Mira's absence at college was noticed immediately. Her professors called her parents, who were frantic by the time they found her room. By then, it was too late.

News of her death spread quickly through the campus. Her classmates were shocked, many whispering in guilt-ridden tones about how they had never tried to include her.

Aditi was inconsolable, realizing too late the role she had played in pushing Mira over the edge. She spent days rereading old texts and emails, trying to understand how she had missed the signs.

Her parents were devastated, but their grief was tangled with a confusion that twisted into regret. As her mother clutched Meera's journal, her trembling hands struggling to hold its fragile pages, tears streamed down her face.

"Why didn't she tell us?" she wept, though deep down, she already knew the answer.

Her father sat in silence, his face pale and hollow. But after a moment, his voice broke through the quiet, trembling and laden with frustration.

"We gave her everything. Everything she could've ever needed! A good education, a roof over her head, food on her plate. And this... this is how she repaid us?"

His words hung in the air, sharp and brittle, as though they might shatter under their own weight.

"We loved her," her mother added, sobbing. "We only wanted the best for her. Why couldn't she see that?"

But even as the words left their lips, a deeper truth gnawed at them, one neither of them wanted to admit.

They had been too focused on the child she was supposed to be an idealized version of success, a testament to their sacrifices. In their pursuit of shaping her future, they had ignored the cracks forming in her present.

"I thought we were doing the right thing," her father whispered, his voice breaking. "We pushed her because we believed in her. We wanted her to have the life we never could. But maybe..." His words faltered as guilt overtook him. "Maybe we forgot to ask what she wanted."