Riya had always believed she understood her world.
It wasn't a perfect world — nothing ever was —
but it was familiar, loud, predictable, full of color, and full of expectations wrapped inside love.
Her father's clothing business, Kaveri Threads, was not a single shop like people assumed.
It was eight stores across the city.
Three mid-range family stores.
Two premium-boutique branches where wedding lehengas hung like royalty.
One warehouse outlet.
And two newly opened kids-wear pop-ups.
Nothing gigantic.
Nothing that made newspapers.
But enough to make people say "Riya comes from a good house."
Enough to give her new shoes every year.
Enough to never make her worry about fees.
But not enough to make her untouchably rich.
Not enough to make her stand in the same room as the Kapoors,
the Mehtas,
the Venkatraman groups,
or the children of the city's real business circles.
She had seen them.
At weddings.
At store inaugurations.
At a charity event where she had stood in a corner with a juice cup while a minister's daughter passed by like the world owed her space.
They never looked at Riya.
Not once.
Not because she was invisible.
But because she was… irrelevant.
That feeling had stayed in her bones like a stain.
So when her parents said,
"Do well in school, kanna. One day you'll take our business forward,"
she smiled and nodded politely.
But inside she wanted more.
A bigger dream.
A name that forced those same rich kids to look at her and blink twice.
She didn't want to inherit.
She wanted to build.
Her own.
Her brand.
Her empire.
Her identity.
But that was all future.
Right now, she was only in Class 5 — stuck between childhood and ambition, between pampering and pressure, between "be bold" and "don't be too loud".
Right now, she was sitting at her dining table, angrily flipping through her pitch file.
The dining room smelled of evening rasam.
A soft kitchen noise came from her mother cooking.
Her little brother, Rohan, was sprawled on the sofa, shrieking at a cricket video.
Her father, still in his shop uniform shirt, folded accounting invoices at the table beside her.
Normal.
Safe.
Warm.
But the anger buzzing inside her didn't fit this warm room.
The file lay open.
Her charts were clean.
Her margins perfect.
Her handwriting neat.
Her idea — "Youth Culture Pop-Up Store: Edition Zero" — was polished, practical, business-friendly.
But something looked… thin.
Not wrong.
Just incomplete.
Like she had drawn a perfect human shape with no heartbeat inside.
And it all began three days ago.
Because of one boy.
One boy who had no business being this dedicated.
One boy who had no family empire waiting for him.
One boy who had nothing to gain except maybe… a less chaotic road.
Aryan.
He didn't talk about ambition.
He didn't display anger.
He didn't flex wealth.
He didn't waste time.
He just worked.
Like someone who was trying to survive, not shine.
And she hated — exactly hated — that somewhere deep inside, his work had made her question her own.
She had been taught to be proud.
To never look insecure.
To never feel small.
Yet every time she saw him talk to those vendors, scribble notes, observe, listen —
a small part of her felt like her pitch was just… surface.
Decorations.
Fabric and lighting.
While his was built from pain and people.
She shut her file harshly.
"Kanna?" her mother called. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah," Riya said a little too quickly.
Her father looked up, adjusting his glasses.
"Pitch work?"
"Hmm."
"You need help?"
"No."
He smiled gently. "You're just like your mom. Even if roof falls, you'll say no help required."
Her mother protested from the kitchen, "Ay! Don't say roof falling in front of child!"
Riya forced a smile.
Her father continued folding his papers.
"You know," he said casually. "When I started this business, I didn't know anything about fabrics. I knew numbers, but not people. That's why our first store failed."
Riya glanced up.
"Failed?" she repeated. "You never said that."
Her father shrugged. "Why tell? Failure is normal. But customers are not charts. They are people. What they want is not always what you think they want."
He pointed to her file.
"You're smart, kanna. Very smart. But don't design only from here." He tapped her head. "Design also from here." He tapped his chest.
She stared at him.
Her father almost never gave business lectures.
He was too busy running it.
But today he had said exactly the thing she didn't want to hear.
People.
Emotion.
Depth.
The things she'd always considered secondary.
Things Aryan seemed to breathe like air.
She shut her file again.
"I'll be in my room," she muttered.
Her father watched her leave with a knowing smile.
He had raised a stubborn daughter.
