I keep aiming to write smaller chapters so I can be more consistent but it does not feel intuitively satisfying to cut a chapter midway through when there's more to tell, so I apologise for the delayed updates :")

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Through the gaps in diamond shaped green grills, the group was immersed in an intense game. Cheers, elaborate curses and relentless trashtalk could be audible from several hundred metres away. By the sounds of them, the scores were marginally higher on Manik's team.

With a glimmer of pride in my heart, I circled the premises with Navya by my side, who had come over to my place to invite me once she had arrived on the field. She looked over at me a couple of times, seemingly to make a remark but decided against it in the last minute. A good decision on her part.

Manik was wearing a long tank top and black sports shorts, sweat gliding off his muscular frame effortlessly, while he deftly weaved through his opponents. Those eyes focused on the ball entirely while Cabir urged, "Aryamann, pass it here," Despite it, Manik shuffled through the crowd and almost dribbled the ball out of Aryamann's hold.

He, my brother and Alia seemed to be part of the same team given how they were trying to tackle my poor classmate, who had been increasingly intimidated by the opponents. They were not going easy on him... they showed no mercy.

On Aryamann's side were Cabir and Mukti, all equally hyped to score a point by hook or by crook.

Cabir stood along the long edge of the court and hysterically waved, "Shoot!" Aryamann sprung in his spot a few feet away from the ring and the ball charged onto the white board, dashing on the rim of the hoop but tactfully slipping out.

"Damn it!"

"Chill Cabir, it's his first time playing..." Mukti comforted.

Navya and I made our way through the creaky gate, grabbing everyone's attention on our entry. Four pairs of eyes gleamed at us–Aryamann who was on the court, Dhruv who was on the cement steps where I usually sat and watched the game, Manik who was smirking while combing his hair with his fingers and Mukti who had been excited at the sight of me finally accepting her offer.

"Nandini, come join us," She suggested as she skipped towards Navya and I. I took one step forward, separating from Navya as Mukti's hands clasped mine and she dragged me in. "You can be on my team, come."

Manik's face dropped and he glowered at his sister, while I rejoiced for once that Manik was not having his way. While the emotional intimacy and comfort I felt around him significantly contributed to my lifted spirits over the last few days, I often had to remind myself that he was the same guy who left me at the drop of a hat several weeks ago... abandoning me without a reason I could comprehend. And if it had happened once, there was a surefire chance it would happen another time.

Be it whatever it was he was battling with, the way he cut me out was brutal and I was not quite ready to be on good terms with him again... or put myself through another wave of loneliness in his absence.

Abhimanyu too had something to add as he approached us. "Yeah, go to the weaker team, it'll make our victory a lot easier!" I took quick strides, swatting his arm swiftly to which he yelped, "Ow!" The boys from his group chuckled at him.

"You deserved that, bro!" Cabir laughed heartily, while Manik locked eyes with me. His lips curved into a sly smile of some sort and within a second, one of his eyes closed at me. Did he just sneakily wink at me? My mouth fell ajar but I otherwise managed to keep my reactions subdued so as to not give room for other suspicions. He smirked and continued chewing the gum in his mouth.

Abhimanyu was still recovering from my attack that by the time he turned to Manik, he appeared so innocent and unaware of his surroundings. Oh, what a devil! "Navya can be in our team, hai na?" He asked to his best friend.

Alia who was standing with crossed arms, clearly displeased by our intervention, witnessed the conversation unravel between the boys. She budged herself into their discussion. "Why are you only asking Manik? I'm part of the team too! Or are you both being sexist and leaving me out on purpose?"

"Haw, Alia! How could you say something like that? You're our favourite player!" Abhimanyu cajoled and wrapped a sweaty arm around her shoulders. Alia faked her disgust but did not budge from his grip. "After this match I'll get you a mango smoothie from that juice shop down the road." Appeased by the offer, she fake-rolled her eyes and shook her head in approval.

Several minutes later, Aryamann had passed the ball to me without any malicious reasons behind it and as the transfer took place, our hands barely grazed each other. Somehow in the moments following that incident, the ball had gotten into our opponent's hands. Manik had very easily scored a point for his team, and while returning with a dribble, he had bounced the ball a bit too forcefully as he neared Aryamann and it knocked his jaw... sending him tumbling down with a thud as his jaw dislocated.

"Oh, I'm so sorry... I – I didn't mean to,"

⭒⭒⭒

Nandini

Abhimanyu peeped into the otherwise empty laboratory, whose only human occupant was me. I gestured him to come in and shut the door behind him. Before us was a huge glass panel, several monitors, cameras and intricate machines that indicated vital information of patients inside a body tunnel.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" He whispered in my ear once he was behind me. To say I was merely troubled myself would have been an understatement, so it made sense why Abhimanyu felt the need to address it as well. "You've seen and felt firsthand the kind of pain he goes through when he gets them..."

