Huge thank you to the readers who dropped in their feedback in the previous update and also my spammers, absolutely love you guys and exams khatam hote hi I'll get back to each one of you <3

A "free advice" tip for you guys for this and upcoming updates as we're entering the crime side of it (it's going to clear up a lot of questions you might have): pay close attention to the interactions between each character, bas itna hi kehna tha :P

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Two weeks later...

Nandini stood before the picture of a deity – her Aiyappa – hanging from a wall and brought her palms together while closing her kohl-lined eyes. Aiyappa, please give me some strength to pull through my first session and run it as seamlessly as possible. Thank you Aiyappa. She interlocked her fingers at the end, touching them to her forehead and then clutching them to her chest thoughtfully.

Nodding to God as if receiving his approval, she walked to the door of her office cabin and swung it open, popping her head through the gap. "Smaran Hebbar?" She called out to the only man seated on a row of chairs beside her soundproof cabin.

He wiped his palms on his camouflaged pants and stood with a start, cocking his head to the side suspiciously. The white coat swallowed the teenage girl dressed in a simple lime and turquoise kurti and leggings. "Nice to meet you, I'm Ms. Nandini Murthy." Her hand extended in his direction, two enamelled bangles on her wrist jingling, as she met him just above her eye level.

It was good to not be craning her neck for once to stimulate eye contact with the opposite gender.

Taken aback by a disturbing thought, Nandini released herself from his grip and instantly backed up into her cabin, massaging her fingers as she hurried back to her chair and awkwardly waited beside it until he made it to his.

Smaran, who had been second-guessing the whole idea of going to a therapist for the last ten minutes and nearly made up his mind to go back to his bunk when the door opened, was kicked back into his senses. He snapped, "Aren't you a little too young to be doing this?"

Spinning in her spot, she gestured for him to grab a chair on the other side of the table but that did not stop the discussion – sorry, blatant disapproval – on his part. He made tornados in the air with his flapping hands. "I thought main yahan aakar kisi doctor se milunga lekin... khair!" The black metal leg of a chair meant for him to be seated on received a sharp impulsive kick that Nandini did not foresee. She staggered.

"This was a wrong call." He breathily grumbled to himself with his arms on his hips, to which Nandini furrowed her brows and crossed her arms.

Aiyappa, the audacity of that lad! Here she was chalking out an hour of her time trying to assist him with coming to terms with some sort of trauma she was yet to unravel and he was blindly judging her? She was being nice to him and he was being rude to her, like seriously?

She was about to retaliate and voice those same thoughts in a more assertive manner. He deserved to be put in his place for how arrogant he was, and she would have done so if it weren't a miraculous voice in her head that taunted her professionalism. It would be not only a disrespectful act on her part as a human being; no, such unhinged exhibitions would further cement his opinion of her immaturity. Besides, part of her job required her to be rational and polite, no matter what.

Modifying her frown, she perked up her mood. "I understand where you're coming from, given this is your first time going through this. If it helps to know, you are also my first client." She confessed genuinely with a small smile, receiving a blank expression from the dude. He probably just passed his teenage years and still thought of himself as one of those studs that would give no shits about others – especially not girls.

"Chalo ab toh confirmed hi ho gaya!" He sarcastically huffed as if he was not moved by her short speech at all, but his baby face did little to support his irritation, which was confusing Nandini.

What in the world could have made him so allergic to a pinch of kindness?

Turning a blind eye to his callousness and instead feeling pity for the negativity bubbling within him and spreading like venom in the biting atmosphere around them, Nandini kindly put forth another placating statement, "As much as I've spent three whole years of my life training for this moment, facing it, in reality, is much harder and much different from my comfort zone. I'm sure you know how that feels – training here and being commissioned elsewhere." There was a flicker of change in his posture as he drew his eyes from the ceiling to her.

Nandini wrenched her agitated hands again as she gulped, feeling palpable tension from being confined in a room alone with a man – in uniform or otherwise – but continued to speak assertively, "So yes, it's as nerve-wracking for me as it is for you, we'll try navigating this together, yeah?" At her soft suggestion, the man rested his fingers on the chair's headrest pondering.

Perhaps it was not all that bad to be talking to someone closer to his age than a grown-ass adult to whom his problems may have seemed insignificant.

He reluctantly pulled the armrest and shuffled his way in, earning a momentary tiny smirk from Nandini. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of noticing it or inflate his ego further. Somewhere between pulling out a notepad from her desk drawers and scrounging a click pen to scribble notes in, the smirk faded away. "So let's start by learning a bit about you," Lazily, she pointed the nib at him.

"I'm Smaran Hebbar, as I already told you, and I've been here two... just under two years now..." Nandini nodded while she jotted down the day's date, current time, and her client's name on the top of the page. "I was a prefect in my final two years of school, topped my school leaderboard, and joined Officers Training Academy in Chennai as a cadet."

As much as Nandini would never consume meat herself, she was itching for some meaty and juicy information that she could make deductions out of. Regardless, some keywords were being penned down, and though Smaran could see them, comprehending those strung-together words was beyond challenging.

Maybe Ms. Murthy was meant to be a doctor, and he just caught her a few years before her time!

"Throughout the years I've been recognised for several awards and –" Nandini shut her eyes painfully, and plopped her pen, subsequently stopping his monologue where he was counting his fingers for every accolade he banked.

