Kritvik Bhatt

“For some reason, that sentence hit me hard.”

“Some people misunderstand infatuation for true love.”

“I had heard it from someone, maybe. But, it made me think that… that maybe… I was making the same mistake… or maybe that I still don’t know what this feeling was called. Was it infatuation? Was it ‘true love’? I… Maybe, it’s love, maybe it’s not. But I don’t think that it was infatuation. It… Whatever it was, it was real. It was mine. And it made me happy. It gave me motivation to keep on living for something. It gave me motivation to keep on fighting everyone. It made me… It made me talk to myself, about my own problems, and then finding my own answers.”

***

“Bye bye!” She waved with a smile, turned around, and then started to walk away from me.

I looked at her back walking away from me with a little smile on my chapped lips.

The smile then faded.

I stood in the middle of an intersection on the narrow street filled with high-rise apartments on both sides. It was a bright summer afternoon. The sky was shining, and the buildings were all brightly lit up. The streets were, for some reason, silent. Just like they always were. The cars stood silently after some steps on both sides, the electric poles were rusting, and the wires were running straight into infinity.

And in front of this background was the white back of Sana walking away with a dark blue bag hanging beneath her shoulders.

My eyes narrowed, and their sparkle faded away. They were lit up before. My lips whispered. “Why… do I think about her so much?” I thought as I looked at her. “Why do I like talking to her this much?”

“… Why… does it hurt when she’s walking away?”

Her back was still walking away, becoming smaller and smaller with each footstep of hers. And I just kept looking at her, questioning myself like that.

“I didn’t have any answers to my questions that day, but… maybe, I knew where I was going. Yeah, no doubt, I didn’t ever think about it or say it at that time, and that right word never really hit my mind, but I now know that… it was… it was love. I liked her. I loved her. And… maybe I had developed a crush on her, for some reason.”

***

I was tying the laces of my shoes as I was crouched down at one corner of the living room, in front of the entrance door of the house. I then stood up, donning the denim jeans with a black t-shirt, and turned to my left, shouting, “I’m leaving, mom!”

The drawing room, which was obviously the first room to the entrance, was lit with dim lantern-style lights of ambient and soothing vibes on top of the sofa on my right.

From the other side of the drawing room, somewhere inside the house, my mom shouted back, “But where are you going, dear?!”

“I’m going to hang out with a friend of mine, mom!”

“Okay then! You both boys can come here too if you want, but don’t wander around unnecessarily.”

Just as I got her agreement, I turned to my back the next second, pushed open the door, and walked out of the room, the door slowly closing on its own behind my back as I walked to the elevator.

At the building area some steps wide, I stood in front of the elevator, pushed one of the buttons on the side, and waited for it to arrive. “Today’s gonna be a great day!” I thought to myself as I smiled hard. My eyes were lit up, shining brightly, and my body was excited.

Click! The elevator then slowly opened with a buzz as its metallic doors slid leftward. I walked in, turned back at the door, and looked at it slowly buzzing again as it slid close.

“You both boys can come here too if you want, but don’t wander around unnecessarily,” I remembered my mom’s faint voice.

“Yeah, she was thinking that I will be with a boy…” I thought in a low voice as I tilted my head down a little. “But… I can tell her anytime that I was not with a boy.” I then turned to the door again. “But finally, the time Sana and I decided to meet up has come!”

Buzzzzzzzz. The door opened. I dashed out quickly in excitement. I walked through the narrow corridor between the parking of the cars and the wall, with the elevator behind my back and the entrance on my front. I pushed open the iron railing door hard, and as it opened narrow enough for me to seep out, I dashed out.

Just as I was on the street, I turned to my right—the exact opposite where I used to turn to go to park—and started to run on the empty silent street. No doubt, I didn’t want to be late to the spot, and my excitement wouldn’t have even let me be late that day.

The small figure of me in a black t-shirt and denim loose jeans running alone on the silent peaceful street beneath the evening sky was visible from the balcony where my mother stood, watching my figure with a smile. “At last, he’s able to adjust here and make some good friends.” My mom turned back at the door and walked inside her own bedroom, which had a bed on the left, a dressing table just beside her on the left, and the wardrobe on her left, but against the door on the other side which was straight away. “Oh God, I hope that he makes many more friends here and doesn’t feel lonely at all.”

