"Mai to nahi hala, mere liye tum bohot khas ho" hamza immediately said.

She didn't know why she shared this with Hamza, but maybe she wanted to or that, he gave her the comfort to share. While this one conversation had given an insight of Hala's emotions to Hamza. He wondered why Hala didnt react on the last line he spoke. When he said that line, he actually meant it by heart, but...she was too occupied in controlling her tears that she didn't get the actually meaning, or may be she was so isolated back before, that she needed time to even recognize such expressions.

Flashback Ends

It was that trip of Hamza's and their talks while getting back from school that had changed everything between them. He ensured to only interact with her when there was no one around, credits for this step ? His mother.

Hamza had gifted Hala a new cell phone against her wishes before going, and even made her familiar with it so that she could use it without any obstruction. He had instructed her or rather ordered to hide it safely from everyone in the house, so that no one is aware of that fact that she had something more than what they had granted. Seeing hala happy would only increase their efforts to raise her distress. Hamza wanted hala to be in his contact while he was gone. She didn't understand everything he was doing but one thing she had known by now was, he would think of her betterment.

Hala sometimes joked how all this phone thing felt like sort of a mission to her. Hiding the phone behind the old radio up there in the top shelf while it charged was in itself a mission. Once ensuring everyone were off to bed, she would sneak out and sit in her usual spot to wait for his call.

Once started from a normal whereabouts call, it had now transformed into a long one. They shared everything with eachother, well except one from Hamza's side which he wanted to tell her in person. It was as if the only important thing in the whole day. Hamza was happy about how much they had progressed and always felt proud that how his one step caused this big change.

Though hala was a bit shy and reserved in the starting, she eventually opened up. He was always patient in listening to how she was being treated and guided her to pass through that time. It pained him everytime to see this side of his family, but then he motivated himself even more.

Sometimes when the situation was too off for Hala, he would share up the silly scenes with his flatmate that made her laugh, one of which included how his flatmate had by mistake left the window open and getting the way, one monkey had made its way to the kitchen where they had caught him conducting a postmortem of the sandwich Hamza had prepared for his lunch.

Not only these talks, Hamza even made sure Hala could cope up with up her studies by conducting special classes on call specially for her. They didn't realiz but these calls were a life support for both of them while they were away. For Hala, she had a caring friend and a figure she could always look up too, he provided a sense of security to her but for Hamza, he was thankful that atleast he knew her abouts, to know that she was fine amidst his cruel family.

...

It was dawn when Hamza's sleep broke with his phone ringing. Groaning at the disturbance he opened his one eye to spot the phone kept on the side table and without looking at the collar ID accepted the call to answer it in sleep.

"Hello" a sleepy Hamza uttered managing hard not to fall back asleep.

"Hello Hamza..." he heard the cry from other side. All his sleep flew away in a second and he sat up straight not believing who he heard.

"Hello, tumhe meri aawaz aa rahi hai" the other person again cried.

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Next update on Saturday

Signing off
Kikaberry