Chapter 1-The Dual Attack
The day crawled on as usual for Maya. Having completed her practical before anyone else, she decided to go back to the class. When she entered, she passed a flitting smile to the guy, Rohan, and occupied her seat.
As she hummed 'Let It Go' to herself, penning down her recent poem, she felt a presence behind her desk. She turned to look at Rohan who was fumbling.
“Hi Maya, I am Rohan, I mean, obviously you know that it's just that I wanted to ask you something,”
“Do you need anything?” She asked in concern because Rohan looked as if he would pass out in the next few minutes.
“Umm, yes… You know, a lot of people have a crush on you, you should check our college confession page on Instagram, people all over the different branches are crazy about you… so am I,”
Maya’s eyes went wide with surprise. No one, in the past 4 years of her college life had been bold enough to propose to her. She knew of the page, of course, she did, her girl classmates wouldn’t shut up when in the first year, someone had posted a confession for her and since then, they had been at least 44 posts about her.
“I Love you, Maya,you are so perfect”
Maya looked at Rohan, her reverie was broken.
“Who is my perfect girl?” His hands caressed her thighs as if they made of soft fur, to be played with, toyed with.
“Mumma!”
Maya rushed out of the class, her breath heavy in her lungs. She could hear her heart thud as the memories that she had buried for the last ten years flashed to her mind. She ran where her legs carried her, away from those words, those promises of chocolates and dolls, that ignorance of the child Maya who had no idea that she shouldn’t be touched that way unless it started hurting her.
She entered a room and leaned against the wall, her vision going dark, nothing seemed coherent right now, not even the “Hey! It’s the Boy’s Common room!”
Rudra was having a horrible day. How could he call! That b*****d! He wished he could run away, but damn he needed the money like no else, so he had to stay back.
And to top it off,Kabir had taken his bike keys, so he couldn’t even go riding and relax!
He threw his head against the bench when a girl entered the common room and leaned on her wall and he rebuked her, but the very next second, she fell to the ground, hugging her knees, crying like a baby.
“Are you ok?” He asked softly and stepped closer to her.
She nodded in a no and yelled. He stepped back.
“Ok, ok, I won’t come close to you, but you need to breathe alright. Can you do that for me?”She nodded meekly and drew in a sharp breath. Rudra sat on the ground, still maintaining his distance.
“Good, can you breathe for a few more seconds?”
He waited as she breathed for a few seconds, her hiccups slowing down and she opened her eyes.
“Can you name any of the five things you can see right now?”
She took a few seconds to process, her rocking and fumbling with her jeans not stopping.
“You, the bench,the bag, the cupboard, and the bottle,” Rudra turned to look at the locker cupboard behind him and saw the bottle. He nodded.
“What about the four things that you can touch?”
“My clothes, my hair, my shoes, and my wounds,”
Rudra raised his eyebrows but let it pass.
“And three things you can hear?”
“You, the fans and some boys outside.”
“Two things you can smell”
“Leather and some men’s perfume,”
Rudra looked at the football that lay near her.
“One thing you can taste”
“My tears?”
Color slowly started returning to her cheeks and she started breathing a bit normally. She rested her head against the wall and breathed for a few more seconds.
“You ok?” She nodded and stood up.
“You should rest, I think,”
“Thanks,” she replied instead and left.
“I don’t give a f**k about how he answered his exam Dessai! He needs to pass this year so that I can send him to London to do his MBA,”
“in London? MJ, the boy can’t clear his first semester exams,”
Mritunjay threw a disgusted look at the dean of his son’s college.
“You do not speak of a Roy in that tone!”
“Before being a Roy, he is your son, maybe you should listen to him and let him drop!”
“No, he stays! He completes his engineering, does an MBA and runs my office, that’s what he is born for, and you will make sure of that, Dessai, because I am pretty sure the government will not like it when they find out that the money they gave you to upgrade your machinery in the workshop was used to buy a house in Darjeeling,”
Raghav was shocked.No one knew of this, he and his assistant had made sure to keep their backs clear.
“Oh, you think I don’t know? I know everything about the woman who joins you at that house and I wonder what your wife will think about her? Will your kids love having a s**t as their stepmother?”
“You cannot do this!”
“No, I can, but I will not if I see the word pass written on son’s mark sheet. Have a good day!”Mritunjay left the seat and buttoned his court and smirked at the foolish dean who shuffled in his seat.
The smell of fear made him forget his son’s harsh words.
Edited by _._shibani_._ - 4 years ago
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