Joy Family

Becoming Jerusha - Joy Family

Part 1: "A Boy with No Place, a Name Without Grace"

Kathir stood near the rusted iron gate of his house, watching the evening sun throw long shadows across the red clay courtyard. The house, if one could call it that, leaned like a tired man -its broken tiles, sun-bleached plastic chairs, and soot-stained walls all whispered stories of years lived without joy. The scent of stale toddy drifted from inside.

He was only seventeen, but his face bore the quiet grace of someone older. Long, wavy hair coiled over his shoulders, soft and well-kempt despite everything. His skin was almost translucent in the low light, the sort that turned golden when the sun kissed it. Lean, slight, and fair-skinned, he looked like someone plucked from another world and dropped into the wrong script. His features were so gently drawn - arched eyebrows, a delicate nose, and that uncertain, low voice - that strangers often paused a moment longer than necessary when they first saw him.

His name was Kathirvel, but everyone just called him Kathir. And nobody at home really saw him.

Inside, his father sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes red, skin darkened from years of sun and arrack. A half-empty bottle sat by his knee, swaying gently every time he scratched his chest. His elder brothers, Ramesh and Kumaresan, sat on the verandah wall, tossing beedis between them, laughing at something crude. Neither of them had studied past Class 10, and both were well-acquainted with the inside of the local wine shop.

"You going to Chennai, uh?" spat Ramesh suddenly, the beedi dancing between his lips. "College-ku ponaa enna, CM aagiduvaan-nu nenachaya?"
(You think going to college will make you the Chief Minister or what?)

Kathir didn’t reply. His grip tightened on the strap of his bag.

"Velai panna solraangale! Namma veetla velai irukku da. Farm-la poi kadalai purichikittu vaa. Seekiram kaasu varum."
(They say work to earn... there’s work here only. Go catch groundnuts in the farm. Quick money.)

"Don’t waste time with dreams, dai. Avlo build illa avanukku. Nee vera…" Kumaresan grinned darkly, looking him up and down with that same mocking smirk Kathir had seen a thousand times. "Look at him. Like some paavam girl from one B-grade TV serial."

Kathir stepped back.

“I’m not staying here,” he said quietly.

"What?"

“I’m not staying,” he repeated, this time louder. “I’m leaving. I got admission in a Chennai college. I’ll study part-time. I’ll work. I’ll earn. I’ll never set foot in this house again.”

His mother looked up for a second from the aluminum vessel she was scrubbing, water streaks cutting down her cracked wrists. She didn’t speak. She never did. He wasn’t her concern - not like her elder sons. He was always too quiet, too soft, too… strange.

His father scoffed and stood up, wobbling.

“College-ku poi enna pannapora? Beautician-aagapora?”
(What are you going to do in college? Become a beautician?)

Everyone laughed. Kathir didn’t flinch. He slung the second bag over his shoulder and turned.

“Your farm can go to hell. And you can too.”

He stormed out before the rage boiled over, before he began to cry in front of them. That was what they wanted - to see him crumble.

Outside, the mud path was still warm. His slippers made soft sucking noises as he walked to the road, where the government bus stood, engine grumbling like an old cow in pain. He climbed in without looking back.

It was an overnight bus. He dropped his bags near the middle row and sat by the window. The seats were sticky with sweat and plastic, and a faint radio crackled somewhere up front.

As the driver pulled out onto the road, an old man wearing thick round glasses and a veshti sat down next to him. He peered at Kathir and smiled.

"Paapa, unga appa enga irukaangaa?"
(Dear girl, where is your father?)

Kathir blinked.

“I’m not… I’m a boy.”

The old man chuckled awkwardly. “Oh, sorry sorry. Apdi theriyala pa. Nalla azhagana mugam.”
(Sorry… couldn’t tell. Such a pretty face.)

He shuffled to another seat near the front.

Kathir sighed and leaned back. He wasn't angry. Not really. It was almost… normal now.

As the bus rocked gently through the darkening fields and the sleeping towns beyond, something fluttered down near his seat. A leaflet, folded in three, dislodged from the fan above.

He picked it up.

Bright blue letters read: "Joy from Jesus Ministries – New Hope. New Life."
There was a picture of a smiling family-mother, father, daughter-all holding hands under a cross.

Kathir stared at it for a moment.

