The Mad Boy’s Secret

Everyone in the town of Mehran knew Aryan. Not for his brilliance or his kindness—but for the madness in his eyes.

He wasn’t born mad. Life made him that way. Or maybe love did.

Aryan was the kind of boy who looked at the world like it owed him something. He moved through life half-awake, half-lost, until she walked in—like a whisper in a crowded room. Her name was Alina. And to Aryan, she wasn’t just beautiful—she was everything he never knew he needed.

He first saw her on a Monday afternoon, sitting quietly beneath the old banyan tree at the college garden. Books in her lap, a soft breeze teasing her hair. Aryan had passed that tree a hundred times and never stopped. But that day, he did. And every day after that, he waited—just to see her again.

He never spoke to her at first. He just watched. Like a fool. Like a dreamer. And slowly, he began to fall. Not gently. Not softly. But like a man pushed off a cliff.

It wasn’t long before he mustered the courage to say hello. Alina looked up, her eyes like midnight stars, and smiled.

That smile destroyed him.

They became friends. Laughed together. Shared coffee, stories, late-night calls. For Aryan, it felt like the world was finally right. But Alina... she had no idea the storm brewing inside him.

To her, Aryan was just a friend—a good friend. But to Aryan, she was oxygen.

One evening, under the same banyan tree where it all began, Aryan confessed. He told her everything—how he couldn’t sleep without hearing her voice, how his world started spinning the day she smiled at him, how he loved her madly.

Alina paused. Her lips trembled.

“I care for you,” she said softly. “But not like that.”

It was just a sentence. Just a few words. But they shattered Aryan like glass thrown from a rooftop.

Something inside him broke that day. Something that couldn’t be repaired. He laughed, nodded, said he understood—but he didn’t. He couldn’t.

After that day, he changed.

He stopped talking to friends. He walked around with empty eyes, scribbling Alina’s name in notebooks, on walls, even on his skin. He’d sit outside her house for hours, just hoping to catch a glimpse of her shadow through the curtains.

His mother begged him to forget her. His friends tried to help. But Aryan was lost.

Love, when returned, is a blessing. But when it’s one-sided and intense—it becomes poison. And Aryan had drunk too deeply.

One night, in a rain-soaked frenzy, Aryan showed up at Alina’s door. Wet, shaking, eyes red with tears and fire.

“I love you,” he whispered. “Still. Always. Even if it kills me.”

Alina didn’t scream. She didn’t yell. She just looked at him—sadly.

“You need help, Aryan,” she said. “This isn’t love. It’s obsession.”

That word. Obsession.

It echoed in his ears for days.

He stopped going out. Locked himself in his room. Scribbled her name on every inch of his walls until his fingers bled. The town started whispering. “That mad boy… Aryan… the one who lost his mind for love.”

Months passed.

Then, one morning, Aryan disappeared.

No note. No trace. Just an empty room and a broken mirror with the words "She was the only thing real."

Some said he ran away. Others believed darker things. A few claimed they saw him walking the railway tracks under the monsoon sky. But no one knew for sure.

Alina cried. She felt guilt—deep and sharp. But what could she have done? She didn’t ask to be loved like that.

Years later, a girl passing through an old village found a diary buried beneath the banyan tree. The pages were soaked, the ink faded—but the words were still there.

"They say I’m mad. Maybe I am. But if loving her makes me mad, then I never want to be sane. I saw God in her smile and heaven in her voice. She didn’t love me. But I loved enough for both of us."

Some say Aryan died in madness. Others say he became poetry.

But one thing was certain—he didn’t just fall in love.

He drowned in it.