Paper Planes and Starry Rains

Paper Planes and Starry Rains

The first time Vihaan met Anaya, she was making paper planes out of old love letters. He watched from a distance as she tossed them out of the hospital window, letting the wind carry them like tiny birds. Some fluttered back, landing helplessly on the damp windowsill. Others soared high, disappearing into the rain.

He didn’t mean to stare, but she turned to him anyway, smiling like they were old friends. “Do you think paper planes ever reach the stars?” she asked.

Vihaan, still clutching the IV pole beside him, blinked. “No. They’re too light.”

Anaya shrugged, unfazed. “Maybe they just need the right wind.”

That was Anaya—always believing in impossible things. She made the hospital feel less like a prison and more like a world of possibilities. She painted constellations on the ceiling tiles above her bed, convinced that if she traced them with her fingers long enough, they’d become real. She named the IV drips after fancy cocktails—"This one’s a Stardust Martini, and that one’s a Moonlight Mojito"—and made the nurses laugh with her terrible poetry.

Vihaan, who had long stopped dreaming, found himself drawn into her universe of make-believe. At first, he resisted. He told himself it was silly, that the stars on the ceiling were just paint, that paper planes couldn’t reach beyond the sky. But Anaya’s world was persistent. It slipped into the cracks of his loneliness, settling into the spaces where hope used to be.

So, he started folding his own paper planes, writing secret wishes on their wings before launching them from the rooftop.

But wishes don’t always come true.

One morning, he woke up to find Anaya’s bed empty. The constellations she had painted were still there, glowing faintly under the pale hospital lights. A single paper plane sat on her pillow, waiting for him.

It had no words. Just a tiny star drawn on its wing.

Vihaan didn’t cry. He didn’t call for the nurses or ask where she had gone. Instead, he picked up the paper plane, smoothing its creases with careful fingers.

That evening, he climbed to the rooftop, the wind tugging at his hospital gown. He held the plane between his fingers and whispered something—maybe a wish, maybe a goodbye.

Then, with all the strength he had left, he let it go.

For a moment, just before it disappeared into the endless sky, it looked like it was flying toward the stars.

And for the first time in a long time, Vihaan allowed himself to believe.