"Joy…" he whispered to himself, not knowing how that word would soon become a name he couldn’t escape.

He closed his eyes. The air smelt of jasmine, diesel, and something new.

Author’s Note 🌸

Hi hi! I’m Jerusha Anne Joy 💫. Before you dive into Joy Family, let me tell you a tiny tale behind the tale.

So, this story? It didn’t start off all dreamy and warm. I was planning the usual---swap, crossdressing, bits of humiliation, blah blah. But… somewhere along the way, something happened. I started feeling more than just the twisty plot. I started caring. And then...oops...I fell in love with the heartwarming stuff. The hugs. The soft dinners. The found family. So... I threw out the old draft and began again, this time writing with all my heart.

I worked in batches (usually four parts a week, depending on how dramatic I was feeling), and over two whole months, this grew into a huge story-baby of 40 parts and 250,000 characters (It was like a mega serial ). I had to trim it down to a neater 125,000-ish characters so it wouldn’t become… y’know… a full-blown biography. 😅 Some deleted chapters were turned into little one-shots (which I might post if you’re curious ).

Honestly, I was super nervous to share this. I thought maybe it wasn’t spicy or wild enough (that's why I came up with 'Trading Smiles'), that readers might yawn and click away. But then I reminded myself - there are people like me out there. People who love soft things. Slow things. Sweet things. Maybe you're one of them? If so, this story’s for you.

A lot of this is stitched from my own world - snippets of real places, real habits, even the characters carry shadows of people I know. It’s weird and personal and probably a little fantasy-heavy, but it’s mine, and now… it’s yours too.

I really hope Joy Family brings a little light to your day. Or at least, gives you something to hug your pillow about.

With love,
– Jerusha Anne Joy 💖
(Yep that's the Protagonist's name too 🐱)

Becoming Jerusha - Joy Family

Part 2: "From Dust to Days, in a City That Forgets"

April.

That word meant nothing special anymore. Once, it had been the month of summer mangoes and ice water in steel tumblers. Now, it was only a reminder that it had been ten months since Kathir left his house in Thanjavur.

Last May was when he had boarded that night bus to Chennai, his heart hot with defiance, bags full of hope, and pockets holding barely ₹2,000. He had left with the kind of fury that feels like courage in the moment - but slowly melts into silence when the days stretch and nothing seems to change.

His current world was a four-sharing PG room in Virugambakkam, stacked with tin cupboards and dreams that hung like damp clothes off the rusting window bars. The fan creaked in circles, pretending to help. The air smelled of socks and talcum powder, and the mattress was so thin that he often woke up with his hip pressed into the wooden board below.

His roommates - three boys from Andhra-were noisy, and none spoke much Tamil. One of them constantly played TikTok videos late into the night with that awful robot voice narrating every scene. Kathir kept to himself, pressing his old phone to his ears even when it wasn’t playing anything. A kind of fake cocoon.

He worked part-time now at a small biryani joint on the main road. Eighty rupees an hour. He cleaned tables, filled water bottles, wiped menus, and occasionally delivered parcels if the boy didn’t show up. The owner - a stout, sweaty man called Sulaiman anna - was kind on good days and thunderous on others.

"Unakku oru smile kooda varadhu da. Matta Pasangala mathri illa," he had once commented.
(You don’t even smile, da. Not like the other boys.)

Kathir had just nodded, like always.

College had started well, in the first few weeks. He had ironed his shirts, packed his books, taken notes, and sat in the front row with the kind of discipline that was born not out of ambition - but desperation. But the lectures turned out to be useless, the teachers disinterested, and nobody cared whether you came or not. In the beginning, he had gone daily. Then three times a week. Then once. Now, weeks passed between visits.

No one from home had called.

Not even once.

He didn’t miss them. But something inside ached -like a paper left out in rain, the edges curling.

He was still too feminine for the city.

Too soft. Too pretty. Too quiet.

Even in his oversized shirts and jeans, people stared sometimes. A few restaurant customers had called him “ma” by mistake. Sulaiman had laughed for ten minutes that day. The biryani boy had told him to "tie his hair up properly next time."

The only person he occasionally talked to was Shravya, a classmate from Commerce. Plump, warm-eyed, the kind who always had extra pens and extra sympathy. She didn’t pry. Just smiled, listened, and once even brought him two boiled eggs in a tiffin box saying, “You look like you skip too many meals.”

