The first thing Aryan noticed was silence.
Not the normal kind.
A different kind.
A silence that sat too close to the skin.
He woke on the floor beside his mattress, breath short, shirt stuck to his back. He didn't remember lying down. Or sleeping. Or anything after the administrative office.
His fingers twitched.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Something else.
Something like a memory half-buried—and half awake.
He blinked.
The ceiling was wrong.
It was the same patched tin sheet, same corner cracks, same faint brown water mark…
but it felt like he was looking at it from far away, like the world was outside a window he couldn't open.
His chest tightened.
Minutes passed. Or hours.
Hard to tell.
The knife-sharp clarity from two days ago didn't come back.
But a residue did—thin, cold, like someone had left a window open inside his skull.
He tried to stand.
His legs didn't fully listen.
The room spun once—slow, lazy—like it was tired too.
Aryan grabbed the wall and breathed in shallow, uneven gasps.
"Control… just… control…"
His own voice sounded wrong.
Too thin.
He pressed his palm to his forehead—
—and froze.
His hand was shaking.
A small shake.
Barely a tremor.
But enough to tighten his throat.
He looked around the house.
Everything was too still.
No footsteps outside.
No pressure cooker whistle from the neighbor.
No kids screaming and running on the street.
Just a slow ticking inside his skull.
He checked the window.
Afternoon. Maybe evening. Light too soft to judge.
He didn't go to school today.
Or yesterday.
He wasn't sure.
No calls.
No messages.
His mother's old button-phone lay on the shelf, silent as always.
He didn't touch it. He never touched it.
And no teacher would call.
Because long ago—he didn't know when—he had told Sagar,
"Don't call my house if I'm absent. Not me, not teacher. Ever."
He didn't remember saying it.
But Sagar would obey.
He always did.
So the world would not come looking for him.
He was alone.
Completely.
Something deep inside him tightened violently—
a ripple in the dark, like an instinct waking.
His breath hitched.
He pressed both hands against the side of his head, knuckles whitening, as if trying to hold something shut.
"Not again… not again…"
The walls closed in for a second—
no sound, no color, just a narrowing tunnel—
And then—
A single, sharp exhale.
The tunnel snapped open.
The shaking stopped abruptly.
Like someone inside him
switched off.
Aryan fell back against the mattress, chest rising too fast.
He didn't understand what happened.
He only understood one thing—
Whatever that was,
whatever woke up two days ago,
whatever looked at Harish like it was analyzing prey—
it wasn't gone.
Just waiting.
Watching.
From inside him.
He curled onto the mattress slowly, hugging his knees.
He didn't cry.
But his breath trembled for a long, long time.
Two days later, Aryan finally came back to school.
He walked into class quietly, head bowed, uniform slightly wrinkled. The chatter around the benches dipped for a second.
Some kids glanced at him.
Some whispered.
Most ignored him.
Aditi didn't.
She marched straight to his desk, dropped her sketchbook on it, and crossed her arms.
"You look horrible."
Aryan blinked. "Thanks."
She sat down beside him without asking. Her presence filled the empty space around him like warm sunlight pushing fog away.
"You didn't come for two days," she said softly, not accusing, not demanding. Just… present. "I thought you would at least tell Sagar."
"He would've worried."
"He already worried."
Aryan looked away.
"I just… needed time."
Aditi studied him quietly.
Not the uniform.
Not the tired eyes.
Not the faint tremor in his fingers.
She looked at him.
"I don't know what happened," she said finally. "But you look like someone who's been fighting a monster inside his own head."
Aryan's breath caught.
She didn't know how right she was.
She flipped open her sketchbook.
Inside was a half-finished drawing—Cassia flowers again. Yellow bursts, soft petals, sunlight in lines.
"I practiced," she said. "And failed. Ten times."
She pointed to the messy pages behind the neat one.
"My dream? I want to be someone who can draw anything I see. Anything I feel. But most days, my hand doesn't listen. My brain says one thing, pencil says something else."
She laughed a little. "Everyone thinks art is easy. It's not. It's like… picking up your heart and putting it on paper hoping it looks pretty."
Aryan listened quietly.
"You know what's worse?" she continued. "Sometimes I think I'm not good enough. For this. For anything."
Aryan's head snapped up.
"You are."
Aditi blinked.
Those words—spoken in his quiet, steady voice—struck deeper than any long speech.
"You are really good," he said again, slower this time, each word heavy, sincere. "Better than you think. Better than what anyone says."
Aditi looked away quickly, cheeks warming.
"…Thanks."
They sat in silence for a few seconds.
Then she nudged him lightly with her shoulder.
"And you? What do you want?"
He didn't answer immediately.
He didn't look at her.
He looked at her drawing.
At the soft strokes.
The gentle light.
The way she saw the world—
not as numbers or systems or problems—
but as something worth capturing.
"…I don't know," he whispered. "But I know I want to try. And not fall apart doing it."
Aditi smiled—small, warm, real.
"Good. Try with me then."
He looked at her.
She held out her pencil.
"Start with one flower. The easiest one. I'll help you."
Aryan hesitated.
Then took the pencil.
Inside his chest, something tight loosened—
not fully.
But enough.