There is something dangerously attractive about people who know exactly where their heart belongs.
One afternoon, Kavya looked at Kabir, smiled, and asked a question that most people would misunderstand.
"Kabir... tum mujhse itni baatein kyun karte ho?"
She expected a compliment.
Perhaps a confession.
Perhaps one of those lines that people write in movies.
Kabir smiled.
Then quietly said,
"Kyunki tumhari awaaz Caify jaisi hai."
She laughed.
She thought he was joking.
He wasn't.
"Wo mujhse baat nahi karegi... Aur uski awaaz sune bina main jee nahi sakta. Bas itni si baat hai."
Silence.
Then he added something that changed the entire conversation.
"Na mujhe tumse pyaar hai... Na kabhi hoga."
Now before you judge Kabir...
Understand him.
This was never about using someone.
It was about surviving someone else's absence.
There are people whose eyes remind you of another person.
Some carry a familiar smile.
Some laugh the same way.
Some say your name with exactly the same softness.
And for a brief second...
Your broken heart forgets reality.
Kabir never flirted because he wanted another love story.
He flirted because memories have strange disguises.
Sometimes they return as a song.
Sometimes as a perfume.
Sometimes...
As someone else's voice.
Kavya was beautiful.
She was intelligent.
She could hold conversations for hours.
She had the kind of smile that made ordinary evenings feel lighter.
If life were fair...
Perhaps Kabir would have fallen for her.
But love has never cared about fairness.
Because the heart is not a democracy.
It doesn't vote.
It chooses.
Once.
Sometimes only once.
Kabir's heart had already chosen.
Completely.
Madly.
Profoundly.
Irrevocably.
Unconditionally.
Caify.
There was never any competition.
There was never any confusion.
There was never another chapter.
Only echoes.
People often ask,
"How do you know you're truly in love?"
Kabir would probably answer,
"When every beautiful person you meet still reminds you of only one."
The world misunderstands loyalty.
It thinks loyalty is refusing to meet new people.
No.
Loyalty is meeting wonderful people...
And still never confusing comfort with love.
Kavya deserved honesty.
Not false hope.
Not mixed signals.
Not promises Kabir knew he could never keep.
So he gave her the only thing he still had control over.
The truth.
"I like talking to you."
"I enjoy your company."
"Your voice reminds me of peace."
*"But my heart..."
"...my heart still belongs to someone who isn't here."*
That is perhaps the cruelest thing about real love.
It doesn't disappear simply because someone else deserves a chance.
It stays.
Quietly.
Stubbornly.
Almost foolishly.
And maybe that is why Kabir still smiles whenever someone asks if he has moved on.
How do you move on from the person who became your definition of home?
You don't.
You simply learn to live in a city where your home no longer exists.
Kavya was never trying to become Caify.
Kabir never expected her to.
He only borrowed a few moments from a familiar voice before returning to the silence that had been waiting for him all along.
Perhaps one day, someone will ask Kabir again,
"Why do you still write about Caify?"
And perhaps he'll smile the same way he did that afternoon.
Because some loves are not measured by how long they lasted.
They are measured by how impossible they are to replace.
Some people are chapters.
Some are entire books.
Caify...
She was the language in which Kabir's heart learned to love.
Everyone else, no matter how wonderful they were, could only ever sound like a familiar echo.
Never the original.