He had thanked her. Not just for the eggs, but for not asking about his past.

That particular evening, he had finished his shift early. The manager’s mother had passed away and the shop had closed by 5:30 PM. The sky was turning the colour of overripe guavas---purple-pink and the heat was just beginning to loosen its grip.

Kathir decided to take a walk.

Not down the usual stretch filled with loud auto horns and water lorries, but toward the quieter lanes across Saligramam. Streets he hadn’t seen before. He told himself he just needed fresh air. But maybe he was hoping to be someone else for a while, to imagine other lives.

As he walked past a gated apartment complex, he paused for a second. Inside, a family was sitting around a round white table on the terrace, laughing. Two kids chased each other with soap bubbles, and the mother - a slim, churidar-clad woman - was pouring juice into tumblers. The father leaned back, grinning at something the boy had said.

Kathir felt something stir.

It wasn’t jealousy. Not quite.

Just the awareness that he had never been part of a moment like that.

Further down, near the bend, a group of schoolgirls from St. Michael’s Matriculation passed by in white shirts and maroon skirts, ribbons bobbing as they giggled past. They had that careless ease only the young and loved carried in their walk. One of them looked at him and whispered something to her friend. They both laughed. He wasn’t sure if it was about him. Maybe not. Maybe yes.

He crossed the signal and turned into a smaller road. There, near the gate of a small church compound, sat a middle-aged man with a salt-pepper beard and a stack of flyers.

"Brother, unga kai-la oru blessing kudukattuma?"
(Shall I give your hand a blessing?)

Kathir hesitated.

The man smiled, a bit theatrically. He wore a navy blue kurta and a badge with a dove symbol.

He pressed a small white card into Kathir’s hand.

"You’ll be Joy today," it read in neat, embossed golden letters.

Kathir raised an eyebrow, a confused smile tugging at his lips.

“Enna sir, magic show-aa?” he joked softly.
(What is this sir, a magic show?)

The man only smiled back.

“Sometimes,” he said cryptically, “the Lord speaks in the form of a card.”

Kathir nodded politely and walked on.

He didn’t think too much of it. Just tucked the card into his wallet, next to an old passport-sized photo of himself he no longer liked looking at. In that picture, he had worn a shirt buttoned to the collar, hair pulled back, lips too pink. Someone once told him he looked like a convent girl there.

The road turned narrow and peaceful here. The buildings older, balconies shaded with drying sarees and potted plants. A lady fed crows from a tiffin carrier. Somewhere in the distance, a veena played from an upstairs flat. Jasmine and incense mixed in the air. This place felt… different.

Peaceful. Like a part of Chennai that hadn’t caught up with the rest of it.

Kathir slowed his walk.

Maybe tomorrow he would go to class. Maybe he wouldn’t. He had stopped making promises to himself.

But he kept walking, unaware that just a few streets away, the Joy family had unpacked the last of their boxes into a cream-painted villa. That somewhere behind tall gates and golden lettering, a photograph sat in a frame.

And in that photograph was a girl who looked exactly like him.

Becoming Jerusha - Joy Family

Part 3: "When Strangers Weep, and Names Return"

The sun was melting slow into the skyline now, a copper disc swallowed by the tangled silhouettes of coconut trees and distant terraces. Kathir's footsteps had grown quieter, his slipper soles softened by the dust of this inner street that seemed forgotten by traffic. The city hummed gently here, as if tired after a long day.

He had no particular destination in mind. His phone had slipped into silent mode in his pocket. No pings, no calls. No one really waited for him to return to the PG room with its creaking fan and forgotten corners. He would walk a little more, just until the evening settled in full.

That was when he saw it.

A villa. Cream-painted. Elegant but unpretentious. Like something out of a magazine, sitting gently on the corner of the street, behind black iron gates with golden tips that curved into vine shapes. The grass was trimmed, the potted bougainvillea climbing up the balcony in cheerful pinks. It wasn’t loud in its wealth -but it was clearly rich. Even the silence around it felt expensive.

Kathir paused across the street, staring up at it with idle wonder.

He wasn’t one to dream of villas or cars or big houses. That had long been scrubbed out of him. But something about this place held him for a second longer than he expected.

