A dim deteriorating part of the delhi where the rain never quite dries off the roads . The world feels like it’s always surrounded by mysteries. The story begins in a tattoo studio nestled between a bar that never closes and a shuttered bookstore. It smells like ink, antiseptic, and forgotten stories. The rain was a dull, relentless thrum against the iron roof of the crumbling tattoo studio—a sound Arjun usually found soothing. Tonight, it only sharpened the edge of his nerves. Each drop sounded like a verdict. A tiny, ceaseless accusation.Then came the click-click-click of her boots on the floor .

She was early. He didn’t turn, couldn’t. Instead, he focused on the stencil beneath his gloved fingers a coiled dragon, razor fine lines whispering of pain and transformation. The client flinched as the needle touched skin, but Arjun barely noticed. His own fingers trembled, a subtle quake he felt down to the marrow. Not now don’t let her that. Don’t let her see you .The machine’s low buzz filled the room like a growl. Familiar steady it was his anchor.

She stood by the counter arms crossed, backlit by the greasy glow of the streetlights through the fogged window. Still as stone silent watching. She always watched.There was something almost violent about how calm she looked like a woman who had made peace with chaos long ago.

Her name was Aksha. That was almost all he knew. She’d started working part time at the front a couple months ago. Said she needed somewhere quiet somewhere dark. She found both. And somehow she had found him too.She rarely smiled. When she did, it was never full. Just the barest curve at one corner of her mouth a flicker of something fierce and private. It didn’t make his heart skip. It wrecked him left him breathless, raw, aching for more than she ever gave.Arjun was a man shaped by silence. A man of ink and shadows and scars. He lived quietly but not by choice. His are shoulders hunched, voice low, never meeting eyes too long. His art was brilliant. He is gifted undeniably.But he never liked praise.Praise made his skin crawl. Every compliment felt like well crafted lie . Every kindness a trap. He didn’t know how to accept goodness without suspecting its cost.He saw himself as a flaw in motion. A wrong note in a quiet song. Mirrors weren’t tools they were punishments. And every glance told him what he already knew you are not enough . You will never be enough.

But Aksha… Aksha was a storm dressed in calm. A woman who wore silence like armor and weapon both. When she looked at him really looked he felt someone has stripped him . Her eyes didn’t just see him they peeled him apart. She cut through the practiced stillness, past the ink and the careful hands, and straight into the small, shaking boy who never learned how to be loved.And worse far worse was that he wanted her to do it.He craved her gaze like oxygen. He needed her attention, sharp and merciless as it was, to feel alive to feel real. He wanted her to find the hollow parts inside him and fill them with something violent and warm.He wanted her to keep looking, even if it tore him apart.Especially if it did.

It started maybe with a brush of her hand when passing him the appointment book. Their fingers touched, a fleeting connection for half a second too long. He flinched she didn’t.Later she spoke - voice low, almost brittle.You tattoo people’s skin. But do you ever draw for yourself ? He didn’t answer. How could he explain that his sketchbooks were full of faces that looked too much like his mother when she left, and shadows that whispered things he couldn’t unhear?

Instead, he said I don’t draw anything that doesn’t bleed.She blinked once, and for the first time, he saw it a crack. Something fragile behind her iron hard gaze.

He started to wait for her.It wasn’t conscious at first. He’d clean his station slower, reorganize needles that were already organised , pretend to be busy until the bell above the door rang at 6:02 PM.

When she didn’t come one evening, he stared at the door like it had betrayed him.

He hated himself for it. She’s not yours. She’s not even interested in you. Don’t be pathetic.But when she showed up the next day with a split lip and silence thicker than tar, something in him cracked.He didn’t ask what happened.But that night, he stayed late and sketched her face for the first time eyes fierce and hollow, jaw tense like she was at war with herself and losing. They didn’t talk much. But when they did, every word felt like it mattered. Not rude just honest.I think you’re scared of being loved,she said one day, out of the blue.

He looked up from his ink tray, raising an eyebrow.I think you’re confusing pity with insight,” he said.She didn’t look away.

Maybe she said. “But you always pull back when someone tries to really see you. That says somethingThe shop was closed. Rain pounded against the windows like it was trying to get in or maybe trying to pull him out.

Arjun sat alone, sketching with a charcoal stub. The lights were dim like always. He liked them that way. He said it was for atmosphere, but really it was for hiding.

He was halfway through a new drawing it wasn’t her face this time not exactly. It was a woman walking into the ocean, her back arched as if she was carrying grief in her spine.The door creaked. She hadn’t knocked.

Aksha wearing black again. Damp from the rain. Eyes tired lips split worse than last time.

