"You went after him?" Aditi asked later, when they sat in the back, sharing a too-small bench.
This part Aditi remembered.
Some parts.
"Only till the corner," Sagar said. "Then I stopped. I don't… chase people when they're... like that."
"Like what?" she asked.
"Like they're trying not to break," he said simply.
---
The DHARA staff room was really just the old Science lab with new posters.
Charts about "Decision Trees" and "Resource Allocation" covered the cracked paint. The man with the thin moustache sat at a plastic table covered in forms.
Aryan stood before him, form still clutched in his hand.
"Sir," Sagar heard him say from the doorway. "Ma'am said I might not handle it. But if I solve something… can you see if I can?"
The man studied him.
He could have said no.
Could have laughed.
Could've told him to leave.
Instead, he slid a single sheet of paper forward.
"Try this," he said. "It's from the Class 5 set. No time limit. Just… do what you can."
Aryan sat on the edge of a nearby bench.
Sagar stayed hidden just enough to watch.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Fifteen.
The questions weren't like textbook ones. They were long, story-like things about distributing water to villages, choosing who gets a seat in a bus, figuring out which factory schedule made the least waste.
Aryan's grip on the pencil tightened, loosened, tightened again.
He answered slowly at first.
Then faster.
He bit the inside of his cheek once when he got stuck, eyes unfocused for a few seconds like he could see a system nobody else could, then wrote again.
When he was done, he slid the sheet forward without looking at it.
The DHARA man scanned the page.
He didn't smile.
But his eyes sharpened.
"Nandini Ma'am said no?" he asked calmly.
Aryan nodded.
"Hmm." The man folded the paper carefully. "You can go. I'll talk to her."
By the next day, Aryan's form was signed.
He didn't look happy.
He didn't look proud.
He just looked… steady.
Like something had clicked inside.
---
The tournament day itself felt like a festival.
Class 3, 4, and 5 students sat in the multipurpose hall—rows of desks, fans spinning uselessly against the heat. Teachers stood along the walls, whispering too much for people who told students not to.
The first round was simple: basic reasoning.
The second round moved the best scorers to face questions from the 4th class pool.
By the time they reached the big round—what DHARA called "quarter-final level"—only a handful from each class remained.
From Class 3, there were three names:
Radhika.
Sagar.
Aryan.
Sagar wasn't proud of being there.
He was scared.
Everyone else left in the hall was older.
Radhika, on the other hand, looked almost excited.
Aryan just looked tired.
"Sheet pattern will be different," the moustache man announced. "Long scenarios. Higher stakes. Time limit: thirty minutes."
He came by and placed one paper on each of their desks.
Sagar didn't remember every question now.
He remembered the feeling.
One scenario was about a village with one doctor and too many patients. Who gets treated first, with what reasoning?
Another was about a school with not enough buses. Who should be picked for transport priority?
Another was about a flood.
Another about a damaged bridge.
They weren't questions for ten-year-olds.
Not really.
Sagar's pencil moved, then stopped, then moved again. He could feel his heart banging in his ears.
He did his best.
He crossed out options, circled better ones, wrote reasons that felt right, even if they didn't sound fancy.
At some point, he looked up—
and saw Aryan.
It was like his friend was underwater.
His face looked calm.
Too calm.
His hand moved quickly, but not messily.
His eyes weren't darting from question to question—they were locked in, like he was seeing the entire paper at once.
The light from the window hit his face at a strange angle, making the hollows under his eyes look deeper.
Sagar's stomach twisted.
On the other side, two rows away, Radhika's expression had sharpened into something he'd never seen before.
Not exam-mode.
Not debate-mode.
Something else.
She wasn't just trying to get things right.
She was… hunting.
Every time she erased something, it was with clean, confident movements, not panic.
Her leg, under the desk, jittered once—and stopped. Her fingers curled lightly on the edge of the table.
Sagar noticed the tiny things.
The way her nose wrinkled once, like a sneeze almost came.
The way Aryan's grip faltered for half a second, his hand hovering above the paper, mid-air, before writing again.
The room's air felt heavier, as if all the oxygen had shifted toward their three desks.
By the end of the thirty minutes, Sagar's eyes burned.
He dropped his pencil when the invigilator said, "Time."
Aryan kept writing a fraction of a second longer, then stopped, shoulders stiff.
From where he sat, Sagar could see sweat at the base of his neck.
Radhika lifted her head slowly.
Her face was a shade paler.
She wiped under her nose with the back of her hand without thinking.
When she placed the paper down, her fingers trembled once.
Tiny tremors.
So small that if Sagar hadn't been looking, he would've missed them completely.
The results weren't shouted.
They were announced calmly.
A list scribbled on the board:
> "Quarterfinal Scholarship Recipients — Class 3 Category:"
Radhika — ₹3000
Aryan Kumar — ₹3000
Sagar — ₹2000