Rajashree watched Mishti toy with her breakfast, looking errily lost. She would keep playing with the food, her concentration on her phone, like she was desperately waiting for it to ping. She walked to her, and sat down beside her, pulling the plate to herself and spooned a bite forwarding it to Mishti, who seemed startled at first but ate later, her shoulders dropping as she sighed.

"Gudiya Rani is waiting for Abir's call?", Badi Maa's question made Mishti look up, and she pouted like a baby, breaking into a complaint session.

"See na Badi Maa, he haven't replied to my messages since yesterday night. He didn't even read them. And didn't bother to pick my calls, or return them. Why does he carry a phone if not going to use it? He knows I am worried, he also knows that I know he is not okay, but he isn't letting me be there for him", Mishti stopped speaking when Jasmeet and Varsha stood up abruptly to find Kunal standing at the door. Mishti immediately ran towards him and held his hand.

"Kunal? Is Abir with you? Where is that Ajeeb Rajvansh, tell me? How can he ignore me like that? Kunal, I am talking to you?", Mishti asked, eager to see Abir but Kunal took a deep breath and squeezed her hand back.

"Mishti, I need you to come with me. Bhai had locked himself in his room since last night, and I don't want him to come out to another nasty fight with Maa yet again. I can't see him like that Mishti, like he had finally lost a battle he was trying so hard to win-", Kunal choked, and Mishti felt the tears stinging the back of her eyelids. She took a deep breath and turned to face Badi Maa and Bade Papa, and to her glee, they both nodded encouraging at her.

" I need to pick one thing from my room before I meet Abir, just wait two minutes", Mishti ran upstairs to her room, leaving a waiting Kunal on the door, which was when Kunal's eyes met Kuhu's, and they both froze for a moment.

They hadn't had any chance at a decent conversation since yesterday and this wasn't the time either. Before either of them could even react, Mishti came running down and walked out, Kunal following her.

Rajashree sighed and looked at her husband.

"I will just visit the temple once and come", Visambhar could only manage to nod, lost deep in thoughts that only strengthened his decision!

When Kunal and Mishti walked inside Rajvansh Sadan, Parul maasi ran towards them, extremely anxious.

"Kunal, where is your phone? Why don't you receive calls when it's most important?", and then she paused and smiled watching the girl standing beside him, "Mishti?"

Mishti managed to smile back, but her eyes kept searching through that mayhem of a house for the one person she had been seeking what seems like all her life. Parul saw through her restlessness and held her hands with a soft voice.

"He isn't at home. He left for somewhere a few minutes back!", Both Kunal and Mishti frowned, and Mishti immediately checked her phone to see if she had any messages or calls from Abir, but to her utter dismay, she had none.

"His phone is in his room. I checked after he left", Parul whispered, but Kunal was shocked.

"Bhai left his room open?", he gaped at Parul who nodded with tears in her eyes, and when she read the confusion etched in Mishti's eyes, she decided to address those questions.

"Since the day you left Rajkot Mishti, all those months ago, Abir began to lock his room after him. If he was at home, which was seldom, it would be bolted from inside,  and if he was out, he would lock the door and then go. He didn't let us enter his room, or say, be there for him, not one day of these past months. But today, he left it open", Parul could not help but cry at Abir's plight.

"What he was hiding in that room, is out in the Open now. He was harbouring his love for Mishti in the confined four walls, that each one of us was too blind to see", Nanu spoke from behind shaking his head in disappointment, shooting a glare at Meenakshi who was sitting near the dining table.

Mishti took a deep breath and walked inside, taking slow but steady steps upstairs to the mentioned room. Meenakshi was about to stop her, but one motion from her father shut her up. Kunal followed Mishti, albeit in silence!

Once at the door, Mishti paused for a minute before pushing it open and immediately her eyes watered because right by Abir's bedside was the huge portrait he had drawn of her. She walked around it and traced the painting.

Memories flooded her as she realized how this very painting had helped her realise her love for him, and the joy it had filled her with to realise see was his 'Painting Wali' back then. But the way it was kept by his bedside, something told Mishti that the painting had tried to fill her void in his life, if nothing else.

By its side, near his pillow, was a diary. Mishti recognised it instantly, it wasn't the one where he used to pen down his shayris. It was her diary. She picked it up, and opened it with shivering hands. Tears rolled down her cheeks when she saw every entry starting with "Mishti Pata hai?"

How had times changed, she wondered. Kunal who was standing behind her peeped in, and was taken aback to read the beginning too. Mishti smiled, still in tears and looked at Kunal.

"Writing a diary was my thing, because I didn't know who to tell stuff to, until Abir happened to me. Because after him, he became my best friend, my human diary. The one person I knew I could tell anything to. But see where life threw us eventually. Abir is writing a diary and that too addressed to me. How did he fall so alone Kunal? How did he lived through these three months and nobody saw through those irritating glares he used to hide himself in?", Mishti's question left Kunal speechless. He didn't know what to answer or how to answer. He felt ashamed of himself, to be honest, for wanting his brother to choose between him and Mishti at one point, because it was today he was clearly realising the impact Mishti had on his brother.

