SHES NOT HER

UNBURIED GRIEF

The rain had stopped before dawn, but the cold remained trapped inside the tiny house like grief refusing to leave. Alma sat beside the bed staring at Maliha’s body while weak morning light slipped through the curtains. Everything felt painfully still. The clock ticked softly. Nana cried quietly in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, birds continued singing as if the world had not ended during the night.

Alma could not stop looking at her sister’s face.

Maliha looked asleep.

If Alma ignored the bruises around her wrist and the dried blood near her temple, she could almost believe her sister would wake up complaining about the storm and asking for tea. The thought shattered her chest all over again.

“You should rest,” Nana whispered from the doorway.

Alma did not move.

Her hands remained wrapped tightly around maliha’s scarf she found in the forest.

“I keep thinking she’s cold,” Alma said quietly.

Nana’s eyes filled with tears instantly. “Alma…”

“She hated the cold.”

The old woman crossed the room slowly and sat beside her. For several minutes neither of them spoke. There were no words large enough for this kind of grief.

The sisters had spent their entire lives protecting each other.

When they were children, Maliha used to sneak outside and describe the city to Alma in endless detail. The tall buildings. The crowded markets. The university students laughing freely in the streets. Alma experienced the world only through her sister’s stories.

Now those stories were all she had left.

Nana carefully brushed Maliha’s hair away from her face. “She carried too much responsibility for someone so gentle.”

Alma lowered her eyes.

Because it was true.

Maliha had lived two lives while Alma remained hidden.

Under the twin prohibition law, only one child could legally exist. The second twin became an unregistered shadow. Families caught hiding twins vanished without explanation. Their grandmother spent years protecting them in silence, teaching Alma never to stand near windows, never to answer doors, never to exist loudly enough for the world to notice.

Maliha never complained about the burden.

Not once.

“She used to tell me she was jealous of me,” Alma whispered suddenly.

Nana looked surprised. “Jealous?”

“She said I was stronger.”

At that, Alma almost laughed bitterly.

Strength meant nothing now.

She could not protect the only person who ever loved her without fear.

Her gaze slowly drifted toward the bruises around Maliha’s wrist again.

Anger twisted sharply inside her stomach.

Someone touched her.

Someone hurt her.

Someone buried her in the dirt and walked away.

Alma reached carefully toward her sister’s wrist and noticed the tracking bracelet still blinking weakly beneath the cracked screen. Deep scratches covered the metal surface.

“They tried to destroy it,” she said coldly.

Nana remained silent.

“That means they knew what they were doing.”

Still silence.

Alma finally looked up. “You already suspected this wasn’t an accident, didn’t you?”

The old woman closed her eyes painfully. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Because people fear what they do not understand. Maliha was soft. Easy to target.”

Alma’s jaw tightened.

Maliha trusted people too easily. She believed kindness existed everywhere because she wanted the world to be better than it truly was.

Alma was different.

She trusted nobody.

Especially now.

Hours passed slowly inside the house while rainwater continued dripping from the roof outside. Alma cleaned the dirt from Maliha’s skin with trembling hands and changed her clothes into her favorite cream-colored dress. The one she wore during festivals. The one she claimed made her feel beautiful.

By evening, Alma could barely breathe inside the suffocating silence anymore.

Without saying anything, she grabbed a shovel from outside and returned to the forest alone.

The woods looked different without the storm.

Quieter.

Crueler.

Moonlight reflected across the lake while insects hummed softly between the trees. Alma carried Maliha’s body carefully through the darkness until she found a hidden place overlooking the water.

Then she started digging.

This time the grave would be worthy of her sister.

Not rushed.

Not violent.

Not abandoned beneath the rain like garbage.

Alma worked until her hands bled again.

When it was finished, she gently laid Maliha inside and placed flowers across her chest.

For several seconds she simply stared downward.

“You promised we would leave this place together,” she whispered.

Wind moved softly through the trees.

“I hated the outside world because I thought it stole you from me.”

Her voice cracked apart.

“But you loved it anyway.”

Tears slid silently down her face.

“You were never afraid of people. Even after everything.”

Alma slowly knelt beside the grave and pressed one shaking hand into the fresh soil.

Then something inside her hardened.

The grief remained.

The pain remained.

But beneath both emotions, something colder began growing.

Revenge.

Not sudden rage.

Not reckless violence.

Careful revenge.

The kind that waits patiently.

The kind that destroys lives slowly.

Alma removed the cracked tracking bracelet from her pocket and stared at the blinking signal.

As long as the system believed Maliha was alive, nobody would investigate her disappearance closely. Nobody would search for another hidden twin.

That realization changed everything.

Slowly, Alma fastened the bracelet around her own wrist.

The device beeped once.

Identity recognized.

For the first time in her life, Alma officially became her sister.

She looked toward the grave one final time.

“I’ll make them suffer for this,” she whispered.

Then she stood and disappeared into the darkness, carrying Maliha’s name with her.

Far across the city, seven students sat awake pretending their lives were normal. Tyler scrubbed mud from beneath his fingernails until they bled. Mia replayed the recording repeatedly. Sophia smoked beside her balcony with shaking hands. Damian stared at his silent phone unable to escape the image of the grave. Ethan/Lila and Marcus None of them knew the truth waiting beyond the forest. The girl they buried was dead. But her sister was coming for them all.