chapter 4 - Maya's POV

With heavy steps, I walked into the office reception. Each footfall carried the weight of my restless heart — the questions from the road incident still burning inside me, mixed with the nervous pride of my first job.

I forced myself to focus as I approached the counter. Smiling faces, formal greetings, the clicking of pens — all of it felt distant, as though I was moving through a dream.

The receptionist guided me through the procedures. Forms were signed, documents checked, ID cards handed over.

Step by step, I completed everything, but my mind was split in two — one half here, trying to belong in this new world, the other still stuck on that road, staring into a face that was mine but not mine.

At the reception, they told me my training would last three months. Those three months would decide everything — pass the exam, and I would keep the job. Fail, and I would lose the chance I had struggled so hard to get.

That evening, I went home with the training papers in my bag and a head full of questions. On the way, my thoughts raced through every possibility about the girl on the road.

I kept asking myself — was she from my town?

Maybe a student?

Married, perhaps?

Older, or even younger?

But no matter how I framed it, nothing seemed to fit cleanly.

I was the youngest in my family, born after a long gap. My sister Shalini was seven years older than me.

Even my father’s younger cousins were older. Sometimes I felt like I had arrived late in a story that had already moved forward without me.

That made the idea of her being my twin — or even a lost sister — feel impossible. And yet, the thought refused to leave me. If she really was connected to me, why had my parents never said anything? Why had no one in my family ever spoken a word about her?

My life soon became busier with the training. Long hours, endless notes, practice tests. I tried to focus, to learn, to prove myself.

And yet, no matter how busy I was, I could not forget the girl I had seen. Her face haunted me every time I closed my eyes.

From childhood, I had carried a strange thing inside me. I could be laughing, enjoying a small moment, and suddenly my chest would ache — a sharp, wordless pain.

There were no wounds. Nothing in the air. But it felt as if someone else’s sorrow passed through me.

I often dreamed of a sister — a twin in shadows, living somewhere else, tied to me in ways I could not explain. But in reality, I was just Maya — the last child, kept too safe, kept too quiet.

After a few days, I could not bear only thinking. I wanted answers. I went back to the road. I stood where I had seen her and asked for help. I told the local police about the time and place, hoping they would check the CCTV cameras.

They listened politely, but then told me the cameras were either not working that day or the footage was already overwritten.

I even showed my photo — the single picture I had of myself that looked like her — to people nearby. I asked shopkeepers, auto drivers, college students: “Do you know this girl?”

Most looked at the picture, then at me, and shook their heads.

Some smiled as if I were joking. One man asked if I was mad. A woman told me not to waste people’s time.

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