My eyes impulsively shut closed, trailing back to the conversations I had with Amma and Appa where I had resourcefully hid the intricacies of my research project. They did not have any clue what my reasons for inviting them to Bangalore were, neither did they suspect anything when they sent Rishabh with me to my lab that morning. So much trust and faith they had in me. And if anything went wrong today, I was dragging all of it down with me, along with my guilt and pride that assisted in this destruction.

I turned around, holding his forearms securely in reassurance. All I needed was a little faith, from someone in my family... anyone. "Unfortunately, I have nobody else I can test my theories on." Had I been able to swap places with Rishabh myself, I would have not spared a second thought at my chances. Even if there was only a 1% chance of survival, I would have bet on those odds... anything to protect my brother from the hellhole he was living in.

Uncountable days went by when I wished there could be someone else in place of Rishabh whose help I could take to progress my mission. Several times the thought had crossed my mind, to reach out to Dhruv, reconnect and explain what I've been up to... but rehashing my past had been way too painful, and even being mildly associated to anything connected to him was unbearable to think of.

It was my terrible luck that I could not truly rely on anyone else except my biological brother to help himself. How utterly pathetic of a sister was I?

Feeling little to no emotional reassurance about the safety of the procedure, or what would come out of it, my years of research and immersive study on the topic alone gave me hope.

Hope. It was long since I held any form of attachment to the word, but today... it was the only thing that could keep me from crumbling.

I glanced at my little brother through the transparent shield. He was so innocent, so pure... he needed to be protected from the evil world at all costs.

Purely out of intuition that had been growing stronger since my endless prayer chants began, I calmly said, "He will be completely safe. I'm right here in case anything happens."

"You're inducing something whose power you're not even certain of," He claimed.

"But it's predictable."

"We can't say that for sure. His previous attacks have all been from external natural stimuli,"

My throat felt constricted and in desperate need of more air to fill my lungs. Every single thing he was saying was true... and he was speaking out of the past experiences he had both been a witness to, and compulsively wished to change the fate of. There was absolutely no guarantee that my experiment could be successful in the slightest.

And it was also true that I was almost selfishly gambling with my brother's dear life in order to prove my possibly baseless theory.

Yet, if there was even the smallest sliver of hope that Rishu could fully recover... live the same life as any normal teenager his age... and could enjoy the rest of his life free from the clutches of that cursed star that took his peace away, was it not worth a try?

Then again... was such a rosy lifestyle really what he wanted, or perhaps so valuable that I had to choose it over his existing life where he was loved and pampered by everyone in his life?

Steeling myself from my judgments, I made a split-second decision and put the consequences in Aiyappa's hands. Surrendering all kinds of inhibitions and haughtiness, I allowed Aiyappa space in my conscience to pull the right trigger for me.

"Can you please trust me? Do you think I would let any harm touch our baby brother?" My convinction was failing to stand strong in the mercy of fate, but letting myself believe in Aiyappa's superior powers, I took a step back from my emotional attachment to my project as well as my baby brother.

Abhimanyu sighed and put a hand on my shoulder. "For your sake, I hope this works in one go."

Praying profusely to my Aiyappa to give all three of us the strength to endure this and come out the other end... strong, safe and happy... I confirmed with my baby brother one last time if he was ready for the scan.

Upon his consent, I channeled the miniature circuit with radioactive waves and the seizures began. Convulsions that started slow, and controlled kept my anxiety at bay. Once it triggered a chain of violent fits and the boy slammed on the reclined bed over and over and over again... my hands clutched together as my lips mumbled an incoherent prayer on my joined fingers, my eyes filling with overwhelming tears.

It was taking immense courage in me to stop myself from disconnecting the circuit, from running over to my restrained brother and hugging him and soothing him until he finally fell into a slumber.

A more rational Abhimanyu registered that a strip of paper was being ejected from one of the machines and moved closer to study it. Unable to comprehend whether what he was seeing was real or just a hallucination of wishes he wanted to be true, he blinked twice and then ran his fingers along the curves.

"The graphs... it's unbelievable!" He mumbled under a breath, too inaudible to reach my devotional trance. "Nandu... come here!"

Resisting the urge to stop praying and listen to what my brother had to say, I stood rooted in my spot, completing the last of my prayer when Abhimanyu held the strip up for me to see.

The curves were soft, graceful and elongated... in much contrast to the jagged spikes from Rishabh's doctor reports where they concluded erratic brain activity that was damaging some firing neurons with its intensity and slowly killing parts of Rishabh's brain.

I gasped in disbelief between my prayer and jumped to examine the graphs myself.

"We can send these to the doctors at Mukti's hospital and get their opinion." Abhimanyu beamed, patting my back appreciatively.

A soft painful smile danced on the corners of my lips. "And if we're right..." I breathed.

"Then you would have discovered the antidote for Rishabh's illness... and he can finally be cured."  

⭒⭒⭒

Manik

Singling out a card from my wallet, I brought my luggages out of the suite and closed the door behind me, locking it as it shut.

