Over the next three days, the visits became routine.
Not in the sense of boring.
In the sense of… accepted.
Day 1, he was "that school project boy".
Day 3, he was "Aryan".
On Day 4, when he approached, Gopal the guard called out, "Arre, project manager, today you are late."
Sagar laughed for ten seconds straight.
Aryan looked like he wanted the road to swallow him.
"Don't call him that, uncle," Riya said, half-teasing. "He'll take it seriously."
Gopal grinned.
"Already serious only," he said. "He's the only student who watches this gate more than me."
That afternoon, Aryan stopped near his chair.
"Uncle… can I ask you also?" he said.
Gopal blinked. "What, pa? My three wishes?"
"Same questions," Aryan said. "Hardest part. Fear. What you want people to know."
Gopal thought.
"Hardest part," he said slowly, "is being blamed by both sides."
He tapped his lathi on the ground.
"School says, 'why you didn't stop crowd?' Vendors say, 'why you pushing us? We are also human.' Parents say, 'why you didn't move that car?' No one sees we are just one person standing in sun."
"What are you scared of losing?" Aryan asked.
"My job," Gopal said frankly. "They will bring CCTV, automatic gate, whatever… then what? They will say, 'thank you Gopal, go home.'"
He chuckled, but there was no humor in it.
"And what do you wish people understood?" Aryan asked.
Gopal looked at the gate.
"That I am not here to trouble anyone," he said quietly. "I am here so nothing bad happens. If something still happens… it breaks me more than them."
His voice caught for a second, then cleared.
"Write that in your project," he added gruffly. "If you write nicely, maybe Principal Sir will increase my salary."
Aryan's lips twitched.
"I'll try, uncle."
Riya watched all of this with a strange, knotty feeling she didn't know how to name.
Her own pitch file — neatly organized at home with colored tabs — suddenly felt too clean.
Her idea was sharp, profitable, presentable.
But it had no Murthy.
No Parvathi.
No Salman.
No Gopal.
Just charts.
And numbers.
And fabric samples.
When she went home that day and opened her file, she stared at the page titled "Target Segment."
Her father had helped her write it.
> Primary: Vidyashree students
Secondary: Alumni & staff
Tertiary: Neighbourhood youth
Clean.
Smart.
Correct.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then, slowly, she added one more line.
> Blind Spot: People who make the school's daily life possible, but never feature in the brochure.
She underlined blind spot.
Then shut the file with more force than necessary.
"What happened?" her mother asked from the kitchen.
"Nothing," Riya said.
Which was half a lie and half true.
---
One evening, as the sun dipped low and the air turned from hot to just sticky, Aryan stood with his back against the compound wall, scribbling faster than ever.
His notes had changed.
They weren't just fears now.
They were patterns.
> All vendors adjust when school has event
— they leave more space
— they self-manage crowd
but school never writes this anywhere
> School only sees them when there is a complaint.
> They want three things:
— to not be chased randomly
— to know rules clearly
— to be seen as part of gate, not dirt at gate
He added a fourth.
> If pitch doesn't protect them, it's a failure. Even if school loves it.
He stared at that line for a long time.
Sagar came up beside him, sipping juice from Salman's cart.
"You're going to burn the page with your eyes," he said.
Aryan didn't look up.
"Do you think," he asked quietly, "it is arrogant for me to write 'protect them'?"
Sagar frowned. "Why?"
"Who am I?" Aryan murmured. "Just a boy in Class 5. I can't actually protect anyone. I can only show paper to people who have power."
"Then write that," Sagar said. "Write, 'my job is to show paper properly.' Protecting after that is their work."
Aryan thought about it.
Then crossed out protect and wrote:
> My job is to prove they deserve protection.
He underlined prove.
Riya, standing a little distance away, pretending to check her own rough book, caught that line by accident.
The words lodged somewhere behind her ribs.
She turned away sharply.
This is stupid, she told herself.
He's just doing project.
You're also doing project.
But another voice — small, quiet, annoying — whispered:
Then why do you feel like he's building something heavier?
The next day, the school terrace was quieter than usual.
Aryan sat cross-legged on the floor with his file open.
On one side lay Aditi's clean layout — Gate Zone, Vendor Support Area, the neat lines of her pencil making the messy world look almost gentle.
On the other side lay his notebook — full of crooked arrows and phrases like:
> "I chose this instead of some other misery."
"We don't love standing in smoke."
"New place means new danger for old legs."
He wasn't sure how to combine them.
A map.
And a set of wounds.
How do you put both in one pitch without it sounding like a sad play?
Steps sound came from stairs.