How much would it even cost, he wondered. A few crores, probably. Or more. The kind of place that didn’t have peeling paint or broken water pipes or someone yelling inside.

As he stood there, the black gates clicked open with a gentle groan.

A woman stepped out.

She was dressed in a plain beige cotton saree, soft and loose around her waist, like she had forgotten to pleat it properly. Her arms clutched some papers - loose sheets in a clear folder. She looked like she had just emerged from a long conversation, or maybe an argument. Her forehead was bare, no bindi, and her eyes -sharp, almond-shaped - were heavy with something unsaid.

Kathir turned slightly, intending to walk past, but her eyes locked onto him.

She froze.

A long, trembling second passed. She stared, wide-eyed, as if the road and its noises had vanished. The folder slipped from her fingers without warning, scattering papers like brittle leaves across the driveway.

Then, without speaking, without checking her steps, she ran.

"Jeru… Jeru… Jeru!"

Kathir’s eyes widened. Before he could move, she had wrapped her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder.

It was not a polite hug. It was a desperate clutching. As though she feared that if she let go, he would disappear again.

Kathir stood frozen, stiff and confused, his arms hanging. His chin rested awkwardly against her temple. She was warm and trembling, and her perfume - jasmine and something faintly medicinal - filled his nose.

“Jerusha… kanna… chellam…” she kept whispering between choked sobs, her voice breaking open in waves.

"Ennachuma…?" a man’s voice called, steps hurrying.

A tall man with a little belly in his fifties came down the portico steps, slowing when he saw the scene. His shirt was untucked, hair greying at the sides, and his eyes widened as he saw the woman in tears holding a stranger.

Then he saw Kathir’s face.

His breath caught.

“Chellam…” he said, softly, as though afraid of disturbing the vision.

Kathir finally found his voice.

“Sir… madam… enna nadakkudhu?” he stammered. “Na Kathir… naan oruthan college-la… naan… I don’t know who Jerusha is…”

He tried to gently step back, but the woman clutched him tighter, fingers digging slightly into his back. Her body shook with emotion.

The man stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s… let’s go inside first,” he said, voice hoarse. “Let her sit. We’ll talk, thambi. Come… please. Just for a few minutes.”

Kathir wanted to run.

But he couldn’t.

Something in their eyes - the tears, the stunned disbelief, the way they said that name - felt heavier than his confusion. Something about the house, the scent in the air, the quiet tremble in his own heart.

He let them guide him by the hand, like a small child walking between adults after an accident.

The woman’s hand remained loosely hooked around his fingers, like she was afraid he might vanish again.

As they turned back into the gate, Kathir, still dazed, finally noticed the name carved into the white stone near the entrance.

Joy Villa.

His steps slowed.

That word again.

Joy.

The same word from the flyer in the bus. The same golden print from that strange card in his wallet.

It meant nothing, maybe. Just a word.

But he felt it - deep, curling unease in his stomach, like a dream taking shape just outside the edges of what he could understand.

He stepped into the villa, leaving behind the quiet street, unaware that his old world had just slipped a little further behind.

Becoming Jerusha - Joy Family

Part 4: "A House with Her Face, a Heart with His Name"

Kathir had walked into many houses in his life. Dingy ones. Loud ones. Thatched ones. Ones with cement floors so cold they bit into your heels. But he had never walked into a house that felt like this.

Joy Villa.

The name shimmered faintly on the white stone near the gate as if sunlight had been caught in its lettering. Inside the gate, everything felt still. Even the birds seemed to pause mid-flight.

The driveway stretched ahead, smooth and tiled, curving like a question mark toward a portico supported by two slender white pillars. Two cars were parked inside: a Volvo SUV, its grey body gleaming, and an Audi sedan, black with tinted windows. He’d only seen cars like that in magazine covers or parked in front of foreign-return weddings.

Kathir’s slippers made soft scuffing noises as he walked between the couple, the woman still clutching his hand like it might slip away. Her bangles clinked faintly with each step. The man, tall and silent, walked slightly behind, his eyes fixed on Kathir’s back - studying, searching.

The house was large, but not cold. That was the strangest thing. The air inside didn’t smell like fancy imported perfume or expensive silence. It smelt like… life. Like freshly opened cupboards, like warm towel fabric, like sandalwood powder and old photographs tucked in drawers.