It was our last day in Lonavala and having spent the whole of the previous day in solitude, I was finally ready for some human interaction. A couple of things had been planned for the day, which got shelved when Ashok Khurana spontaneously called me earlier in the morning and asked if we were ready to perform a dry run for him at four thirty the same evening.

We promptly vacated our hotel rooms and decided to congregate near our jeep. All I had to do then was return the keycard to the reception and off I was.

A thud echoed downstairs and following a couple of shrieks, I glanced over the glass railings to see Dhruv who had been walking to the lobby to checkout plopped on the floor squirming. Brimming with a wave of panic, I abandoned my luggages without a thought and spiralled down the stairs, skipping a few in the process to make it there faster.

Keys were being stuffed into his palm which did not stop Dhruv from moving and in fact, when he flung them across the room, it frightened some passersby even more. The receptionists quickly phoned for security and extra protection, unsure of what they could do to keep the situation at bay.

Midway along the stairs, I realised I had ditched my guitar too outside my room and sprawled back to retrieve it. It would come very much in handy at bringing Dhruv some calm and peace.

"Buddy... buddy relax..." I nearly slid over while making my way to him and grasping him between my arms, pulling him into my lap and chest. Dhruv's body had not stopped convulsing and I had forgotten how different he felt compared to the teenage brother who I could very easily keep still with my strength.

"Look, I'm here... Manik's right here... shhh..." I muttered desperately, trying to rock him in my arms. "Everyone out. Right now!" I commanded. Some left immediately while some watched from the distance having never witnessed such a situation before.

I slapped Dhruv's cheeks, pulling him in for a hug. "Calm down, buddy... I'm right here..." He calmed down by just a notch, and my eyes pooled with tears reminiscing the guilt from being unaffected by the shooting star nearly fifteen years ago while my best buddy lost a little bit of himself in every attack that followed. Why? Why him of all people?

Pressing the inner corner of my eye, and aware of the attention surrounding us, I reached for my fallen guitar and brought it closer. The guitar strings were gently strummed. "Acchha... so I've been working on something... I want to know what you think." I confessed meekly and played a piece I had been working on over the last couple of days when I was all alone with just Nandini's diary.

It was a melodious track, a little nostalgic in terms of the music we played back when we were in school. A perfect blend of heartbreak and harmony. Dhruv smiled as the piece took a unique shape when he pressed certain chords himself. All in all, those few moments had turned to be magical as Dhruv returned to his usual self and separated from me.

The details of his expressions were difficult to comprehend but the general feeling of ache and remorse was clear in them. "I'm sorry..." He said softly.

"Sorry? Why are you sorry?" I sniffed and smiled. "If anything, I should be. How must you have managed all these years..." My voice broke at the last bit of my sentence.

Dhruv shook his head smiling. "Don't worry... this is the first... intense one in nearly ten years... I thought I was over it." Falling into a tunnel of deep and dark thoughts, he blankly stated, "But nothing's changed."

"Even I thought... I was over it," I confessed, feeling raw and torn in those few moments that reeled me back in time... to when Dhruv was my everything.

"Maybe some bonds can be broken but not forgotten..." He patted my back gently and stood to his feet, helping me up as well. The crowd that had found the whole encounter quite fascinating to begin with had dispersed, finding entertainment elsewhere.

He walked with me upstairs where I had left my luggages.

"Can I ask you something honestly?" I asked as we climbed the first fleet of stairs.

"No, I'm not angry... at you for leaving us. You did what you had to... we all did what we had to... to preserve ourselves."

"And about Nandini?"

"I may have liked her... but she loved you... there was no space for me... in her life," There was no pain as he said that, just a bold acceptance that it was somehow written in destiny to be that way.

He was not the first person who had mentioned what she felt for me as love. Yet, the word felt obnoxious and ill-suited for someone like me. There was no way a teenager could feel to that extent. And most of all, I was not the slightest deserving of such an emotion.

"You really think that was love?"

"It can't be anything else if it... brings that much pain... along with it..." Branching from his own train of thought, he seemingly remembered something and half-chuckled, "And dekho na buddy... it taught you... how to live with yourself." He patted me on the back proudly after which the happiness vanished, replaced by a dark void that could never find light. "Will I ever be able to?"

"You'll have me... so you don't have to," It was a blank promise... more than I had expected I could keep up. But one thing was certain, in all those years when Dhruv had needed me, I was not there. He had done so much for me and I had been so ungrateful... and forgotten it in my fit of despair. Mistakes of that sort would not be repeated.

"But you can't always... be with me... na Manik, I have to – have to do this on my own,"

"Then I'll be with you every step of that way,"

⭒

Is he even Manik Malhotra if he does not break a few bones of a guy who comes remotely close to Nandini? :P

Manik and Nandini are linked by fate, no doubt, but the depth of their pain goes deeper.

It's going to be fun unravelling those twists and tangles, and super satisfying when they finally unite <3 What do you think?

Hope you like this so far! Keep your votes and support coming, please! Lots and lots of love!