Episode 8: The Confession
633 Words
For a moment after she said it, the theatre was silent.
Yes.
A word so small. So ordinary.
Yet when spoken in that moment, it detonated like a bomb.
Ishika Mukherjee didn’t flinch.
She sat still, back straight, hands folded over her lap. The light from the projector haloed her face — a spotlight without mercy.
No tears. No trembling.
But her eyes—those never-lost, hawk-like eyes—looked like glass cracked from the inside.
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The Shattering
Tara was the first to rise.
“You did this?” Her voice cracked, half disbelief, half fury. “You destroyed us?”
Mrittika reached for her, gently. “Tara…”
Tara stepped back.
Ishaan stood. “Ishika, say something.”
She turned to him. Her voice was steady.
> “You were slipping away from me.
He was pulling you in.
You didn’t see it. But I did.”
Ishaan's face changed—not anger, not confusion—but a kind of grief one only feels when a sacred thing turns to dust in your hands.
“I wasn’t leaving you,” he whispered.
“I couldn’t take that chance,” Ishika said.
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The Unraveling
Arko spoke next, quietly.
“I knew.”
Everyone turned to him.
“I suspected it… not then. But later. I saw the fear in your eyes. The way you watched us. I read the signs. But I said nothing.”
Rwik sat down again. His hands trembled, finally. All his performance, his confidence—gone.
“You destroyed me,” he said, looking straight at Ishika. “You turned me into a scandal. Into someone people whispered about.”
“I didn’t think it would spread,” Ishika murmured. “I just wanted him gone.”
“And what about me?” Anirban asked, his voice soft but sharp. “What about what it did to my life? My name?”
Ishika closed her eyes.
> “I was seventeen.
I didn’t know what it would do.
I only knew I was scared.
Scared of being forgotten.
Of not mattering to the one person I mattered to.”
She looked at Ishaan again.
Her twin.
Her other self.
He stared at her as if she were a stranger.
---
The Collapse of a Circle
Mrittika broke the silence with a whisper.
“We weren’t gods. We were just kids trying to survive.”
Tara nodded, her voice lower now.
“Except some of us didn’t.”
She didn’t mean death.
She meant dreams. Trust. Love.
Anirban stood and moved toward the projector.
“You all performed your parts well. And tonight… the curtain falls.”
He handed a folder to Arko.
“It’s yours now.”
---
The Final Words
Arko looked down.
Inside: the original script of Behind The Light.
Handwritten notes. Storyboard sketches. Scene timelines.
On the last page, one line:
> “Only the one who watched in silence can write the ending.”
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Aftermath
The group stayed a while longer.
No more shouting.
Just silence.
One by one, they left.
Tara and Mrittika walked out together, side by side—not touching, but closer than they had been in years.
Ishaan lingered behind, then finally turned to Ishika.
“I loved you,” he said.
“I still do.”
“But I don’t know who you are anymore.”
And he left.
She didn’t follow.
Rwik approached Arko at the doorway.
“I read your monologues.”
Arko nodded.
“You should’ve told me,” Rwik said.
“You weren’t ready,” Arko replied.
“I might never have been.”
They didn’t hug.
They didn’t need to.
Anirban turned off the projector.
Arko walked back into the theatre’s darkness, alone.
But this time—he carried the light.
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- Writer
