"Until the Last Leaf Falls"

The first time Aryan saw Meera, it was raining — the kind of rain that blurred everything except her.

She stood under the gulmohar tree outside the college library, soaked from head to toe, laughing with a group of friends. Her eyes sparkled in a way Aryan had never seen before, and in that instant, he knew his life had found its axis. She wasn’t just another girl with a beautiful smile — she was the storm, the calm, and the rainbow after.

Aryan was quiet by nature. He believed in the rhythm of books more than the noise of people. Meera, on the other hand, was everything loud and lively. She spoke like a poet and laughed like a child. Still, something unseen and unspoken started growing between them.

It started with shared glances in the hallway, then exchanging books, late-night messages about dreams, fears, and old songs. Eventually, they became inseparable. Meera would read her favorite lines to Aryan, and he would sit, quietly watching her with all the tenderness in the world.

“I don’t know why, but it feels like you were always meant to be in my story,” Meera once said, leaning against his shoulder under the same gulmohar tree.

“I’ll stay in your story,” Aryan had replied, “until the last leaf falls.”

They had dreams. Meera wanted to become a writer; Aryan, a teacher. They had promised to support each other, chase the sun together, and always return to this city, their city — with its narrow lanes, tea stalls, and memories tucked into every corner.

But life is rarely a smooth road. In their final year of college, Meera was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder. The doctors said it was manageable, but unpredictable. She would have good days, and she would have terrible ones.

At first, Meera tried to laugh it off. But Aryan saw the fear behind her brave face.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” she whispered one evening, eyes brimming with tears. “You don’t have to stay.”

Aryan looked at her as if she’d said something blasphemous. “Don’t ask me to leave,” he said, voice cracking. “Love isn’t only for the sunny days.”

Meera smiled sadly. “But it hurts to see you hurt.”

“And it would hurt more not to see you at all.”

They held on. Through hospital visits, through relapses, through the weight of uncertainty. Aryan never missed a single appointment. He learned how to manage her medications, how to ease her anxiety attacks, how to read her silences.

But time wasn’t kind.

After three years, Meera’s condition worsened. She began to forget things. Sometimes she would wake up and not recognize Aryan for minutes. Each episode shattered a piece of him. Yet he stayed — waiting, praying, hoping.

On the day autumn arrived, when the gulmohar leaves began to fall again, Aryan brought her a notebook filled with all the letters he had written to her but never sent.

“I wanted you to read them,” he said gently. “In case... one day you forget our story.”

Meera flipped through the pages, tears trailing silently down her cheeks. She couldn’t read them all at once. Her fingers trembled, and her eyes blurred.

“I didn’t forget you,” she whispered. “Not even for a second. Even when my mind forgot everything else, my heart remembered you.”

That night, she fell asleep in his arms under the fading stars.

Two weeks later, Meera passed away in her sleep.

Aryan didn’t cry at the funeral. He sat still, looking at the sky as if searching for the lines of her favorite poems. Everyone told him to move on, to heal, to start over. But he didn’t want to forget. He couldn’t.

Years passed. Aryan became a literature professor in the same college. Students often found him sitting beneath the old gulmohar tree, reading, or quietly staring at the branches.

No one knew that every year, on the day the first leaf fell, he would leave a letter beneath the tree. A letter addressed to Meera.

One such letter read:

"It’s been seven years, Meera. The world moved on, but I still sit where we first met, hoping to catch your laughter in the rustling leaves. I see you in every rain, in every poem, in every student who dares to dream. I kept my promise, love. I stayed until the last leaf fell. But somehow, they never stop falling."

"Maybe that’s just you… reminding me, you’re still here."

Some loves don’t fade with time. They grow roots deeper than pain and memories that bloom even after the person is gone.

This was that love. The kind that waits under the gulmohar tree. Forever.