The main hall was painted in warm beige with cream crown-moulding around the ceiling. A faint golden light came through the linen curtains and made the marble floor shine like polished pearl. On the walls hung framed portraits - wedding photos, studio shots, and a few oil-paintings of hills and lamps.

But it was the photo above the TV cabinet that made him stop.

A girl. Probably fifteen. Maybe sixteen.

Hair parted neatly, long curls falling past her shoulders. Same eyebrows. Same chin. Same long nose.

She looked just like him.

Kathir’s breath caught.

He stepped forward, instinctively drawn. The girl in the photo was wearing a school uniform - white shirt, maroon tie, and the crest of some school he couldn’t read from where he stood. Her smile wasn’t posed. It was real. Like someone had told her a joke just before the picture was clicked.

His own face stared back at him - but more cheerful, more certain, more… known.

He didn’t notice the couple watching him as he stared.

The woman finally let go of his hand.

“Sit,” she said, voice still shaky. “Please. Just sit.”

Kathir lowered himself onto the cream sofa, the fabric so soft it felt like it sighed under him.

The man remained standing, his palm resting on the back of the adjacent chair. The woman sat opposite him, crossing her arms across her chest like she was still hugging herself.

No one spoke for almost a full minute.

It was Kathir who broke the silence.

“Sir… Madam… I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he began, his voice trying to sound firm but coming out too gentle. “My name is Kathirvel. Everyone calls me Kathir. I’m not your daughter. I came to Chennai last May for college. I stay in a PG. I work part-time at a restaurant. I don’t know anything about a Jerusha.”

The man nodded slowly, as if confirming something.

“I’m Stephen Joy,” he said finally. “And this is my wife, Maria. We moved to Chennai only two months ago.”

Maria still hadn't blinked properly. She kept looking at Kathir like he might vanish if she did.

“You look exactly like her,” she whispered. “Our daughter... Jerusha...Jerusha Anne Joy.”

Kathir dropped his eyes again to the photo.

“You… you sure?” he asked hesitantly. “I mean, faces can resemble…”

Stephen walked to a drawer near the wall and pulled it open. He returned with a small photo album. The kind used in school projects.

He placed it in Kathir’s lap.

Kathir opened it slowly.

Page by page, the girl unfolded before him.

Jerusha in birthday dresses. Jerusha painting on a terrace. Jerusha standing near waterfalls in Ooty. Jerusha with braces, later without. Her smile was constant. Her hair, always long. Her face…

It was him. Or rather, it could have been him. If life had been different. Kinder.

He swallowed.

“She… she passed away?” he asked softly, though the answer already hung in the air.

Maria nodded. “Ten months ago. Last June 1st.”

Stephen sat down now, slowly.

“She was studying in Coimbatore. Bishop Matric School. Hostel girl. We had gone to visit her. She was having fever for a few days. They didn’t tell us. By the time we got there, she was already… she was already gone. Our home was in coimbatore only but...she wanted to experience hostel life.... shouldn't have allowed...”

Maria’s hands trembled. She pressed her palms to her cheeks.

“We didn’t even get to say goodbye properly. No final words. No last smile.”

Kathir’s own throat felt tight. He didn’t know what to say. He had never been good with grief - not his own, not anyone else’s.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” he said, genuinely.

Stephen looked at him again. “You said you came to Chennai in May last year?”

Kathir nodded.

“Then exactly a month before we lost her,” Stephen murmured. “You arrived here.”

“It’s coincidence, Sir,” Kathir said quickly. “I… I didn’t know anything. I’m not from Coimbatore. I’m from near Thanjavur. I didn’t even know your family.”

“We know that,” Maria said quietly. “But God knows things we don’t.”

Kathir looked down.

“Tell us about yourself, kanna,” she added gently. “Please.”

So he did.

He told them everything. Not with drama, just the truth.

That he was the youngest of three boys. That his father and brothers were drinkers. That his mother never once fought for him. That he left home after a fight and came to Chennai with the dream of college and work. That he now stayed in a PG with strangers and worked wiping tables. That his college didn’t care. That he didn’t have friends. Except for one girl, who sometimes brought him eggs.

They listened.

Maria wiped her eyes. Stephen folded his hands and nodded occasionally.

