It was time to wind up the house.

Twelve years had passed since I’d lived with Baba. My parents had parted ways amicably, and I’d moved in with Ma when I started college. I wasn’t angry, just... removed. It seemed like I hid my grief well. Truth is, I wasn’t sure I’d ever let myself feel it.

And now, Baba was gone.

He passed in his sleep. Peacefully, they said. I wasn’t there. That’s the part that keeps me up at night.

Ma joined me to help pack up his things. We moved quietly around Baba’s house, stepping over memories that still clung to the corners. Baba hadn’t changed much, it seemed. His books still stacked by the bedside, his slippers worn thin at the toes, old bills folded and forgotten in drawers.

“Do you want to keep these?” Ma asked, holding up a stack of audio tapes, possibly Baba’s voice recordings, maybe poetry, maybe old radio shows. Her voice cracked a little.

“Yeah,” I said. “Keep.”

While digging through a drawer in his study, I found a few photo albums we hadn’t taken with us when we left. Most were filled with familiar scenes: Diwalis, birthdays, Sunday lunches on the balcony, the sorts.

Wedged between two albums was his old digital camera. I charged it for a bit and turned it on. The first photo that came up stopped me cold.

It was me. Around twelve. Sitting on the roof, my face turned away, crying into my sketchbook.

I don’t remember being photographed. I don’t even remember crying like that. But I remembered the day. I’d lost an art competition and convinced myself I was no good. Baba had brought me a chocobar, said nothing, just sat beside me while I sniffled through my drama. I didn’t know he’d taken a picture.

I scrolled some more.

Me at eight, clutching my bleeding knee, face scrunched in pain.

Me at ten, in the green room before a school play, white-faced with stage fright.

Me at fourteen, eyes red after a failed math test.

Not a single one of these had made it into the albums.

“I didn’t know he kept these,” I murmured, almost to myself.

Ma looked over. “He always said the hard moments mattered too. That they made you.”

I stared at the tiny screen, my throat catching a breath.

All these years, I thought Baba only captured birthdays, vacations, festivals. I never knew he saved the quiet heartbreaks too. The in-between moments. The ones I forgot.

The ones he didn’t.

A month passed. I was back in my city. The world moved on like it always does.

At my office desk, right by my lamp, I placed one framed photo of me, the one on the rooftop, tear-streaked, clutching that sketchbook like it was my last chance at being seen.

Underneath it, I got carved ‘He saw me’.