Kritvik Bhatt

Triiiing! Triiiing!

The mobile phone buzzed on top of the dining table. The increasing sounds of footsteps rushing toward it appeared, and in a second or so, my waist—covered by my dark red sweatshirt—stood in front of the dining table. My hand took up the phone and I had a look at its screen. I frowned as I looked at the letters ‘Unknown Number’ on top of a dozen little numbers beneath it against a black background. I swiped the green button on the right leftward with my right thumb and placed the phone on my right ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, K!”

“Sana?” I replied in astonishment, turning to my back at the sofa set in the living room in front of the television, where my mother sat with her eyes on the TV.

“What were you doing?” Her sound from the phone asked.

“Nothing important. Just surfing the internet, trying to find cheat codes for the new Nekromon game.”

“Nekromon is so old! How do you still play it?!”

“That’s the farthest my computer can go, man!” I replied, turning to my left and walking inside my room again.

“Yeah yeah, poverty gets the better of us.”

“Shut up!” I smiled as I stepped inside the room, closing the door off behind me. “And they’re just one-day hobbies. Tomorrow, or maybe after a week at its maximum, I know I’m not even gonna remember Nekromon.”

“That’s sad. Anyway, play Jenshin. It’s not gonna be like that.”

“Maybe. But anyway, why did you call?” I asked her genuinely as I walked toward my study desk at the far right corner of the room.

“Nothing important, really. I was getting bored at home, so I just thought of calling up.”

“Damn, man! Who calls like that for no reason?!” I said with a smile, pulling back my plastic office chair with my left hand and sitting on it.

“All girls do that. I actually wanted to call Kavya, but we had a fight yesterday, like I was telling you before. So, I thought of calling you up.”

“So, you… you girls call each other for… fun?” I asked, a little shocked by the discovery, for some reason.

“Yeah yeah. Did you… really not know that you can call people without reason just to chat with them?”

“I, uh…” I stuttered as I looked at the screen of my laptop, where a search engine was open and some links were beneath it. I looked at the time on the lower right corner of the screen. It was half-past five. “Not really, to be honest.”

“That’s sad…” She commented. “Anyway, do you know what happened in the new episode of…”

***

The same computer screen showed the time of seven in the evening. The white text was written beneath the date November twenty-seven, twenty-twenty-one. The curtains in front of the windows to my left were flowing a little. The window was open. On the other side of the open wooden window, the apartments were covered by the darkness of the night. There were no stars at the time.

“Yeah, bye-bye!” I said with a smile. I then moved the phone down beside my laptop on the black table. The screen of the phone was turned on, and I could see the calls log open, with other names and a number on the top. “One and a half hours!” I whispered to myself, smiling, in astonishment. “Damn, man!” I then turned my head to my right. The dark brown wooden door of the white-colored shining room was closed. I then turned to my left, looking outside at the sky. “It’s… Maybe it’s the first time in my life that I’d talked so much to someone over a phone call.”

“Kritvik, dear!” I heard my mother’s voice and turned to my right at the door. The doorknob opened and the door was pushed open. My mother stood on the other side, with the knob in her left hand. “With whom were you talking to?” She interrogatively asked.

“Just a friend of mine, mom,” I replied, with a smile on my face, obviously.

“You both sure talked a lot. Oh, God!”

I chuckled a little. “Yeah, mom. We lost track of time.”

“Who was he?”

“Her name is Sana.”

She frowned upon hearing the name. “Is she a girl?”

“Y-Yeah, mom…” I hesitantly replied. Inside somewhere, I kinda knew I should not have told her for some reason.

She nodded. “Make sure she’s only a friend. Don’t get too close to any girl. Focus on your studies. Girls come and go.”

“Y-Yes, mom,” I obediently replied.

She then smiled again. “Sana seems like a good name, by the way.”

“Mom!”

“How’s she at studies?”

“U-Uh… Just like me…?”

“Then make sure to ask her any doubts you have. Girls are good at studies, so she might teach you a thing or two,” She smiled as she commented.

“Mom!”

She pulled the door and closed it. I kept on smiling after she was gone. “Man…” She could have scolded me a little longer, but all she did give was a warning. I was happy that nothing serious followed. But obviously, I was happy because of Sana too.

***

Sana Kohli

I wore yellow shorts over a red t-shirt as I sat on the corner of my bed, which was on one of the corners of my room. The lights of the room were lighting my study desk on my left and the door on my front. My knees were up, my feet touching my butt, and my head was tilted down, sunken inside my knees. My black hair covered some parts of my legs.

“He… really lifts my mood up.”

