Aditi leaned a little closer, adjusting Aryan's grip on the pencil.
"No, no—like this. Hold it lighter."
"I am holding it lighter."
"You're holding it like it owes you money."
Aryan blinked at the dents on the paper and silently accepted defeat.
A small smirk tugged at Aditi's mouth—not mocking, just the satisfied look of someone who liked being right about tiny, stupid things.
Around them, the classroom hummed back to life after the morning lecture.
On one side, Tanish and Savithri were in the middle of their usual, low-key war.
"Your symmetry is off by two centimeters," Tanish muttered, bending over a half-built cardboard model of some "eco-energy structure" he'd been bragging about for three days.
Savithri rolled her eyes, painting a neat border around the base. "And your soul is off by two miles. If it looks dead, I'm not putting my name on it."
"You literally—"
"Shh. Artist working."
She snatched his scale. Tanish muttered something about "unscientific people" under his breath, which only made her draw extra swirls just to annoy him.
Their bickering blended into the background like a familiar soundtrack.
Near the door, a group of sports boys passed a football between desks even though everyone knew the rule: No ball games inside the classroom.
Rules, however, were flimsy when it came to boredom.
"Bro, pass properly, la! You hit my bag—" "You kept it on the floor like a clown!" "Guys, keep the ball down!" the class monitor shouted, earning exactly zero respect.
The world looked normal again.
Loud. Messy. Moving.
But Aryan felt like he was still half a step behind it.
Two days missing from school had cut a small gap between him and everything else, like he'd stepped out of his own life and was now trying to slip back in without anyone noticing.
Aditi drew a soft stroke on the page.
"See? Base shape first. Then shading."
Aryan tried again. His lines were far from perfect, but this time his hand didn't shake.
Better than this morning, he thought. Better than yesterday. Better than the floor.
He hadn't told anyone about waking up beside his mattress instead of on it, about the silence that felt wrong, about the moment something inside him went still like a switch being flipped.
He didn't want to think about it now either.
Aditi watched him, her expression thoughtful—not pitying, not nosy. Just… steady, like she was quietly taking his temperature without a thermometer.
"You don't have to pretend with me, you know," she said, voice low.
Aryan kept his eyes on the paper.
"You look tired," she went on. "Like you didn't sleep for a week."
"I'm okay."
"You're a terrible liar."
He finally looked up at her.
She didn't flinch or look away. She just raised one eyebrow like she was waiting for him to say something real.
He didn't.
Before she could push further, Sagar appeared between their desks, slightly breathless.
"Da! You vanished right after assembly. Sir was searching for you for the DHARA worksheets."
"I didn't feel like standing in the crowd," Aryan said.
Half-true.
The crowd really had felt like too much. Too loud. Too close. Every voice scratching across his skull.
Sagar frowned, dark eyes scanning his face the way only someone who'd seen him on his worst days could.
"You should've told me," he said quietly. "I'd have taken your sheet."
"There was no time," Aryan replied.
There had been time. He just didn't want anyone pulling him back when the urge to escape hit.
Sagar didn't argue. He rested his hand on Aryan's shoulder for a second—firm, familiar, grounding—then straightened.
"Anyway, I told ma'am you went to drink water. Don't disappear completely, okay?"
He left before Aryan could answer, moving off to join Charan and Tanish.
Aditi watched Sagar go, then turned back.
"You didn't even tell him?" she asked.
"He would've worried."
"He already worried," she said.
Aryan had no answer to that.
Good, a small, selfish part of him thought. If he worried, he didn't call. If he didn't call, Amma didn't find out I missed school. If Amma didn't find out… she didn't think I was weak.
He hated that logic.
He needed it anyway.
Aditi flipped to a clean page in her sketchbook.
"Let's draw something easy," she said.
"What?"
"A Cassia flower. The simple one."
Aryan glanced at her. "You said you mess it up."
"I did." She shrugged, lips twisting. "But today I want to try again."
"Why?"
She hesitated for a half-second, pencil hovering above the blank sheet.
"…Because you're trying," she said quietly. "So… I should try too."
He didn't have a proper reply for that, so his brain chose something useless.
"You're dramatic," he muttered.
She immediately jabbed his arm with the pencil. "I am motivational, you ungrateful creature."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
She doesn't know what she's doing, he thought. Or maybe she does.
She nudged him with her shoulder. "And don't get used to this soft version of me. I'm not always like this."
"I know," he answered.
Her eyes narrowed. "What do you mean you know?"
"You're loud."
Aditi stared at him, betrayed. "HEY—"
Her voice bounced off the walls.
Half the class turned to look.
She slapped her sketchbook over her face at once. "I hate you," came her muffled voice.
"See?" Aryan said.
She kicked his ankle lightly under the desk.
"You're impossible."
"You started it."
"You always start it."
Their glares lasted only two seconds before dissolving into quiet laughter.
For the first time in days, the weight in Aryan's chest shifted—from something heavy and sharp to something warm and sore, like a bruise healing.
The bell rang for short break. Students spilled out toward the corridor—bottles in hand, tiffins clinking, voices rising.
Their classroom slowly thinned until only a handful stayed inside—a few who were too lazy to walk, a few who had homework to copy, and two kids at the middle bench trying to draw flowers like their life depended on it.
Aditi tapped the page. "Come on. One more petal."
Aryan focused.
One curve.
Another.
It wasn't good.
But it wasn't bad.
And more importantly—his hand didn't feel like it belonged to someone else.
