Vizag was glowing in its own mood that evening—
half sky painted golden by the sunset,
half swallowed by a growing storm rolling in from the Bay of Bengal.
⭐ Manoj — The Man Who Loved Silence
Manoj had always liked quiet things.
Quiet sunsets.
Quiet thoughts.
Quiet roads.
He wasn’t the dramatic type—
just a simple software engineer working in MVP Colony,
living alone in a small rented room with a single plant he kept forgetting to water.
People thought he was introverted.
He thought he was just… tired.
It had been a long Monday.
Meetings, deadlines, bugs that refused to die.
As he stepped out of office,
rain clouds were gathering above Kailasagiri like a warning.
“Great,” he muttered, starting his car.
“Rain. My luck.”
He didn’t know the sky was listening.
⭐ Naina — The Woman Who Fixed Everyone But Herself
Across the coast, inside the quiet campus roads of Andhra University,
Dr. Naina locked up the AU Health Centre for the day.
She was the type of person who smiled even when she was exhausted,
who remembered everyone’s problems but never spoke about her own.
A top-ranked AU medical graduate,
now working as a junior doctor on campus,
she spent her days treating students who came in with everything from fever to heartbreak.
Everyone loved her calmness.
Nobody saw the weight behind her eyes.
She tied her hair, looked at the sky, and sighed.
“Not today please… I’m too tired for rain.”
But the clouds didn’t care.
⭐ Roads That Shouldn’t Have Met
Manoj drove down Beach Road,
windows half open,
letting salty wind hit his face.
Naina took the same stretch from the other side,
heading home near Lawson’s Bay.
Both were strangers.
Both were thinking about completely different things.
Both were unknowingly driving toward each other.
And toward destiny.
By the time they reached Tenneti Park curve,
the storm cracked open.
RAIN.
THUNDER.
WIND.
The sea started roaring against the rocks.
Wipers struggled.
Lights flickered on the wet asphalt.
The road shimmered like a sheet of glass.
Manoj slowed.
Naina leaned forward, gripping the wheel carefully.
Then—
BOOOOM!
Lightning tore through the sky, striking dangerously close to the electric pole between them.
Everything brightened—
white, gold, silver—
as if the world paused for one holy second.
⭐ The Split Second That Changed Everything
Manoj felt something strange inside him—
like a sudden tug in his chest,
like his breath was being pulled through a tunnel.
Naina felt the same—
a sharp flash of warmth,
a dizzy stretch in her mind,
as if some invisible rope had tied her to something she couldn’t see.
Their cars hit the slippery patch at the same time.
SKRRR—SLIDE—
Naina’s car spun sideways.
Manoj’s steering jerked out of control.
And the lightning struck the pole right between them—
CRACK!!!!
A blinding explosion of light swallowed everything—
the road,
the cars,
their shadows,
their consciousness.
In that single brilliant second,
something impossible happened:
A piece of Manoj…
and a piece of Naina…
were pulled out—
copied—
and pushed into the other.
Two souls duplicated.
Two destinies tangled.
Then darkness.
Silence.
Only the rain falling softly over broken metal and two lives that would never be the same.