Locking her hands before her, she put up a gentle smile trying to keep her personal opinions of him at bay. "That's... amazing to hear, Smaran! You must have worked very hard for those achievements and that recognition. That's wonderful." Clearly, the smug young man associated his success with awards and medals and could she even blame him, when marks and grades were all that Indian parents from that generation talked about? Wasn't her family – precisely her cousin's family – a living example of bragging based on marks too?

That brought her to the next gold mine.

"Anything you would like to share from the family front? Parents, siblings?"

"One sister. My parents live with her in Bangalore."

"Oh, I'm from Mangalore!" She squealed impulsively as she touched her chest without reading the room and the gloominess in his tone as he mentioned it. That was embarrassing on her part; what happened to being more composed and professional, Nandini? "Sorry," she waved a hand, resorting to holding the pen instead to keep her erratic hand in check.

However, the childish excitement Nandini showcased, even if it lasted only a moment, relaxed Smaran's nerves a notch, reminding him of a carefree time when he too felt safe enough to express anything he wished because his loved ones would always support him. Oh, how wrong was he about everything!

"How do they make you feel?"

"My family? Oh yeah, they're the most supportive bunch. Not a thing to complain about. I love them to bits." He grinned, bringing his eyes to meet her lined ones again.

He had not noticed it earlier but the girl appeared to glow, exuding an innocent warmth that was a byproduct of a caring loving family that understood her every step of the way, and picking up on that radiant energy infuriated him. Because what sin did he commit to have been deprived of that?

"How is it like to have a sibling? I only have cousins but I've always wished to grow up with brothers and sisters, at least one of each would have been a blessing!"

Smaran was completely ready to lash out at her, feed his own inferiority complex and nullify some internalised rage but the innocent curiosity in her tone, as if she truly cared about what he had to say and did not just think of the session as her job, tingled something in him. Evoking a vein of honesty, however thin it may be.

"It's... not all that awesome. Especially when you're the older one, there's a huge responsibility to be a role model, someone who... never makes mistakes and..." He felt his voice beginning to crack and dismissed any further information in that context. "I mean it's not as bad as I'm making it sound right now. I –"

He was just getting into the good stuff, and Nandini was fearful that if he changed his mind at that juncture and closed himself off again, everything she had been desperately working so hard for over the last few minutes would prove futile.

Rerouting the conversation on a more empathetic tangent, Nandini kindly said, "No, in fact, I think it's perfectly natural to feel that way when families don't realise their child is not a third parent in the household. In fact, I feel that way too sometimes being the only daughter; that if I do something wrong, I would be ruining my entire family, because I am the only one who can shoulder that responsibility."

And like a crumbling wall of bricks, Nandini realised where a dull sense of guilt she could not erase from her heart stemmed from. How had she singlehandedly surrendered not only herself to the clutches of an undeserving man, but also Navya's home – her haven – and her best friend's trust in her but putting all of it on the line. Merely in her pathetic attempt to experience something exciting and new.

He could have done anything that night, absolutely anything – stolen from Navya, robbed something significant to her family, or why stop there: he could have even planted something incriminating and framed their family for a crime they didn't commit – all because of Nandini. In fact, shouldn't she be grateful that he had stopped with just her, and toying with her?

That bone-chilling terror of putting another family, a family that saw her from her diaper days and loved her as their daughter, in complete danger began to chew her insides. She restlessly swallowed to wash away that sensation to her best ability.

"So I think your perspective on it is completely valid," Nandini uttered, every word emerging from incredible strain.

Smaran shrugged, feeling a lot lighter than when he walked in. "It's alright I guess... like I said, not much to complain about. I made them very proud by always excelling at everything I took up. Can I speak more on that?" He beamed as he switched to a more comforting topic, and Nandini slumped her chin into her cupped palm, unsure of how to politely tell him to stop boasting. She was not sure her horribly fragile state would be able to cope with it.

Hope was slowly slipping under her feet. Not only was the therapy session going nowhere but Nandini was slowly losing faith in herself and her judgments altogether on both the professional and personal fronts. Smaran was boring her to death with his tales, no doubt, but the more devastating part of all was the voice in her head getting louder and louder.

Mocking her for being the most foolish person to ever exist.

Drowning the mind-numbing stories he was telling her in elaborate detail.

It could have been the perfect escape from the dreadful series of events in her life had the onset of a panic attack not surfaced. Just then, Nandini's alarm went off, startling her back to reality. "Oh, time's up!" She dryly chuckled, feeling no amusement about finally being alone in her own thoughts.

The most dangerous place for her to be in.

As she sent off her client with a calling card, she grabbed her pink tote, threw in her phone, keys, and wallet, and raced to the rickshaws outside the gates. The only place that could relieve her of her burdens was the nearest Aiyappa sanctum.

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This part was incredibly interesting to write for three reasons:

a) Nandini's first practical experience in therapy;

b) new character, new mystery; and

c) it's nice to write about closed-off characters that are not linked to the "dark world" (but the military do see a lot of dark stuff so I guess that's not entirely true)

What did you guys think about Smaran's and Nandini's interaction? Is anyone else getting grumpy x sunshine vibes? :P

Please don't forget to spread your love and drop your votes and comments if you enjoyed this part, tons of love! <3