episode 7
326 Words
Kartik shoved his hands back into his pockets as he left the courtyard, the echoes of those boys scrambling away still ringing behind him. Usually, moments like that left him pumped with adrenaline…
but today, something else was distracting him.
A pair of brown eyes.
He walked through the empty hallway, the sound of his boots tapping against the floor. His expression was the same — cold, unreadable — but inside, his heart replayed that moment.
The moment he bumped into her.
Meera.
The girl with two braids.
The girl clutching a sketchbook like it was her world.
The girl who looked nothing like the others in Rosemary School.
“Stupid,” he muttered to himself, brushing his thumb across his lips. “Why am I thinking about that?”
But he couldn’t help it.
When he bumped into her earlier, he had looked down out of habit — ready to snap at whoever got in his way — and then…
He froze.
Because Meera had looked up at him with those big, brown, soft eyes behind her glasses. Eyes that didn’t have fear or attitude.
Just innocence. Confusion.
And something that made his heartbeat actually skip.
“Kya bakwaas,” Kartik whispered, shaking his head as he walked. “She’s just a new girl. Why do I care?”
He tried brushing it off, but every time he blinked, her eyes flashed in front of him again.
He didn’t know her name.
He didn’t know her story.
But he remembered her hand tightening on her sketchbook…
and the way her lashes trembled when he stepped close.
And for the first time in a long, long time…
Kartik felt something strange.
Something soft.
Something he wasn’t used to.
His heart fluttered.
Just a little.
He clicked his tongue and walked faster, annoyed at himself.
Yet a tiny, dangerous smile tugged at his lips.
“Those eyes…” he murmured.
“Who the hell was she?”
- Writer
