
She folded the paper and whispered:
“I think I’m finally learning how to breathe.”
"I think, Life continues even After the Sunset."
---
End
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