You’re bleeding, he said, not moving.

I know.

A beat passed.

Do you want ice?

No.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

No.

Okay.

She dropped her bag and walked toward the counter her movements unhurried, deliberate. Like she didn’t want to startle him or maybe herself.

What are you drawing?

He didn’t want to show her.

But he turned the sketchpad anywayShe took one look and sat down across from him.I feel like that sometimes,she said. Like I’m drowning, but no one would notice until I wash up.He studied her for a second.

You ever think about not going into the water at all?

She smiled, but it wasn’t nice.

“I’m already soaked, Arjun.”

After that no one said anything they sat in silence the whole time.

That night, he dreamt of her.

Not naked. Not touching.

Just there.Sitting in his chair, flipping through his sketchbook, stopping on the pages where he’d drawn her from memory her lips in different shapes, the way her fingers curled, the softness in her eyes when she thought he wasn’t watching.

In the dream, she looked at him and said,

You’re not drawing me. You’re drawing my pain.

He woke up gasping, sweat on his neck, his chest tight.

The next few days felt… off. But in a way he didn’t hate.

They spoke more. Not about the past never directly. But around it.

One evening, she asked,

Do you think people can be broken forever?

He didn’t hesitate.Yes,he said.

Then added, softer But that doesn’t mean they can’t still be beautiful.

Later, one night while closing up, she lingered at the door.Fingers resting on the light switch.Eyes almost meeting his, then drifting away again.

Why do you flinch when I get close?she asked.He was quiet for a moment. Then he said Because I don’t know how to need someone… without falling apart.

She nodded slow. Like she had been there.

Like she was there.

I don’t want safe,she said. I want real.

He should’ve looked away. Should’ve said something that made it easier to walk away.

But instead, the truth slipped out of him like a breath -Real hurts.

She moved toward him, close enough that the air between them changed.

He could smell the cold in her coat, the rain still clinging to her skin.Her fingers lifted just barely and brushed the edge of his jaw, right where the beard gave way to bare skin.It was the lightest touch. But it lit something deep inside him.

She didn’t kiss him.She didn’t need to.

Her touch said everything.

And it was enough to break him apart.

The lights in the shop had been off for nearly an hour, but they stayed.

Aksha sat in the tattoo chair quiet, still unnervingly composed. Arjun stood a few feet away, his hands shoved into his hoodie pockets, knuckles clenched so tight his nails dug crescent moons into his palms.

She had asked him to tattoo her.

Not just anything.A line of script over her ribs.Something no one would see unless they were close enough to feel her breath.

What does it say? he asked.Her voice was almost a whisper -what you survive becomes you.

He nodded, heart stammering.

You sure?

She lifted her shirt without flinching.

He saw the bruises then not fresh, not old and he looked away like it burned.

Look at me, Arjun-she said.He did.

It was the first time he had really seen her skin. Not in a sexual way in a human way. In a witnessing way.

The ink machine hummed to life.As he worked, his hand steady but his breath uneven, she didn’t make a sound. Not a flinch , not a hiss. Her eyes stayed locked on his face, and he hated how vulnerable he felt being watched like that.

How do you not feel this? he murmured.

I’ve felt worse.

Silence.

Then she said-You draw pain. I wear it.

Later, when the tattoo was done, she didn’t leave.They sat on the floor together, backs against the counter. His hoodie was too big for her, but she wore it anyway. Rain tapped at the glass like fingers too impatient to knock.

I was thirteen,she said suddenly, staring at nothing.

He turned toward her.

My father used to lock the bedroom door and turn the TV up so loud, you could hear it through the walls. Action movies, game shows it didn’t matter. Just noise. Loud enough to cover everything else.”

Her voice didn’t waver, but it dropped, like the words were heavier now.

And my mother… she never asked. Not once. She just kept folding laundry or cooking dinner like nothing was wrong. Like she couldn’t hear the screaming. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.”She took a shaky breath, but there were still no tears. Only that hollow calm that comes after years of surviving.She’d ask me if I’d finished my homework. If I’d cleaned my room. But never the real questions. Never the ones that might’ve forced her to see what was happening.I left at seventeen. Haven’t been back.No tears. Just facts. Her voice carried the weight of someone who had learned crying didn’t buy you mercy.

He wanted to hold her but he didn’t.

Instead, he offered the only thing he could.

I don’t draw people,he said. But I’ve drawn you a hundred times.

She looked at him, expression unreadable.

I know she whispered.And then she did something unexpected.She took his hand.Not casually but Deliberately.

She threaded her fingers through his like she was choosing him. And Arjun who had always felt like a second choice didn’t pull away.