He looked up.
Tanushri stepped in, balancing a cloth bag on one hip, her hair pulled back loosely in a way that always made her look half-senior, half-tired-older-sister.
She tiptoed in, set the bag down, and then actually saw the mess in front of him.
"Whoa," she said softly. "That's… a lot of paper for someone who hates charts."
He didn't smile.
"Project," he said.
She sat down opposite him, folding her legs in one smooth, practised motion, like she'd done this a hundred times — because she had.
"Gate?" she asked.
He nodded.
Her eyes skimmed the pages.
She didn't touch them.
Didn't rearrange.
Just read.
Her gaze moved from Aditi's drawing, to Aryan's sentences, to a small scribble in the corner:
> Help exists. I'm the one who doesn't take it.
She raised one eyebrow.
"Poetry now?" she asked lightly.
He rubbed his forehead. "Just… note."
She looked back at him properly.
His face was thinner than last month.
His eyes had that particular tiredness that came not from laziness, but from carrying too much in his head.
Her chest tightened.
"You've done a lot of ground work," she said quietly. "More than most college projects I've seen."
He didn't answer.
He didn't know how to take praise from her without feeling like he hadn't done enough.
"You know what the next problem is, right?" she asked.
He frowned. "What?"
"You have too much," she said simply. "If you go and vomit all this in one pitch, they'll tune out after two lines. You need… structure. Flow. A clean story."
"I know," he said.
He didn't.
Not really.
But he knew he should.
She watched his fingers tighten on the notebook.
"Aryan," she said softly.
He looked up.
"If you want," she said, keeping her tone light, almost casual, "I can help you turn this into a proper pitch. I have my old DHARA project file. We can steal the skeleton and put your content."
He blinked.
"You're busy," he said automatically. "Your own exams—"
"I'm not so busy I can't sit with my brother for one hour," she said.
Her voice was still gentle.
But there was steel under it.
He opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
The part of him that had been carrying things alone since Class 3 gave its usual answer first.
"I'll manage," he murmured.
There it was.
The old reflex.
The small wall.
Not shouted.
Not thrown.
Just… placed.
Between them.
She saw it.
Felt it.
For a second, something like irritation flashed in her eyes.
Not with him.
With the world that had made him like this.
She took a slow breath.
"Of course you will," she said quietly.
She reached out and straightened one corner of Aditi's layout, which had curled up.
Her fingers were careful, respectful.
"I know you can manage," she added. "That's not the point."
He frowned slightly.
"Then what is?"
"The point," she said, "is that you don't always have to."
The words sat between them like another file.
He didn't know where to keep them.
On which shelf inside his mind.
She didn't push.
She just tapped the floor lightly with her fingers.
"Listen," she said. "I'm not forcing you. I'm just saying this very clearly, so later you can't say, 'Akka never offered.'"
He huffed softly.
She smiled.
"My help is there," she said. "Senior discount. Free consulting. No hidden charges."
She paused.
"And no ego if you say no now and yes later."
That last line slipped out more honest than she intended.
He looked at her for a long second.
Something flickered in his eyes — not quite acceptance.
Not full refusal.
Just… a quiet storing away.
Like he'd put her offer on a mental shelf with a label:
> Use only if absolutely necessary.
She took that.
For now.
"Okay," she said, standing up with a small groan. "I'll leave you with your papers. I need to sleep if I want to survive tomorrow's Chemistry."
She picked up her bag.
At the staircase, she glanced back once more.
He was already bent over his notebook again, lips moving silently as he tested a sentence.
She smiled — soft, proud, a little sad.
"You're doing good, kanna," she said.
He didn't look up.
But he heard it.
After she left, the terrace felt a little emptier.
Aryan stared at the mess in front of him.
Slowly, he turned to a fresh page.
At the top, he wrote:
> Pitch Structure (maybe ask Akka?)
He underlined maybe twice.
Then, in tiny letters beside it, he added:
> If I can't make it clear alone.
He stared at that line for a long time.
Half a promise.
Half a warning.
He shut the notebook, lay back on the wall, and thought of leaking roof.
The street didn't owe him anything.
Neither did the school.
Neither did his sister.
But offers were appearing anyway.
Trust from vendors — slowly.
Help from Akka — gently.
He didn't know yet which ones he would accept.
He only knew one thing:
Tomorrow, he had to turn all of this — the voices, the fears, the maps, the jokes, the insults, the cars, the gate — into a story that the school couldn't ignore…
…and that wouldn't betray the people who had finally, cautiously, started talking to him.
Whether he asked for help doing it…
was a battle for another day.