"I really loved dancing, didn't I? I hope someday I will dance once again like I used to."

A whimsical smile danced on her lips, but it failed to reach her eyes, whose frantic flutter strove to mask the sense of loss brought upon by the narration. Embarrassment and powerlessness had mocked over each of her drooped shoulders when she called out for help to attend the nature's calls. Sucheta's kind smile when she rushed to her side could not erase her awkwardness hidden by the veil of a smile.

She wanted to fly like a bird, bend like a bow, and jump like a deer as she danced her heart away, and the diminishing optimism offered no shelter to the extinguishing conflagration of hope in the recesses of her mind which had drowned in darkness of despair.

Vivaan placed his warm hand over her twitching fingers and she puffed an exasperated sigh before a tiny smile dawned over her visage. "You will. Your determination and your passion did not let dancing remain as an unfulfilled dream in the past, and I don't think this time it will be any different."

"I don't understand. Why was my father against dancing?" she asked with an incredulous stare directed at Vivaan.

"Most of our beliefs do not actually have a basis, Radha. We just embrace them as we are supposed to. Your father respected culture and tradition more than anything, but he was averse to everything that was associated with love. Lasya - Tandaav, Raas-Lila, you name it, dance is one of the most surreal expression of love. How would he accept it? It's just something he had learned from his forefathers and embraced it."

"Why do we have to hide from Paa? It's just a dance. It's not like I'm training with the lions like that man from the circus last week."

The eight-year-old Vrinda settled on the porch and placed her bag against the pillar, unlike her friend Vivaan, who had resorted to testing his aim with his bag. Vrinda rolled her eyes and scoffed at him as he shrugged his shoulders.

"Why do you dislike Puri? It's not like it is mixed with poison instead of water," asked Vivaan, prying inside the living room of his house through the window. The rumbling of his tiny stomach did not go unheard by Vrinda, whose eyes narrowed before she shook her head at him.

"Well, I-I don't like it because it is, uh, too oily?" she said, averting her eyes from his and straightening the starched and prim hem of her navy blue skirt.

Vivaan's lips thinned out as he shot her an astounded stare before scoffing at her.

"Maybe your father has a similar lame excuse for disliking dance. Something told by his parents," he said, continuing to look for something that could ease the hunger pangs wreaking havoc in his tummy.

The bridge of her nose crinkled and her nostrils flared. "Aye! Don't call his reasons as lame excuses, okay? He's my father, and he always has a reason, okay?"

His lips stretched on their own accord with the surge of memories of the times he had answered the same of hers. So much had changed, and yet so much remained unchanged.

"Some instances in his life had strengthened his beliefs. Struggle begins when we question the basis, and often people do not have enough strength or patience to do it."

"You have an answer to every question of mine, don't you?" she asked, eying him with a glint of admiration.

Her enamored gaze suggested a sense of intense ardor as though everything else faded away in his company and, like the sight of him, soothed her very soul.

Vivaan could not help but let his smile stretch further. The swirling pools of affection and passion in her eyes added a healthy dose of optimism to stop the flame of hope from extinguishing in his ravaged heart. Her cheeks, with warm hues dancing across her high cheekbones, grew prominent in the wake of a warm smile stretching upon her chapped lips.

The naughty glint in her eyes and an almost instinctive leaning into him reopened the closed and haunted realms of his heart, which laid forgotten since their separation.

"I was wondering, why have I never met Daksh Bhai's dad? I mean, he was very close to my father, according to everyone's anecdotes. Then why haven't I met him?"

Vrinda's question doused the warmth of nostalgia and plunged him back into the ocean of repentance. He had long ceased his struggle to remain afloat against the tidal waves of his conscience that dragged him deeper into the depths. The salt in the ocean burned his eyes and filled his eyes with tears whilst the insurmountable pressure of the depth asphyxiated him.

But the pinkish brown bow on her visage offered him the respite he had long forsaken. The naughty glimmer of her eyes weaved into knots that aroused the desire to tether himself to the shore once again. Alas, the wave of memories had dragged him into the bottomless sea once again.

"He feels he is your culprit in some twisted way and does not allow anyone to convince him otherwise. He wants to meet you only after you learn everything about your past, when you will accept or refuse his apology," said Vivaan with a sardonic smile.

His father had chosen a path not too different from his own and he remembered the older man jumping to his defense with Sucheta, and Daksh scoffed at his idea at the dinner countless times.

Vrinda's eyebrows arched in surprise and transverse lines creased her wide forehead. "My culprit? How can Uncle be my culprit in any way?"

"Like I said, it is his belief. If I reveal the reason, you would know almost everything about your past and what you write in that book. I don't think I should reveal it at this stage. I am sorry. Trust me, I am eager for you to learn everything, but it's not the time," said Vivaan, taking his hand in between his as his eyes turned into pools of melancholy and angst.

In some other setting, at some other time, it would bring great pleasure for Vrinda to tease Vivaan for citing the same reason for everything, but the potent potion brewed in his eyes had erased every hint of mischief from her heart which seemed to lament at his grief.

"And once I know everything, will I get to meet Vivaan?"

Her raspy whisper made him pull his hands away from her. The tremulousness of his eyelids made her heart skip a beat.

He did not know what he wanted Vrinda to choose - punishing the man who broke her heart or refusing to meet him. Regardless of her choice, he knew that disappointment, agony, fury, and heartbreak awaited her.

It would torment her heart to realize the one she had loved more than anything else in the past, and whom she had trusted as her confidante and eternal companion, had betrayed her in the worst way possible. She would antagonize him for hiding his identity and ostracize him for growing close to her using another identity.

While hiding his identity, his motive was to escape the quandary of exploiting her trust and driving her into maintaining the relationship they had left behind, but he had not imagined that it would cause yet another quandary.

"You will," he said, rising from his position as he sought to avoid her scrutinizing gaze, only to be stopped by her grip on his hand, which was gentle, but enough to stop him anytime.

"I don't know what I will say to Vivaan when I meet him. But I know what I want to tell you, Vihaan. For now, let me speak my heart out to you. Vivaan and I might have shared the most scintillating love story in the past, Vihaan, but I have no memory of that. Every time I try to visualize things narrated by you or the ones in the book, I cannot help but visualize you instead of him."

A morose smile and a hint of tears adorned her crestfallen face when he turned towards her with widened eyes.

"I had, in fact, hoped that we were lovers in the past."

A chuckle escaped her lips and his heart galloped like a restless horse that had lost its path. A part of him wanted to scream and announce the truth of their relationship, but the rope of constraint strangulated him and did not allow him the luxury of baring his heart.

"I have no control over my past and I am not sure about the future, but I want your presence to beauty my present, and my heart soothed by your words. I don't know what you feel for me, but a part of me says that you reciprocate my emotions."

Her chest heaved and her lips trembled. Vivaan's knees almost gave way and settled on the bed beside her, locking his stormy eyes with her hopeful ones. "I don't know if it is my optimism and hope speaking or my intuition. Tell me, Vihaan, just like you answer every question of mine, is it my intuition that you reciprocate my feelings or is it just my hope?" she asked.

The quandary of betraying her past or choosing the present she craved for, had stolen her sleep for several nights before her heart had made the choice to side with the second option, with no doubt plaguing the free bird. The flash of agony which crossed his face when she mentioned about Vivaan cemented her beliefs that his heart held the same emotions for her and motivated her to confess her heartfelt emotions to the one who seemed to know her better than anyone else.