Mishti, unaware of Kunal's turmoil, continued to look through the room, and then paused at the point where she found her precious origamy letters arranged in the wall hanging. A particular green letter looked a bit unfolded out of them all, and she didn't have to think twice to know what it was.

"Agar aaj k baad kisi ne tumse galat tareeke se baat ki ya unchi awaz me baat ki, ya rudely behave kiya toh use mera, angry, voilent avatar dekhna padega"

Mishti chuckled, and softly caressed the paper.

"I am so sorry Abir, I could not live upto my promise. I know how manipulative your mother could be, I had even warned her against hurting you, yet I could not look through you when I should have the most", Mishti spoke to the paper, and Kunal felt worse hearing those words. The bitter realization that even though he claimed to love his brother the most, he had only taken him for granted, always, hurt him bad. And with that, also dawned the truth that it there was someone who had always put Abir before everything, like Abir did for everyone else, it was only Mishti.

Mishti's eyes then fell on her ear-ring and pendant lying beside his pillow. She bent a little to pick them up and clutch them tight.

"Your stupid brother snatched this away from me and threw it into the lake to drive me away, and then jumped into that stupid lake's stupid cold water to find this back after I left. Ajeeb Rajvansh!", she rolled her eyes, and smiled, remembering those moments. She continued to walk around, in the room, and Kunal stayed mum, because he could see she was just in her own world, a world that had only her and Abir, and it made him think about how much he didn't know about his own brother.

"Everything was so evident if you people had wanted to see", Mishti's voice caught Kunal's attention and he frowned at her walking upto her where she was standing near Abir's paintings.

"Someone who made such lively paintings to someone who began drawing abstracts - the change is so clearly there. Abstract - is all about feelings that have no definitions, no boundaries. Limitless. Melancholic", Mishti stated in a trance, and Kunal watched her in amazement as in how minutely she understood Abir.

"He stopped writing Shayris too", Kunal found himself saying, and Mishti turned with a jerk, "He stopped talking for most days. He stopped being who he was in all honesty. And I saw it Mishti, I saw it. I tried to ask him, but he would only smile and say- "Everything is awesome Nanko" and won't share one word. I saw him suffocating, and I tried to help him but I didn't know how to. I saw how he avoided Maa every waking moment, I saw how he smiled genuinely only when your Badi Maa would bring him desserts in the temple every week. Even though she didn't look at him, she didn't stop caring for him, and that was the only day in the entire week he looked at a little peace. All of us, took him for granted Mishti, and he kept giving away a part of him, until there was nothing left anymore", Kunal sighed and sat down on the bed, holding his head in his hands. Mishti stood rooted to her spot, not finding it in her to console Kunal in that moment, for her own heart felt like torn into shreds yet again.

She hated the fact that Meenakshi Rajvansh had somehow managed to tear them apart, not only from each other but also from within, and she had let her. Mishti fisted her hands to her side as the anger consumed her. But before she could burn the house down, her phone pinged and she was surprised to see Kartik's message, which was when she remembered about the message she had sent him yesterday, in a fit of her anguish.

"It's never easy Mishti, it never has been. And no, you weren't only my way to Naira, you really were and are my BFF. I know neither me, nor Naira had acted like it recently, but don't let our mistakes overshadow your perception of you Mishti. You are the bravest person I know, and you will always be. We have a lots to catch up, and we will soon".

Mishti smiled reading the message. No matter how much Kartik and Naira's behaviour had hurt her, Kartik really did have a knack of saying the right things to her just at the right time.

Her phone rang this time, and she immediately received the call.

"I will be there Badi Maa", she heard and answered, before disconnecting the call, and Kunal raised his head to see a different kind of fire in Mishti's eyes. Somehow it made him smile, for today, he was witnessing through his own eyes why his bhai called him angry chorni.

Mishti hurried down the stairs, but stopped on her tracks when she spotted Meenakshi. She walked to her and stood right in front of her, looking straight into her eyes.

"I have told you before also aunty, that you really need to reconsider your notions of love, for what you think is love, is actually sheer manipulation", Mishti spat, and Meenakshi's eyes went wide with humiliation.

"Mishti!", she raised her voice at her, trying to scare her down but Mishti didn't pay a heed.

"Awaaz neeche, aunty! I am not yet done. You have hurt Abir enough, and yet not achieved what you wanted. You can't separate me from him, not again. Not ever. And that's an open challenge. Right now, better focus on how you will save the family you boast so much about, because if or not I know how to value relationships, time will well, but you don't, that's already proven. But now, I am not letting you hurt Abir even for one more waking moment Mrs. Rajvansh, never again!", Mishti's words were like a slap to Meenakshi who had been ranting how Mishti would break familes, and before she could even retaliate, Mishti walked out, her head held high.

"Absolutely true, what she said. She won't break this house, because you already did, quite successfully. You not only failed to tie Abir, but you also lost Kunal Meenu, and maybe that's why you deserve for thinking that being the head of tne family is equivalent to being a dictator", Nanu shook his head as he watched Kunal follow Mishti out and left for his room. Ketki and Atul who were watching the drama unfold sighed and left the drawing room too and Parul was already trying hard to not break down.

For the first time in her life, Meenakshi Rajvansh felt how loneliness feels, standing in an otherwise crowded house!