A weird, quiet satisfaction settled in his chest.
Aditi leaned over the page. "There. See? Improvement."
"It still looks like a starfish," he said.
"A good starfish," she corrected. "Anyway, half of art is confidence. If you say it's a flower, it's a flower."
He almost smiled.
He didn't show this to anyone else, this version of himself that thought stupid things like if she says it's okay, maybe it's okay.
"Why do you try so hard?" he asked suddenly.
Aditi blinked. "At… drawing?"
"At everything," he said. "You don't even need this project. You're not in the pitch."
She considered that.
"…Because I want to be good," she said, slower this time. "Not just 'talented' good. Real good. The kind that doesn't break when people stop praising you."
Her voice softened.
"And because… if I stop drawing, I feel like I'm just… existing. Not… me."
Aryan understood that more than he'd admit.
If I stop fighting, he thought, then I'm just a boy with a leaking roof and a tired mother.
He didn't say it.
He just nodded once.
Outside, the boys from sports ran past the door again.
"Evening trials today da, don't forget! Coach said final team list soon."
"Kabir will definitely get striker position."
"Abhi also, macha. That fellow runs like someone is chasing his soul."
Savithri lifted the cardboard model carefully and moved it to the sunny part of the corridor.
"Don't touch the edges," she warned. "If the paint smudges, I will smudge your face."
Tanish hovered nervously beside her, hands in the air. "Don't keep it near the window! One ball hits and—"
"Then shout at your sports friends," she said. "Not my problem."
Life moved around them.
Projects.
Trials.
Plans.
Everyone else was building something.
Aryan felt that subtle panic rise again—I'm late. I'm slow. I'm behind.
Aditi noticed the way his grip tightened on the pencil.
"Hey," she said lightly. "Brain going too fast again?"
"A little," he admitted.
"What's it saying?"
He hesitated.
"That I should be… doing more," he muttered. "Planning. Calculating. I'm wasting time sitting here."
Aditi stared at him.
"What do you think you're doing now?"
"…Drawing."
"And?"
He frowned. "And…?"
"And learning how to breathe without falling apart," she said simply. "That counts as work, Aryan."
He blinked.
He hadn't thought of it like that.
Breathing as work. Staying normal as work. Existing as work.
Maybe. For him, it was.
Aditi flipped to another page and shoved the pencil back into his hand.
"Also, your flower still looks like a starfish. So we're not done."
He exhaled slowly. Some of the tightness left his shoulders.
For a few minutes, nothing dramatic happened.
No pain spikes.
No visions.
No cold voice in his head.
Just pencil scratching, Aditi's small complaints about how yellow never prints the same on school charts, the distant echo of a football hitting a wall, and Savithri yelling, "IF ANYONE TOUCHES THIS MODEL, I SWEAR—"
Normal.
Fragile.
Good.
Aryan found himself thinking, If every day could stay like this, maybe I wouldn't mind being weak.
He didn't notice his gaze softening when he watched Aditi talk with her hands, explain shadows, complain about cheap paper.
She noticed.
But pretended not to.
"You could draw more if you wanted," she said suddenly. "You're not bad."
"I'm not good," he answered automatically.
"You could be good," she insisted. "If you practiced like you do with math and those scary DHARA questions."
He looked at her.
Her eyes were steady. No teasing. No drama.
Just belief.
It scared him more than Shaila's stare.
Because he knew what happened when people believed in him—
they handed him weights without meaning to.
But still…
For a tiny second, he let the thought exist:
If someone like her is beside me… maybe I won't break so fast.
Before he could say anything, a shadow fell across the desk.
"Aryan?"
Aditi turned.
Tanushri stood there—hands on her hips, hair slightly messy from rushing through corridors, her ID card swinging against her chest.
She stared at Aryan for a long second.
Up close, he could see faint tired lines near her eyes, like she hadn't slept properly either.
"You idiot," she breathed out, the words slipping out with the air she'd apparently been holding for two days. "Do you know how worried I—"
She stopped.
Her gaze shifted.
From Aryan's face.
To Aditi, sitting close beside him.
To the shared drawing between them—uneven petals, rough shading, two different handwritings in the margins.
A slow, unreadable smile curved over her lips.
"So," she murmured, "this is where you've been."
Aditi blinked, suddenly aware of how close she was sitting.
"Uh—hi, Akka," she said, half-awkward, half-curious. "We were just—"
Tanushri didn't answer her.
Her attention was fixed entirely on Aryan now.
"We need to talk," she said softly.
Her voice wasn't scolding.
Not teasing.
Something else.
Something heavier.
Aryan's stomach tightened.
Aditi whispered, "Did… something happen?"
He had no answer.
He just knew that the fragile, warm balance of this morning had shifted by a few millimeters.
And with his life, a few millimeters was a lot.
He placed the pencil down carefully, like dropping it too hard might crack the moment.
Then he stood.
Tanushri stepped back toward the doorway, arms crossed, eyes never leaving his.
Up close, they were softer than her posture, full of relief and anger and something that looked dangerously like fear.
As he reached her, her voice dropped to a whisper only he could hear.
"Come," she said. "It's important."
She stepped into the corridor.
Aryan followed.
Behind him, Aditi watched with her pencil frozen above the page, a small knot of unease forming in her chest.
The classroom door swung halfway shut, paused—
then closed with a soft click.
A small sound.
Too small.
Yet somehow, to Aryan, it felt like something huge had just been sealed on the other side.