At the first intersection, which was just about a dozen steps away from my house, maybe, I turned to my right, looking at the bustling market filled with crowds of people and cars walking here and there some intersections away. As I looked at it with a smile, I started to dash in faster, vigorously moving my hands and legs around.

***

“Going out to watch a delinquent battle, for some reason, really seems dumb,” I said as I stood in front of Sana in the middle of the walking crowd… in the middle of the pavement of the market. The yellow illuminated lights of the shops were seeping out from the glass windows–which seemed odd since the sky had not turned dark until that point, and was about to, in an hour. The street was filled with people’s footsteps and indistinct chatter all around us.

“Yeah yeah,” She replied with a smile.

“Now listen to me, they are really scary guys, so make sure you don’t get caught.”

“Yeah, you too,” I replied in a serious tone. “I already said that it would be a problem when we were talking yesterday.”

“Well, not for me,” She narrowed her eyes. “Anyway, they ain’t touching a girl like me, or they know what might follow.”

“Damn! Okay, man!”

“Now, let’s go.” She turned to her back and started to walk, and I dashed two steps to walk on her right. “Anyway, you know about the new updates on Jenshin?”

“Yeah, they’re all around on the internet.”

“They added another legendary limited time character!” She told me in excitement. She then turned to her right at me, “You should come play Jenshin too!”

I turned to her. “You buy me a decent laptop, man!”

“Buy one yourself! Tell your dad that… that it’s slow, it lags, and… I can’t concentrate on my studies because of it.”

“I don’t study on my laptop. Only books.”

“There were online classes some time back.”

“I passed them through tuitions,” I turned my head to the front again. “And whatever I say, he won’t allow it. Already, he believes that real classrooms are better than online classes.”

“That’s sad,” She commented.

I smiled. “Yeah, that’s really sad. But, I’m not so interested in games either. I like anime, and I can do that just fine on my laptop.”

“Well, poverty really gets the better of us.”

I chuckled. “Haha, no doubt.”

We both were smiling for a couple of seconds as we both walked beside each other, and then, she suddenly commented, “Jenshin is, like, so cool. You don’t even know what you’re missing in life.”

“Yeah,” I said with an open grin.

“That’s so sad.” She then turned at me, extending the joke. “You’re gonna have so many regrets in your life that… that… that you won’t go to heaven, but start wandering around as a ghost.”

“That was not good enough, and I guess being a ghost is better than going to heaven. Seems like so much walking…”

“Yeah, what I said was kinda cringe, but I feel better hearing your joke anyway,” She said with a smile.

I turned to my left at her and looked in her eyes with a smile. “No doubt what you said was cringe, but I messed up too trying to become cool.”

“You can be cool, but… can you be cooler?!” She suddenly started rubbing her hair as she looked at me with a grin.

“Cooler? Than you?” I narrowed my eyes seriously as I turned to her.

She then burst into laughter as she knew what I was about to say. “Ahahaha!” She covered her mouth with her right hand as she laughed.

I was just about to crack a joke, playing as if I were about to laugh at it or say something like ‘obviously’, but as I looked at her smiling face and her lit up eyes, I was… I was lost… in her looks. I thought inside, “She looks so cute when she laughs her heart out, man…”

Yeah, she had a genuine smile on her face beneath that black mask of hers. She was smiling genuinely. And on that dark evening was when I first noticed that she had such beautiful long dark hairs, with golden studs in her ears. She looked at me as she laughed. “What?”

My cheeks turned pink as I turned my head to the front. The smile of happiness turned into a smile of awkwardness and hesitation as I said, “N-Nothing.”

“We were not on a date that night. We were not going out for dinner that night. We were just hanging out, having fun. But… that night was one of the most beautiful days of my life. Maybe because I was with Sana, maybe because till that point of time, everything was going alright, maybe I was just in a good mood, or maybe… I just loved spending time with her. But… everything was perfect that evening. And I loved it. I wanted to live like this all my life. I never wanted that time to end. I never wanted those days to end. I… And I… never even wanted to be there in the first place. No doubt, I was in the prime time of the worst days of my life. Kinda contradictory, for some reason.”