“You’re trying,” Maria said softly. “Despite everything.”

“I’m just surviving,” Kathir replied.

Another silence. Then Stephen leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“We have a… request. A very simple one.”

Kathir looked up.

“Just stay here. With us. No pressure. Just for a few days. You can take her room. It’s still untouched. We just want… peace. We won’t ask anything of you. Just be here. Eat with us. That’s all.”

“But…”

“You don’t need to go back to that PG,” Stephen said gently. “Or the restaurant. No need to wipe tables for sixty rupees an hour.”

Kathir blinked.

“Why would you…? I mean, I’m not her. You know that.”

“We know. But still,” Maria said, standing slowly. “It feels like God gave us… another chance to grieve properly.”

Kathir didn’t respond.

He looked again at the photo on the wall. That smiling girl with his face.

And for a flickering second, he felt like he was standing inside her memory.

Not replacing her.

But brushing against the place she once filled.

He didn’t say yes.

But he didn’t say no either.

Becoming Jerusha - Joy Family

Part 5: "One Room for Her, One Life for Him"

A slide show of his life.

One by one, sharp and full of feeling.

The last few months first.
His cracked slipper on hot tiles outside the biryani stall. The sound of oil sputtering. A customer shouting “Bill!” with impatience. The cold steel of his tumbler as he filled water jugs, the ache in his back, the way the smell of fried onions clung to his hair long after his shift.

Then the PG room - crowded and sad. That one broken wall hook that held his college bag. The roommates he never really spoke to. One always laughing into his phone, the other playing PUBG late into the night, yelling in Telugu.

Earlier still - his first week in Chennai. Trying to find his college building, getting lost in Vadapalani, a kind stranger in a roadside bakery showing him the right bus. The new notebook he had bought with pride, only to give up writing in it by mid-June.

Before that - home. The word bitter in his throat. His father’s roar, the sound of a liquor bottle smashing. His brother mocking his soft hands. The smell of cheap country liquor in the house, the creaking ceiling fan above the thatched hall, the cracked mirror in which he used to examine his own face, wondering why it didn’t match how he felt.

Even earlier - school. That one cruel boy who had laughed and said, “Nee ponna payyana?” The teacher who looked the other way. The only compliment he remembered: a girl who once said his handwriting looked “like a girl’s diary.” He had kept that diary.

Before all that - his childhood.

A slipper hitting the ground near his foot. His mother calling for him to bring water for his brothers. The feeling of wanting to disappear. The safety of sitting on the terrace at dusk, alone with the birds.

That’s where the reel ended.

He opened his eyes.

Kathir sat upright on the plush sofa in Joy Villa, the photo album of Jerusha still open on his lap. The AC hummed softly in the hall. The clock ticked. Maria had stepped into the kitchen for tea. Stephen was on the phone somewhere inside. The villa felt alive, but slow. Grieving. Listening.

He turned the album over again.

This time, page by page, in reverse.

Jerusha, aged sixteen.
School photo. The maroon skirt, white shirt. Her smile - broad, confident. Her eyes full of life.

Fifteen.
A selfie with her mother near a Christmas tree. Lip balm, velvet top, silver earrings. Her cheeks rounder.

Fourteen.
In Ooty. Mist around her face. Hair loose and blowing across her cheek. Laughing at the camera.

Twelve.
Riding a bicycle. A cast on her wrist. Scribbled caption: "Her first fall, not her last."

Nine.
Short frock. Missing front teeth. Hugging a Labrador puppy.

Six.
Pigtails. Birthday cake. Frosting on her nose.

Three.
Teddy bear twice her size.

One.
A small photo of her wrapped in a white towel, her mother smiling sleepily behind.

Kathir stared at that last one for a long moment.

She was once real.

And now - she was a photo album.

“Thambi?” Stephen’s voice called from behind gently.

Kathir turned. The man walked forward, his face warm and careful, like he was afraid to push too hard.

“You said okay, right?”

Kathir nodded slowly.

“I’ll stay. Just… just for a while. Ungaluku peace irundha…”
(If it brings you peace…)

Before he could finish, Maria returned from the kitchen. She had heard.

She rushed forward, cupping her palms and looking up.

“Thank you, kanna. Thank you. God has not forgotten us.”

