The deeper clearing they eventually reached held no laughter whatsoever — which somehow proved considerably more unsettling than the sound had been the entire journey there.
Just heavy, complete silence, and at its very center, an old, completely dry well ringed with stones so thoroughly worn smooth that they’d long since lost whatever carvings they might have originally held.
“This is precisely where it happened,” Kanhaiya said, his voice noticeably steadier now, closer to how an ordinary boy his age should actually sound.
“I fell.
No — I only thought I was falling.
After that, I don’t remember anything else at all.” Aanya leaned carefully over the well’s edge, peering down into a darkness that seemed, disturbingly, to extend far beyond where a well of this modest size should logically end.
“Prem Singh told us the mountain keeps whatever it isn’t finished forgetting,” Vihaan said slowly.
“Perhaps this specific place is exactly where it keeps them.
Not gone entirely.
Simply…
paused indefinitely.” “Then we finish this properly,” Aanya said firmly, echoing the exact promise she’d made days earlier.
“We absolutely do not leave him only half-restored.” She reached for the small notebook they’d carried the entire way — Kanhaiya’s own careful handwriting, his single desperate plea not to be forgotten — and held it directly out over the well’s waiting darkness.
“Your name is Kanhaiya Ram,” she said, clear and deliberate, each word falling into the well like carefully placed stones.
“You live in Lohaghat.
You have a mother and two younger sisters.
You play cricket constantly and you consistently avoid your homework.
We remember you — completely, genuinely, permanently.
Now please, come back to us.”