***

Aaryan Khanna

The sky had turned dark. Perhaps, it was around seven or eight in the night. The street was narrow, dark, and empty, filled with nothing but garbage and dust and shit all around. The street had small narrow houses on both the sides, along with some electric poles. The street was lit by the white light from the houses.

As I walked, the faint sounds of pop music behind the indistinct voices of people and shit came from a television inside one of the houses. A yellow packet of potato chips on the left, a dark blue cold drink can, and some dust went past my white sports shoes as I walked through the dark tanned street. My hands were inside my denim blue capris. I donned a full-sleeve white t-shirt on top of it. My eyes were serious as I looked at the front.

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. I walked through the narrow street.

The street was bending to the right some steps away. I was walking inside, my face tensed. With my frowning eyes, I looked at the curvature some steps away. “I… gotta find Rohit tonight. Vikram won’t leave me if I don’t find him. Fuck!”

Just as I was walking toward the bend, suddenly, I heard the footsteps of three to four people walking. There were even some banging noises. I knew at once that they had bats and shit. My feet stopped, my eyes widened.

A man appeared in black pants and t-shirt, and behind him another, and then another. The three had bats on their right hand, resting on their right shoulder, and metal chains in their left hands, hanging down straight. “Aaryan…” The one at the center, a dark-skinned man with a cigarette in his lips, looked at me. That asshole looked fucking scary.

I gulped in as both of us walked toward each other silently and then stood in front of each other. Both of us had our eyes fixed on each other’s eyes.

“What the fuck do ya want from me, asshole?”

“The fuck are ya calling asshole, huh?” He said, his tone filled with attitude and dominance.

“See, Akshay, I—”

“Where the fuck is Rohit?” He asked. He then moved his cricket bat down and banged its other end on the ground.

“Ya see, forget that shit up with him, okay? And—”

“That fucker is rigging our elections and taking in a part in our gang activities. Everyone knew that…” He blew air in his chest and patted on it with his left hand. “Everyone knew that I was gonna be the leader of the gang, but that fucker refused to cooperate with me as the leader. Imma kick his ass, then kick Vikram's ass, and then take over the gang and become the leader of the Black Reapers.”

“That asshole can’t do shit, Akshay,” I replied as I moved my index finger up at him. “But if anything happens to him, Vikram and others won’t let you get away easily.”

“That fucker can do whatever he fucking wants,” Akshay replied aggressively. He then started to turn his head left and right in anger. “I heard that he comes somewhere here at this time of the day. I gotta find him.” He then turned his head to me again. “Either you’re telling me about that fucker, Aaryan, or you’re gonna be fucked tonight.”

As I looked at his eyes, frowning with tension, I thought, “For tonight, I’m just gonna fuck around with him, distracting him around. This will probably turn off the fights within the gang for some time.”

“O-Okay…”

***

Kritvik Bhatt

The sun was shining brightly the next morning on top of the apartments. Sunrays entered through the windows on my left, cutting through my dark red curtains and softly rubbing my sleeping face. Rest of my body was covered by my dark brown blanket. My eyes tightened, and then opened a little. They then closed again. My hands emerged out of the blanket and rubbed my eyes.

“Get up, Kritvik! It’s time for school!” I heard the faint voice of my mother shouting at me.

With my both hands still rubbing the inner edges of my eyes, my back moved up and I sat up. I twisted my body to my left, moved my legs down, and put my feet on the ground. I then moved my hands down and opened my eyes. I looked at the sunrays coming in. “School… maybe is not such a bad place to be,” I thought.

***

About an hour later, I was in the classroom. The white room with the blackboard in front of my eyes was filled with the indistinct chatter of people talking and chilling. I turned to my right, and looked at another guy entering with his bag behind his back. He turned to his left toward the desks and walked in. “Ayo, man!”

I then turned my head to the front again. I was sitting at my usual desk—center front. My head was on my right palm, my right elbow standing upon the desk. I was uninterestedly glaring at the blackboard with my narrowed eyes.

“Sana is absent, huh?” I thought. “Great. Now, what am I gonna do today without her?”

“That day, as expected, went boring. For some reason, I had never thought that a day could go this damn boring just without one person being absent for just a single day. But, that experience, and that time, gave me enough exposure to boredom that I was able to ask myself a question which I had been asking myself for too long.”

“Do I… love Sana?”

“I don’t know, man. Every single second of every single day of my life… I wanted to spend it with her. I wanted to be with her, listening to her experiences and then commenting over them. I… Is that love? I don’t know, man. I never really had anyone else to spend time with, so maybe, what I wanted was not specifically Sana, but someone with whom I can pass my time with and be myself with. But… I was still in doubt. I wanted to believe in both of them, but in neither of them. Maybe it’s confusing, but… maybe that’s the only way I can sum my feelings.”