She began to cry softly - not like before, not with grief, but with the kind of slow relief that falls when something begins to heal.

Stephen held Kathir’s hand gently - then placed his other hand over it. A warm grip.

“You’ve given us something we didn’t even know we needed,” he said.

Kathir looked down.

“I have to go to the PG. Pick up some things.”

“I’ll drive you,” Stephen said at once, already pulling keys from the table.

He twirled them.

“Sedan today,” he added with a light chuckle. “Jerusha always liked the Audi more.”

The car was smooth as a breeze as it rolled out into the night. Stephen took the longer route, intentionally avoiding traffic.

The city glowed gently in amber lights. Kathir sat in the passenger seat, hands on knees, watching the road roll past. The AC whispered. The leather seat cooled against his spine.

“She used to love long drives,” Stephen said after a while, voice gentle. “Would always sit here, next to me. No matter where we went. She’d talk about cars as if they were people. Could name every model from its tail-light.”

He chuckled faintly.

“Wanted to become an automotive designer for a while. Then a pianist. Then a travel blogger. Too many dreams.”

Kathir smiled a little.

“We used to stop near that Adyar bakery every Sunday,” Stephen pointed out. “She’d ask for honey cake. And fight for the window seat every time.”

There was a pause.

“Sometimes I still buy that cake,” he added. “Then forget to eat it.”

Kathir climbed up the PG stairs for the last time.

His roommates didn’t ask questions. He had always been the quiet one, the polite one. He packed quickly - just a small bag, two changes of clothes, toothbrush, college ID card, and a fading photo of himself that he stared at a moment longer this time.

He locked his cupboard. Left the key with the owner downstairs.

Stephen stood waiting near the car, humming faintly.

They drove back.

On the way back, Stephen spoke more - this time about himself.

“I run an IT consulting firm,” he said. “Mostly Europe clients. Maria volunteers part-time for a Catholic counselling center. She helps women through grief, loss, trauma.”

He smiled slightly at the irony.

“She couldn’t save herself when it was our turn. But I think… you’ve helped.”

They reached the house. Maria was at the door.

She led Kathir inside, not like a guest now - but like someone returning.

Jerusha’s room or so the name said, was on the first floor.

They opened the door together.

Kathir stepped in - and stopped.

The air inside was still.

Not stale. Just still. Like it had been waiting.

The curtains were soft cotton, pale blue with white stripes. The bed was low, with a dark wooden frame, and a small stuffed elephant lay near the pillow. A bookshelf stood near the window, stacked with school novels, journals, and sketchbooks. A study desk had a corkboard pinned with notes, schedules, and a few keychains. There was a cupboard with printed stickers peeling at the corners - Frozen, Harry Potter, Cars.

Everything was arranged but untouched. Loved, but frozen in time.

Kathir stepped closer. On the wall, just beside the mirror, hung a photo of Jerusha in a long gown, arms raised in joy at a hilltop. Her hair flew like a flag.

The bed cover was floral, lavender and white. The air smelt like talcum powder, old soap, and something else… something warm.

He placed his bag gently by the edge and sat on the bed.

It didn’t creak.

Maria stood in the doorway.

“Dinner?”

He nodded.

Downstairs, they didn’t let him serve himself.

Maria placed extra ladles of dal on his plate. Stephen poured water with care.

They fed him like he hadn’t eaten in months. Tomato rasam, beans poriyal, curd, fried papad. Everything tasted of comfort, though he couldn’t have told you exactly why. Maybe it was the silence they shared. Or the way Maria smiled when he took a second helping.

When he finished, he touched his fingers to the edge of the plate and muttered, “Romba nalla saapadu, ma'am. Nandri.”
(Very nice food, ma'am. Thank you.)

Maria touched his head gently.

Back in the room, he stood near the mirror.

He didn’t recognize himself. Not entirely.

He looked like someone halfway between two lives.

He took out his phone and messaged the only person who might care.

Kathir:
Hey. Lot to tell. Not in PG anymore. Staying with kind people. Will update soon. Hope you’re well.

He didn’t say more.

He didn’t know how to.

He lay back on the bed, pulling the sheet gently over him.

The ceiling fan above spun in soft rhythm. The moonlight fell in long stripes across the desk.

And as he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the echo of laughter in this room.

Not his.

Hers.