Ten years ago, they were seventeen. Rohan was the new boy in Shimla—loud, clumsy, and wearing a ridiculous fanny pack on his first day. Aanya, the shy girl with a camera, was the only one who didn’t laugh. She showed him the secret path behind the school that led to the old deodar tree. "My fortress," she’d said.
Meanwhile, Kabir also started writing to Aanya—pretending to be Rohan. "Hey Fern, Canada is boring. I miss our tree. Do you think we could ever be more than friends?"
So he never read a single word.
For sometimes, friendship isn't the consolation prize. It's the whole point.
Then she paused the movie, just as the characters on screen finally confessed their love. She smiled, not at the film, but at the messy, beautiful, real story about to begin.
Instead, he called his other friend from Shimla—a charming, confident boy named Kabir who had stayed behind. "Hey, tell Aanya I said hi. And… ask her if she misses me."
I’m flying to Manali tomorrow. I don’t care about the past. I just want to sit under a tree with my Fern. No pretending. Just us.
She wrote. Every single day for two years. Long emails about the changing seasons, her photography dreams, her fear of never being seen. But Rohan, being Rohan, was terrible with technology. He’d set up an old, rarely-used email address for her—one he forgot the password to within months.
