cruel beauty

chapter 2

**Crown Heights, Seventeenth Floor**

On the far side of the city, on the seventeenth floor of a tall tower of glass and steel, a boy stood by the window.

Outside, clouds. Inside the huge apartment, a silence so complete that even the ticking of the clock sounded too loud. The walls were gray, the sofa black, and there was not a single thing in the whole place to suggest that anyone lived here. Everything was arranged, and nothing was lived in.

Only one corner was different. The table by the window, where an old sketchbook lay open, with three pencils beside it, their tips worn down. Every so often, the boy would glance up at it.

His name was Siddharth Singhania.

At Royal Crown University, people knew him less by his name than by a label: *“the trustee’s son.”*

He was twenty-two, a final-year student, six feet one inch tall, with a walk that never showed any hurry. His hair was jet black, slightly tousled across his forehead, and he never tried to fix it. His eyes were direct and unmoving, so much so that the other person always looked away first. He mostly wore black, gray, or navy. No brand showed on anything, yet everything was expensive, and you could tell that from a distance.

People said that when he entered a room, the noise dropped. The truth was that he never silenced anything. People simply stopped on their own.

He spoke little, and what he said was short. Three or four words, sometimes seven, never more. He asked few questions and made many statements. And when he was angry, his voice didn't rise. It sank, until you had to lean in to hear him. There was a joke at college: *“When Siddharth goes quiet, don't be scared. When he starts speaking softly, that's when you should be.”*

But he had one habit he had never told anyone about. When he was thinking, or when something heavy sat inside him, he would turn the strap of his watch with his thumb. An old leather strap, its edge worn smooth. His mother had given him the watch on his eleventh birthday, and two months later she was gone. Ever since, the strap had kept turning. And when it stopped, you could be sure something inside Siddharth had broken, or was boiling over.

His father was Mahendra Pratap Singhania, chairman of the Singhania Group and chief trustee of this university. Siddharth had money, a name, and a car no one dared to touch. But at college he was captain of Nocturne House, and anyone who thought he was there only because of his father's name should have seen his report card. Top of every test. The cleanest work on every project. He left no room for complaint.

People mistook it for arrogance. In truth, it was fear. The fear that if he slackened even once, in his father's eyes he would go back to being *“only his son.”*

And the apartment on the seventeenth floor, which everyone called “the Crown Heights penthouse,” wasn't a home. It was just a place he returned to at night, because in the Singhania mansion there was no room where he could breathe.

* * *

Siddharth turned the page. On it was a window. Streaks of rain outside it. And inside, blurred, a hospital room.

This was his third attempt at the sketch. He had torn up the first two because someone had been sitting in the chair. In the third, he left the chair empty.

*Because I never sat in that chair,* he thought.

His thumb turned the watch strap. Slowly, steadily, as if it alone held back the noise inside him.

“Bhai!”

The door burst open, and a boy his own age barged in with two big bags in his hands, as if the place belonged to him. He had never learned how to knock.

This was Kabir, who was, you could say, Siddharth's interpreter. Yes, you heard that right. *Interpreter.*

Kabir Mehra was Siddharth's exact opposite.

He was five foot nine, curly-haired, and always in some hoodie or other, whatever the weather. His laugh was so loud it carried to the far end of the corridor. His father ran a sweets business in the city, Mehra Sweets, and Kabir's bag always held a box of some expensive chocolate brand.

He and Siddharth had been together since eighth grade. Since the day Siddharth sat alone in the school canteen and Kabir plonked himself down in front of him, uninvited. *“I’m Kabir. Why don’t you talk? Fine, I’ll do the talking.”* And he had been talking ever since.

Kabir chattered, joked, teased, and behind all of it hid a very sharp eye. He noticed everything, but acted as though he knew nothing. Only he could needle Siddharth, only he could call him “bhai,” and only he could walk into Siddharth's home without knocking.

He also ran a light-hearted page at college, **@nocturne_nights**, where he posted memes about the house. Never to mock anyone, only to make people laugh, which was why nobody was ever upset with him. He knew, even in jokes, where a joke should stop. He couldn't say the same about that *other* page.

Kabir knew everything about Siddharth's mother. That was why, whenever Siddharth fell silent, Kabir never asked a thing.

“I figured I’d bring dinner today, since you’ve been living on coffee for three days. It’s butter chicken. Don’t say no, I practically forced the shopkeeper to…” He stopped and looked at the sketchbook. “Right. That again.”

“Kabir.”

“I’m not saying anything.” Kabir dropped the bags on the table. “Just that the place you go every evening? Your secret’s out there. The receptionist aunty asked me, ‘Is that boy in the black coat your friend?’ I said, ‘Yes, the one who quietly pays for everything and never says a word.’”

Siddharth's finger stilled on the watch strap.

“I didn’t pay anything.”

“Of course not,” Kabir said, raising an eyebrow. “It’s just that the guy in hospital accounts told me yesterday that some ‘anonymous well-wisher’ deposited a huge sum, and had the form specifically say no name should be written. And I thought, bhai, that’s so *trustee-style*. Does the work, never takes the credit.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, and I don’t know why your watch has stopped right now.”

Siddharth took his hand away. Kabir laughed, but very softly. Then he pulled up a chair and sat, and for the first time there was no joking in his voice.

“Look, I won’t ask anything about you unless you tell me yourself. But tell me one thing. The person you’re doing all this for, when she finds out who you are, what will you do?”

Siddharth said nothing for a long time. Outside, the clouds had grown darker.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Maybe she never finds out. And that’s what I want.”

“Why?”

“Because she never saw me. And for the first time, someone saw me *because* of who I wasn't.” He paused. “She once said to me at the gate, ‘Hey! Watch where you’re going.’ Without knowing who I was. Ever since…”

He left the sentence unfinished, and a memory unfolded before his eyes.

* * *

*It was a morning in July, and the main gate of Royal Crown was packed with the first week's crowd.*

*Siddharth was passing beneath the clock tower, as he did every morning. People were making way for him, as always. Shoulders hunched, eyes averted, stepping aside. He was so used to it that he no longer even noticed.*

*Then a girl, face buried in her phone, came walking fast and crashed straight into him.*

*Her phone nearly slipped from her hand. Irritated, she snapped, without even looking up:*

*“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”*

*And she walked on.*

*Siddharth stayed where he was.*

*For the first time in who knew how long, someone had scolded him. No “sorry, sir,” no “excuse me,” none of that silent fear. Just an annoyed, careless voice, spoken to him as if he were only a person who had blocked the way.*

*He turned and looked back. The girl was heavyset, with a haughty stride and a heavy new bag slung on her back, already lost in the crowd. He hadn't even gotten a proper look at her face.*

*But that one moment, when someone had looked at him without knowing him, had lodged itself somewhere inside him.*

* * *

He would have forgotten it, if two months later he hadn't seen that same girl's face in a viral video.

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