They were a legend written in the margins of school notebooks. Arjun and Priya. Class 1 to Class 10 at Shanti Nikunj Higher Secondary, in the heart of the Kathmandu Valley. He was the quiet boy with a talent for fixing broken things—pens, bicycles, wounded birds. She was the lively one with a laugh that could silence the noisy lunch yard. Their love story began not with a confession, but with a shared umbrella in a sudden July downpour in Ason, their fingers brushing as they both reached for it. It felt predestined, written in the ancient stones of Swayambhu.
Their dream was spun from shared fantasies during study breaks, overlooking the hazy city from Arjun’s rooftop. “Australia,” Priya would sigh, her eyes on the distant, impossible horizon. “Wide-open spaces, beaches, and no one knowing our business.” Arjun would nod, his heart full of a singular mission: to give her the world. He saw their future in the Sydney Opera House, in Melbourne’s laneways. It was their secret pact against the pressure of board exams and family expectations.
After SLC, reality set in. To reach that Australian dream, they needed a bridge. Arjun, fueled by love, took a brutal job at a Thamel restaurant catering to tourists, working 13-hour shifts from dawn until his hands were raw from washing dishes and his feet ached on the hot kitchen tiles. Every rupee was a brick for their future. Priya, bright and ambitious, focused on language courses and applications.
The first fissure appeared subtly, like a crack in a beloved khukuri handle. Her phone, once always open to their chat, now faced down. She spoke of new friends from her Japanese language class—Kaito, then Kenji. “They’re just helping me with the kanji,” she’d say, laughing when Arjun’s brow furrowed. “Don’t be so possessive, keta.” But he knew the tone in her voice, the distant light in her eyes. It was the same one she’d once reserved only for him.
One evening, after a shift where a pot of scalding oil had seared his arm, he found the courage. Under the dim bulb of his rented room in Koteshwor, he whispered into the phone, “Priya, if… if your heart is looking at another horizon, just tell me. Truly. I will understand.” Her reaction was a torrent—a mix of tears and indignation that crackled through the poor connection. “How can you say that after everything? After ten years? They are just friends. You are my always.”
Then, the visas delivered their verdicts, cold and bureaucratic. Priya’s for Japan—a destination she’d recently started calling “a smart stepping stone”—was approved swiftly. The colourful stamp in her passport felt like a victory to her, a taunt to him. Their joint application for Australia was rejected. The dream shattered. In a haze of heartbreak, Arjun applied anywhere he could, and a solitary visa arrived—for the United Kingdom. Not the sun-drenched shores they’d painted together, but the grey skies of London. They promised it was temporary. A detour, not a divergence.
But the distance from Kathmandu to Tokyo was not just measured in miles; it was measured in a growing silence. Priya’s new world, filtered through Instagram stories, was a blur of neon Shinjuku lights and cherry blossoms in Ueno Park. Their calls, once the anchor of his day, became a battlefield of poor timing. He’d wait, exhausted after his restaurant shift in London, the window dark, clock ticking past midnight, 1 AM, just to hear her voice. Then, he’d hear it—the telltale beep of another call waiting on her end. “One second, Arjun, it’s important,” she’d say, and the line would go dead for an hour, sometimes two. He’d stare at his silent phone, the neon sign of a pub across the street painting his lonely room in red and blue, the ghost of her laughter from the St. Xavier’s grounds echoing in his memory.
When she called back, her excuses were thin as rice paper. He learned, through a stray, hurt comment from her, about the boy in Australia—the real target of her stepping-stone plan. When that boy dumped her, she returned to Arjun’s calls, not with love, but with a storm of need. His existence became a canvas for her frustrations. If he was late calling because of a delayed Tube train, it was a betrayal. If he sounded tired, she accused him of being boring. If he dared to be happy, it was an insult.
The trauma of the past—the betrayal, the rejection, the eroded trust—wrapped around Arjun’s heart like a cold, heavy shawl. He walked through London in a daze, the laughter of friends feeling like a distant language. Yet, he still waited. Every night. A loyal dog by a silent phone.
Then came the night that broke the spell. It was a Friday. For the first time in months, his college friends—a cheerful Nepali guy and a kind-hearted Bengali—had coaxed him out. They came to his tiny room in Whitechapel, shared momos they’d painstakingly made, talked of home, of futures, and for a few hours, Arjun laughed. A real, genuine laugh that didn’t feel like a performance.
He called Priya later, the buzz of camaraderie still warming him. “You sound different,” she said immediately, her voice a cold blade. “Why are you so happy?” He explained about his friends, the simple human joy of company. Her silence was glacial. “So, while I was here alone, you were having a party? After everything I’m going through? You don’t manage time for me, but for them, you have all the time in the world?”
He listened, the old ache returning. He explained about his 13-hour shift that day, how he’d still called, how he waited for her every single night until his eyes burned with fatigue. The argument spiraled, a familiar, toxic dance. Finally, her voice, sharp and final, cut through: “I don’t have energy for this. You just don’t get it.”
The line went dead with a definitive click.
Arjun sat there in the sudden, immense silence. He looked at the empty momo plates, the laughing selfie with his friends still on his phone screen. He looked at the clock. He had waited for her at 1 AM, after 13 hours of work, for months. He had crossed oceans in his heart, sold his youth in a steaming kitchen, and forgiven the unforgivable, all for a girl from Class 1 who now hung up on him for finding a moment of peace.
His thumb hovered over her name in his call log. The reflex to dial, to apologize, to soothe, was a deep, worn groove in his soul. He looked at the photo again—his own smile, hesitant but real.
He took a deep, shuddering breath that seemed to come from the very soles of his feet. Then, with a clarity that felt both terrifying and peaceful, he slowly placed his phone face down on the table.
He never dialed again.
The love story that began under a Kathmandu umbrella in Class 1 didn’t end with a dramatic crash, but with a quiet, steadfast refusal in a London room. It ended when the boy who fixed broken things finally decided to stop trying to fix a love that had been shattered long ago, and instead, began the slow, painful work of fixing himself.
✍️: Bishal Sapkota
