The giant hall lights dimmed at once, and the sudden chill from the air-conditioning washed over Aryan's neck. Cold against sweat. Sharp against skin. He sat stiffly on the hard plastic chair, knees pressed together, fingers curled tight around the edge of his notebook.
The murmur of hundreds of children thickened like humid air before lightning.
"Just breathe, Aryan," Tanushri whispered beside him. Her voice held that firm, older-sister steadiness—equal parts advice and order. "It's just listening."
Just listening.
If only his head agreed.
Sagar leaned forward, eyes glowing at the huge screen on stage. "Da, look at that chart! They're using Q3–Q4 projections. They're treating us like college students already."
He fiddled nervously with the strap of his backpack, the way he always did before tests, announcements, or basically anything scary.
Aryan tried to focus on the screen, but the bright lines blurred at the edges. His head throbbed once—sharp, twisting—then eased only to tighten again.
Then the speaker walked in.
She didn't look like a school guest.
She looked like she'd stepped out of a boardroom where people got fired for breathing wrongly.
A stiff saree.
A blazer too expensive for this hall.
Eyes that scanned the students like she was looking for weaknesses.
"The Business & Management Domain," she began, voice clipped, formal, cold, "is about survival. Every resource—time, capital, and people—has a cost. If you cannot extract value, you are a liability."
A few kids straightened unconsciously.
The next words came sharper.
"You will learn about profit margins. Forecasting. Market pressure. Competitive advantage. And consequences."
Aryan's brain, usually neat and organized, felt like someone was forcing noise into it. He tried writing down the new words, but his fingers trembled slightly.
"Does anyone know the difference between a debt instrument and a futures contract?" the woman asked, eyebrow raised.
Silence.
Then a hand shot up three rows ahead.
Riya.
Of course.
She stood with perfect posture, uniform crisp enough to cut glass.
"A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell later at a fixed price," she said clearly. "Debt instruments are how companies borrow—like bonds—which they repay with interest."
A few students stared at her like she'd spoken magic.
The speaker gave the faintest approving nod.
"Excellent. See? Some of you are already thinking like business owners."
A ripple of admiration spread across the hall.
But Aryan felt something else—
the air around him getting thicker.
He pictured their small house again.
The rusted tin roof rattling during rains.
The buckets placed to catch the leaks.
The factory dust on his mother's tired hands, her fingers always cracked and red.
A cold weight tightened in his chest.
If I can't understand this… we will never fix the roof.
The speaker's voice sharpened again.
The words felt like too many stones thrown too fast.
His headache flared.
Tanushri muttered quietly, "This is ridiculous. They shouldn't dump this on ten-year-olds."
Sagar checked his digital watch.
"My Science orientation starts now… but—"
He looked closely at Aryan, noticing everything: the tight jaw, the trembling hand, the unfocused eyes.
Then he grabbed Aryan's elbow firmly.
"Da. You need air. Now. Don't sit through this."
Aryan didn't argue. He squeezed Sagar's arm once—a silent promise—and slipped out of the row.
He walked fast, weaving between knees, bags, and whispering clusters of students.
Past the Science wing, where excited shouts about circuits and robots echoed down the hall.
That was Sagar's world.
Predictable noise. Friendly noise.
Aryan needed silence.
He kept walking until the noises faded into an almost holy quiet.
He had reached the Arts & Humanities Wing.
The air changed here.
It didn't carry ambition or fear.
It smelled like sandalwood, old books, and pencil shavings.
The lighting felt softer, like evening before the streetlamps turned on.
His headache—still there—finally loosened its grip.
He paused near an easel.
A portrait of an old man stared back at him, eyes tired, lines deep. Something in those wrinkles felt familiar. A kind of pain that never spoke.
Aryan exhaled slowly.
Then he saw her.
Aditi sat near the window, hair falling to one side, sunlight catching in it like warm silk. She wasn't smiling. She wasn't calm. She was fighting her own drawing.
Her pencil moved in frustrated strokes until—
she stopped.
Scowled.
Crumpled the paper.
And threw it on the floor.
"Why won't you look right?" she whispered to the paper, voice soft but upset.
Aryan walked closer. Not loudly. Not quietly. Just present.
Her head jerked up.
Her annoyed expression softened immediately.
She smiled—warm, gentle, honest.
"Hi, Aryan," she said.
She picked up the crumpled ball from the floor, embarrassed.
"I was drawing the Cassia flowers outside the main gate. But they look flat. Lifeless. Not how they look in my head."
Aryan nodded slowly.
He understood that better than she knew.
He pointed at the portrait.
"He looks like… he needs to sleep."
Aditi followed his gaze and studied the sketch again.
Her eyes widened a little.
"The artist showed his tiredness perfectly," she whispered. "They must have really looked at him."
"They cared about his shoes," Aryan said.
Aditi frowned slightly, then leaned closer to the portrait's feet.
The cracked leather.
The worn sole.
The scratch near the ankle.
She looked back at Aryan, startled by the correctness of his observation.
"You're right," she breathed. "They look walked in. You notice the best things."
"The true things," Aryan murmured.
She smoothed the paper on her knee.
"It's okay to start again. Sometimes the noise makes you forget what you're seeing."
She wasn't talking about her drawing anymore.
She was talking about him.
About the hall.
About the suffocating pressure.
A quiet warmth filled Aryan's chest.
She gets it.
She understands the silence inside me.
For the first time that day, his shoulders eased completely.
He could sit next to her forever.
He didn't say it. But it lived silently in the space between them.
After a few minutes, the headache dulled enough for him to breathe clearly.
He gave Aditi a small nod of thanks.
She nodded back—no words needed.
Aryan stepped away, feeling steadier.
He walked back toward the east corridor, ready to return to the storm.
But something in the air changed—
a shift in footsteps,
a drop in surrounding noise,
a sudden tightening in the corridor's rhythm.
Across the hall, three important-looking adults walked toward him. Their body language commanded space. Even the older students moved aside instinctively.
They were from DHARA.
The lady leading them stood out instantly.
Shaila.
The same woman from the stage.
She spoke to the tall man beside her, relaxed, almost gentle. But her eyes moved differently—sharp, hunting, analyzing.
As she passed Aryan, she didn't turn her head.
But her eyes—
Her eyes flicked to him.
Stopped.
Snapped back.
Then narrowed for less than half a second.
A precise, calculating gaze.
Not at him.
Into him.
It was the look of someone reading a three-second x-ray of his entire being.
A thrill of cold shot down Aryan's spine.
Sharp, metal-cold, like stepping barefoot onto ice.
In one breath, he felt:
Seen.
Measured.
Mapped.
And categorized.
Then she looked away, smiling gently at her colleague.
As if nothing had happened.
Aryan stood still longer than he meant to.
The cold feeling stayed—metallic, clinical, frightening.
The fear that B&M created—fear for his family, fear of failing, fear of poverty—was loud and human.
But this?
This was different.
This was a predator's awareness.
This was the kind of intelligence that didn't see children—only data, potential, liability.
He inhaled once, steady.
Exhaled slower.
Then he turned, heading back toward the Business hall.
His steps were quiet.
His determination—harder.
He carried the warmth of Aditi's smile.
The steadiness of Sagar's friendship.
The protection of Tanushri's worry.
But wrapped around all of it was something new and cold:
A sudden understanding that the real challenge wasn't the domain.
It was the world watching behind it.
And for the first time, Aryan walked not just toward a classroom—
He walked toward a war he didn't yet understand.