Room number 131, second-year hostel floor
The doorknob turned and a tall, black-haired boy pushed the door open, juggling a notebook and a tablet. His white apron hung loosely from one hand — tossed aside earlier, probably in exasperation.
Karan walked in, letting the pharmacology notebook flop onto his bed with a weary sigh. "Joshi was on a warpath today. Took half the lecture doing his attendance rant — apparently a lot of people skipped. Then he went full sermon about not skipping class on the ones who didn't skip, chewing our ears off. The ones who did skip aren't even there so what is the rant for? And then, he started on how caffeine is a drug of abuse — because, you know, caffeine is the devil even though he drinks espresso like the rest of us. Hey, you never showed up. Me and Nalini saved you a seat and waited. We thought you said you wouldn't skip, man. She — whoa."
He stopped short mid-sentence when he finally took in the scene in the room. Aarav sat rigid on his bed, hair still damp from the shower, wearing a soft cotton shirt and shorts. The most arresting thing wasn't his clothes so much as his posture: ankle propped up on two pillows, the joint wrapped neatly in a crepe bandage that stood out like an accusation. His face was set, lips pressed thin; he wasn't doing anything — not reading, not scrolling, simply staring ahead, thinking.
Stewing.
Karan's gaze flicked to a pile at the foot of Aarav's bed. A light-brown pair of uniform trousers, water-stained and limp; a white apron that had clearly seen better days — its "better" being earlier that morning, before dirty rainwater baptized it. A copy of the pharmacology textbook lay pitifully on the table, pages curling and stiff where they were drying, flecked with tiny specks of brown.
"...What the hell happened to you?" Karan asked, shifting from casual ranting to a tone that was equal parts concerned and, undeniably, amused. "And here I thought you'd randomly changed your mind about the lecture after being so dead set on attending. Did you get into a fight with a lawn sprinkler and lose?"
Aarav's head — still in that stew-and-brood trance — snapped up at the sound. The blank, broody look evaporated and was replaced by a cold, incandescent fury. "No." He paused, jaw tight. "A first year." He bit the words out, clipped, almost like spitting.
Karan blinked. "A...first year? What do you mean?"
"I mean," Aarav seethed, "a first year did this to me."
Karan didn't have a reply ready but his confused expression shouted the rest. Aarav rolled his eyes but began to explain, words coming out in a taut, controlled rush. "I was walking to class. I was a little late, so I decided to take the shortcut—"
"That shortcut?" Karan cut in, already picturing the slick strip. "You know it gets crazy slippery when it rains!"
"I didn't slip, Karan!" Aarav snapped, each syllable a small, contained explosion. "At least listen to me first. Where was I— yes. I was walking. Walking like someone who knows how to keep balance on a slippery area. Then he came. That first year." He said 'first year' like it was a slur. "He came barreling around the corner like a loose cannon. Six-foot something of a giant of pure, unfiltered idiocy. He slammed into me — shoved me into a puddle, which twisted my ankle. It's not broken, I think — I could put weight on it after — but it's twisted. And then, after he had shoved me into a puddle with his colossal clumsiness, he just...left. Ran off with a pathetic 'sorry!' and didn't even look back to see if I was okay."
As Aarav recounted it, Karan's eyebrow lifted higher and higher. He tried to keep a straight face, to offer the sympathy his friend deserved, but the ridiculousness of the situation — coupled with Aarav's very serious, very simmering expression — got the better of him. He snorted, quickly disguising it as a cough because he wasn't about to be the target of Aarav's next rant.
"He... what? And you just... sat in the puddle?" Karan asked, unable to help himself.
"My ankle was twisted, Karan!" Aarav hissed, voice sharp and dripping with venom. "I couldn't walk properly at first. I wasn't just going to sit there forever. I knew Joshi's lecture was a lost cause by then, so I hauled myself up and hobbled back here, looking like a miserable, drowned rat. All because of one clueless giant who didn't know how to watch where he was going."
Karan moved over to sit on the empty spot opposite Aarav on the bed. He couldn't help wincing when he saw the swollen joint. Concern softened the amusement for a second, though the fascination remained — an oddly gleeful interest in this new calamity that had befallen his roommate. "So, let me get this straight," he said slowly, folding his hands. "Your new archnemesis — the one you're currently cursing through emotion and righteous fury — is a guy you haven't even met properly, who happens to be a tall first year and has now officially declared war on you by being clumsy and in a rush?"
"It wasn't just him being clumsy — it was assault, Karan!" Aarav scoffed, turning his face away and curling his lip into a disdainful sneer. "He's a problem. A walking, talking violation of every sense of decorum and common sense this college stands for. And I am going to find him."
Karan, trying to be the more reasonable friend, opened his mouth to offer the sensible course: don't make a mountain of a molehill, rest your ankle, go to the hospital, don't pick fights with random freshers. "You know, you could just—" he began.
But Aarav wasn't listening. His eyes had gone far past Karan's head; a plan, already assembling behind them to make the giant's first weeks of college unforgettable — in the worst possible way.
Karan watched the expression settle on Aarav's face — a thin smile, all ice and calculation. He felt a rush of half-amusement, half-alarm. "Aarav," he said, trying again for a gentler tone, the concern in his voice plain, "this sounds like unnecessary trouble. Your ankle— you should rest. You can't be plotting a campaign while you can't even walk properly."
Aarav glanced down at his foot, flexed his toes with a hiss, and then looked back up. "I will rest," he conceded, voice small at the edges. "Eventually." Then, with brittle calm, he added, "But first I will find him. He humiliated me. He will regret it."
Outside the window, the college quad basked in a shy slice of post-rain sunlight — peaceful, unsuspecting. Inside Room 131, a plan hatched quietly and thoroughly, inside the mind of one specific scorned vigilante second year.
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AN: I aspire to be this petty and pressed.