The walk back into the hospital was a silent, furious march. The slamming of the main glass door echoed their mood. They didn't go back to Gangesh's room. Instead, Karan led them straight to the billing department, his face a mask of cold determination.
"My family is rich," he stated to the confused clerk, his voice clipped and efficient. It wasn't a boast; it was a simple, brutal fact, a weapon to be deployed. "The bill for Room 204, Gangesh Verma. It was paid by an external party. I am voiding that transaction. Here is my card. Run the payment again."
The clerk, bewildered, processed the new payment. The machine whirred, the receipt printed. Karan took it, the paper feeling like a trophy reclaimed in a war they hadn't known they were fighting. He then immediately opened a banking app on his phone. His fingers flew across the screen. A transfer. The exact amount. To Anya's number, which he'd gotten from the college group for a project that now felt like it belonged to another lifetime.
The transaction notification popped up on Anya's phone, still in her hand as she sat at the table. She looked down at the screen, her face hardening into something cold and impenetrable. The brief confusion in her eyes was quickly replaced by a simmering understanding. The boys were not done.
"They… they just refunded the money," she said, her voice quiet but laced with a sharp edge.
Before the girls could fully process this fresh insult, a shadow fell over their table.
Karan stood there, alone. Aditya and Sagar were visible near the hospital entrance, their arms crossed, a united front of silent, supportive fury. Karan's posture was rigid, his usual strategist's calm replaced by a visceral need to reclaim their narrative.
He didn't throw the receipt. He placed it on the table between them with a precise, deliberate motion, as if laying down a gauntlet.
"Take your money back," he said, his voice dangerously low.
The four girls looked up at him, a spectrum of reactions on their faces: Anya's cold fury, Suman's immediate, predatory focus, Kusum's pained confusion, Sandhya's deep, analytical observation.
Suman was the first to speak, her voice a whip-crack in the tense air. "Is this your next brilliant strategy? Financial ping-pong?"
Karan ignored her, his eyes locked on Anya. "Do not interfere with us. Do not think you can buy your way into our matters. Your… *charity* is rejected."
It was the wrong thing to say to this particular group, at this particular moment. The conversation, once a multi-person brawl, narrowed into a fierce, focused duel between the strategist and the sharpest wit.
**Suman:** "Charity? Is that what your fragile ego has decided it was? It was a solution to a problem you were loudly failing to solve. We provided a resource. You're rejecting a resource out of sheer stupidity."
**Karan:** "It wasn't a resource! It was a statement! A statement that we are incapable. We are capable. We handle our own. We always have."
**Suman:** "By sleeping on floors and calculating your friend's blood loss in milliliters? Such capability. Truly inspiring. The world trembles before your managerial skills."
**Karan:** "You know nothing of our dynamics! That 'calculation' was a focus point! A way to channel the panic! Something your cold, systematic mind wouldn't understand!"
**Suman:** "My 'cold, systematic mind' just solved your financial crisis in five seconds. Your 'dynamic' was about to get him discharged onto the street. But please, continue lecturing me on effectiveness."
The other girls watched, annoyed but silent. Kusum looked down, twisting her hands. Sandhya's eyes darted between Karan and Suman, decoding the subtext of every barb. Anya sat back, allowing Suman to be their spear, her own anger a cold, steady flame.
**Karan:** "Effectiveness isn't everything! Loyalty is! Principle is! We don't take handouts! Especially not from you."
**Suman:** "From *us*? Ah, there it is. The real issue. It's not about the money, is it? It's about it coming from *our* hands. The girls who beat you in class. The girls who don't find your chaotic, self-destructive performance endearing."
**Karan:** "This has nothing to do with you being girls! This is about you thinking you're better than us! You always have! Looking down from your high tower of topper-dom and presentation trophies!"
**Suman:** "We don't need to think we're better. The evidence is rather overwhelming. We pay bills. You make speeches about loyalty while your friend has a hole in his leg. We act. You perform."
Karan flinched, the hit landing true. His voice rose, losing its calculated edge. "You are nothing! Do you hear me? NOTHING in comparison to our friendship! What we have, you with your 'systematic' friend group will never understand! It's built in fire and blood, not in library study sessions!"
Suman's annoyance was morphing into a cold, razor-sharp fury. He was dismissing everything they were.
**Suman:** "Fire and blood? How dramatic. You sound like a bad movie. Our friendship is built on mutual respect and intelligence, not on who can curse the loudest or take the most foolish risks. We don't need to nearly get each other killed to prove we care."
**Karan:** "He took that risk for a stranger! A selfless act! Something your data-point logic probably can't even compute! You reduce everything to cold, hard facts. You can't quantify what we have!"
**Suman:** "And you can't operationalize it! Your great, unquantifiable bond was about to fail at the most basic, quantifiable level: keeping a roof over his head and a doctor by his side. Your friendship doesn't pay hospital bills, Karan. Money does. A fact my 'cold' mind understands perfectly."
**Karan:** "We would have found a way! We always do! We would have sold things, called in favors, done something! We didn't need your clean, easy, condescending solution!"
**Suman:** "Your 'way' would have been slower, more painful, and more humiliating for him! But I suppose that's the price of your precious pride? Letting Gangesh lie there, wondering how he's bankrupting his friends, just so you can feel like big men who 'handle their own'? That's not loyalty. That's vanity."
The word "vanity" hung in the air, a direct challenge to their entire moral code. Karan was breathing heavily, his strategies and retorts failing him. He was outmatched in this purely verbal duel, and it was infuriating.
**Karan:** "Just… stay away. From him. From all of us. Your money, your logic, your… your everything. We don't want it. We don't need it."
**Suman:** "Don't worry. We wouldn't dream of interfering with the spectacular display of 'brotherhood' you have going on. It's far too entertaining to watch from a distance. Like a car crash in slow motion."
With that final, devastating blow, Suman leaned back, her point made. The spar was over. She had dismantled his every argument, not with shouts, but with a relentless, logical brutality that left him intellectually bloodied.
Karan had no comeback. The receipt lay on the table between them, a worthless piece of paper now. He had gotten what he came for—the money was returned, the point was made—but he felt utterly defeated. He had wanted to shame them, but instead, he felt laid bare.
He turned on his heel, a wordless retreat, and walked back to Aditya and Sagar. The three of them stood for a moment, a united but hollow front, before turning and disappearing back into the hospital.
The girls were left at the table. The air was thick with the aftermath of the verbal battle. Anya finally picked up the receipt, crumpled it into a tight ball, and dropped it into a nearby bin.
"Let's go," she said, her voice flat.
They stood and walked away, the morning's brief hope for a truce completely annihilated, replaced by a chasm of resentment that now felt wider and deeper than ever. The war was no longer about philosophy or principles. It was personal.