I saw the eyes, and I knew. Instantly. You don't forget someone's eyes – when you have lived with them for seven years, and then helplessly seen them close. Eyes lead you to the soul, don't they?

She was holding a marigold in one hand and a rose in the other (marigold-right, rose-left). The dust from the marigold had just been wiped to make it presentable. The red rose was fresh, and glowed in the background of her red skirt and red sweater. She was smiling serenely, and I felt happy looking at her. Her heart was smiling at mine.

'Thanks,' I gushed, taking both the flowers from her, and the next moment she was gone – flitting across the play field dotted with other reds like her. I took the flowers inside the classroom and inserted both of their stems in the crack of an almirah.

The next day, she was back, with a friend and three flowers. We are good friends, her partner said, but we fight a lot. And then we become friends again.

I replaced the old flowers with the fresh ones, and put the older ones carefully in my shirt pocket. Every night after that, I would transfer them to my diary when I got back to my room.

The eyes were always on my mind, though. The round sparkle; the quiet laughter; the maturity in her innocent talk. Could she have come back?

For a long time after Rashi left us, I would see her in my dreams, telling me that she was right there. I would realize in the middle of the dream that this couldn't be possible, and wake up with a start. The brief moment of happiness in the dream would be followed by a quiet and painful sadness.

I slowly got used to getting the flowers everyday. I actually started expecting them; without any question; without explanation. She would be there everyday. Marigolds; roses. More marigolds; more roses. My diary was getting bloated with the dried flowers with each passing day.

And then suddenly, one day, they disappeared. All of them. Not a trace remained.

I remember I had had a good look at the flowers that morning, and the space between all the pages in my diary was now occupied. There was just one that needed to be filled up. Right from the first day, I had somehow followed the unspoken rule of putting every flower on a new page. She had recently started bringing in many more roses everyday, so that I had quickly run out of space. And now, they had all suddenly vanished into thin air.

I checked with the chowkidars; a hunched man called Lallan chacha, and a younger, rebellious looking fellow. They both declined ever entering my room in my absence. They were actually indignant that I had even entertained such a possibility. They certainly had no interest in flowers, they said. They would bring me some fresh ones if I really needed them. They grinned. I declined.

And then, when I got back to my room, I realized with a start that I had never heard the girl's voice.

She had never spoken, though her friends had. She had always smiled, and never talked. And I had never noticed. I didn't know her name. How would I find her if she suddenly stopped coming with the flowers – it certainly looked possible now with the disappearance of the flowers? I would ask her friends, I decided, or maybe give her description to one of the teachers who were friendly with me.

That night, I couldn't sleep. I made a thorough search of my room, but the flowers were nowhere to be found. The diary was as it had always been; though there was no sign of it ever having been bloated with dried flowers. I was flabbergasted.

I kept thinking of all possibilities that night. Maybe someone was playing a trick on me. Maybe Rashi's ghost was haunting me. Maybe Rashi's spirit had entered the girl. For the first time in my life, I was actually scared of Rashi. I was terrified even to think of her.

The next morning, I died. The police suspected foul play, so my body was sent for postmortem.

They found the flowers in my stomach – all of them. I don't know how they got there. The police thought I had got depressed and killed myself after swallowing the flowers, but they couldn't detect the cause of my death. There was a deep, inexplicable wound near my heart though, just where my shirt pocket had been. It had been bleeding internally there for over a month.

They burnt my body later that evening; and my eyes went alongwith everything else. I tried my best to save it, but nobody would hear me. I wanted them to preserve it. How else would I come back? How could they hear me? And without my eyes, I couldn't even enter into another body.

And that evening, as I lay shivering between the rocks, sad and disconsolate, I saw everything in a daze. And I understood what had eluded me in my life.

Rashi's eyes, as per her childhood wish, had been donated to a girl from some remote village when she died. So, she had come back. The flowers had the kiss of death.