And stubborn people didn't like being shaken.
---
In her room, she tossed her books aside, sat at her small study table, and opened the file again.
This time, she didn't flip to charts.
She flipped to the blank page she'd added yesterday.
The page she'd titled:
Blind Spot
Under it:
> People who make the school's daily life possible, but never feature in the brochure.
She underlined it again.
Slowly.
Thoughtfully.
Then she whispered to herself,
"Why did I write that?"
She knew the answer.
Because of that car incident.
Because of the two rich boys who had laughed.
Not at her.
But at something she was standing next to.
Her world — the vendors, the street, the chaos — had become someone's joke.
And she hated how that made her feel.
Not because she wanted status.
But because she understood — maybe for the first time —
that the world could crush you with one look.
Just like it did to Aryan every day.
Just like it did to the vendors every week.
Just like it had done to her father when he lost his first shop.
She took a deep breath.
Picked up her pen.
And began writing.
Not business.
Not analysis.
Not cost structure.
But questions.
> Why do I want to win this pitch? Why do I want to be better than Aryan? Why does his method bother me? Why does his struggle make me uncomfortable? Why does it matter to me what he thinks?
Her handwriting grew slower with each line.
Then she wrote the one line she hadn't wanted to write:
> What if his way is the right way?
She stared at it.
Long.
Longer.
Then replaced "right" with "dangerous".
That felt safer.
> What if his way is the dangerous way?
She underlined it.
Because she suddenly saw it clearly:
Aryan didn't want to win.
He wanted to fix.
That was far more dangerous than winning.
Winners competed.
Fixers changed people.
And change forced everyone else to see their flaws.
She shut the diary hard enough to make the pen fall.
This isn't fair, she thought.
He's making things too deep.
It was supposed to be simple.
Just a school pitch.
Not… life lessons.
Just business marks.
Not… humanity.
Just competition.
Not… whatever this strange feeling was —
part admiration,
part irritation,
part fear
that she wasn't enough.
She lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.
Her mind replayed the gate scenes:
Murthy uncle flipping bajji without looking.
Parvathi aunty slapping the hand of a kid stealing extra sev.
Salman wiping his jug with tired precision.
Aryan standing with his notebook, listening like their words mattered.
And for a second — just a second —
she wished she had seen all this before he did.
Not because she wanted to "help them."
But because she didn't like being behind.
Behind him.
Behind anyone.
Three knocks broke her thoughts.
"Kanna?" her father said.
"What?"
"Snack ready."
"I don't want."
"Even achievers need dosa."
She groaned.
"Appa I'm not 'achiever'. I'm just—"
"Riya," he said, voice calm but firm. "Don't shrink yourself."
She froze.
Her father's voice rarely went firm.
He stepped into the room, leaned against the doorframe.
"You compare too much," he said. "We never compare you. Why do you?"
She looked away.
"Because I don't want to be small," she muttered.
"You aren't," he said. "You're growing. Growing is different from being small."
Her throat tightened unexpectedly.
Her father sighed and came closer.
"Kanna," he said, "whatever project you're doing… remember something."
She blinked up.
"Being the best doesn't mean beating everyone," he said softly.
"It means… becoming sharper without losing kindness."
Her breath caught.
He tapped her file.
"I don't care if you win pitch or not. I care that you learn how to see the world. That's real business."
He left the room with a smile.
"Now come eat dosa."
When he left, the room felt different.
Not lighter.
But clearer.
Slowly, Riya picked up her file again.
Then tore out the clean chart page she'd been proud of and put a blank one instead.
At the top, she wrote:
> Version 2 — With Reality
Under it, she wrote:
> I won't lose to him.
Then immediately scratched it out.
And wrote:
> I won't lose myself trying to beat him.
She sat back.
Closed her eyes.
And for the first time, began planning a pitch
not from ambition,
not from fear,
but from something she didn't even know she had:
Depth.
---
That night, they slept in different parts of the city —
one in a leaking house,
one in a furnished room
with air that smelled like fabric softener and dosa.
But both were awake longer than they wanted.
Both were building the same thing in different ways.
A pitch.
A story.
A future.
They would meet it soon.
Not as friends.
Not as enemies.
But as two children trying to understand a world too big for them.
And neither knew that the first real collision of their lives was only a few days away.