Akaay Malhotra — the boy with a smirk that could burn through silence and eyes that looked like they held every secret you weren't meant to know. The infamous hacker, the one who could bring down empires from behind a screen and still make time to crack a joke like none of it ever touched him. He was the wildfire in every calm, the charming menace, the shadow people feared but laughed with. Always the side character — never the soft one, never the seen one. He carried everyone, knew everything, and yet no one ever asked what it cost to always be the one holding the weight.

Until she came. The one person who didn't want anything from him but honesty. Not his money, not his pretty face, not the name that meant war. Just him. Raw, broken, real. And he wanted to give it — God, he wanted to — but he didn't know how. So he destroyed it. Lied by omission. Pulled away. Let her suffer in the silence he called protection. Because love like that? It scared him. Because she was his rival's sister. Because for once, someone had seen the real him — and he ran from it. And now, the boy who never needed anyone is haunted by the only person who ever stayed.

Kritika Singhnia — the girl who spent her life being "protected," which really meant controlled. Known as the funny side character in everyone else's story, she masked pain with sarcasm and chaos, hiding behind red hair and man-hating jokes. Until he came. And saw her — really saw her. Made her believe she was the main character all along. With him, she softened, loved loudly, wrote poems about feelings she never admitted. He rebuilt her, made her feel safe — then left, breaking her worse.

And now, the girl who once laughed through the hurt can't write a single word. Because he was all she ever wanted to write about. He didn't just leave — he took the only version of her that believed in happy endings.