It's a happy moment for me that we've hit 900 followers! (Thank you for having trust in me despite my hiatuses and terrible health) :")

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Dedicating the upcoming series of updates to you all :")

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The door to Alia's room opened, and she peeked through the gap. Dhruv's bedroom was wide open, but she couldn't give anyone – including him – the impression that she was restless to meet him. Alia cautiously placed a fluffy hard sole and tiptoed out.

Through the rails of the landing upstairs, she thoroughly scanned the lower floor. Manik and Cabir were nowhere to be found. The Professor too had been busy running errands and overlooking some maintenance work happening at SPACE. Both Mukti's and Adira's shoes were not present near the shoe rack. Alia naturally assumed Mukti was with Adira, and they were either out to buy the little one something she wanted, or they too were at SPACE, helping the Professor out.

It was only her and Dhruv in the house. Unexpectedly, the thought of being alone with him was unsettling. It wasn't that she did not feel safe around him; truth be told, over the last few days of working along with him, she had gone from relying on his assistance to prove her point to valuing his opinions and actually second-guessing her own decisions in the process.

This too was one such scenario where his composure and neutral feedback would be indeed helpful to her, which was why she had come to the decision to open up to him. She mentally rehearsed how she was going to initiate the talk about twice. Taking deep breaths to keep her hesitation at bay, Alia proceeded to the door but was interrupted by a nagging anxiety.

What if Dhruv had a lowly impression of her, would she be able to take it?

He was reclining on his bed with his knees pulled up. A romance novel was spread in his lap. Upon seeing a shadow of someone at the arch of his room, he thumped the hard cover book shut and placed it to a side. He got off the bed and ran his fingers quickly through his hair.

"Alia?"

Flustered, she returned to her consciousness and turning from the door, she hurried away, her dusty pink slippers clapping as she walked. He sped up to her in no time and hauled her by the elbow. "What, what happened? Bhaag kyoon rahi ho?" She winced at the icy touch that sent a shiver down her body, and noticing the reaction, Dhruv scrutinised his own possessive hold on the woman and instantly let go, supremely startled by his guts.

On missing his touch, Alia worried that he was retreating and frightfully opened her eyes, meeting his confused ones. Okay, this was her one and only chance. There was no going back for her. "I have to tell you something..." She muttered in one breath, struggling to maintain eye contact after the intimacy that got her feeling things she never thought she could feel for anyone except Manik.

She added, "It's been on my mind for a while now, and..." Taking a deeper breath, she glanced at the sparkling tiles while Dhruv's features slightly lit up appraisingly. He had never caught the ever-so-confident Alia being so adorably shy, and he had to admit it was almost an ego boost to him.

"Phew... okay, I'm just going to come out and say it," As she met his eyes once again, Dhruv deliberately changed his expression to be more blank and neutral in contrast to the bubbling amusement, which was a result of making a beautiful woman nervous about voicing her feelings.

To be polite and concerned, he gently asked, "What is it?" He was bending to a side to look at her features a little better.

Lining up her confessions one at a time, she dropped the first one. "That day when I told you I was going shopping for a pair of black shimmery heels, I didn't go shopping... I went to the post office."

Dhruv's expressions changed from an elated state of being to a miraculously obvious frown as the woman spoke. Then, feeling irritated for no apparent reason, he tightened his jaw, "Post office?"

Alia could not pinpoint what exactly happened, but in those few seconds that she had opened her mouth, Dhruv had been angry about something. And she naturally assumed it was the lie she told him that bothered him. "I am really sorry, Dhruv... I know I shouldn't have hid it from you." Her cheeks had become wet from a couple of tear trails. "But main tumhe kya bolti, when I wasn't even sure how to process that Harshad's my brother who ran away from home as a child?"

"What? Ho –" Realising his tone was sharp, he modified, "– did he tell you that?"

"No, no. On that visitor register, his full name was printed: Harshad Saxena. He's my bhai!" As huge tears fell from her eyes, Dhruv stilled at the outburst and felt a twinge of sympathy in his gut. Alia drew an imaginary circle around his face. "This is why I didn't want to share this information with anyone. I knew I would get looks like this." She cried and bolted towards her room.

He anxiously followed her, utterly confused about what she was trying to say. It was like he couldn't read her at all. "No, that's not... Alia, wait – that was not what I was hinting at." He shoved his hand in the gap of the door before she closed it, prying it open. She gasped at the unforeseen force and as they stood on either end of the piece of wood, they breathlessly gazed at each other for a long moment.

"What were you going to say about the post office?" He demanded, and Alia could not help but feel completely captivated by the man before her.

"I went to drop off a letter for Harshad," She gleamed, gulping as she spoke through her tears. "I think I saw the pimp the Malhotras have an arrangement with, Rose. She bumped into me and some contents of her bag popped out. She was with a man though, I helped her out, but she must've been in a hurry, she left her handkerchief behind. Wait..." She said, turning around and shuffling her things in her handbag.

A cream piece of fabric with scalloped hem edges emerged from her handbag. "And look what it says..." As Alia brought the piece closer, Dhruv studied the cursive lettering that was oddly broken down into multiple lines with differing alignments.

Trust not in the promises

of stars,

for deceit may cloak

itself in charm and blind

one from darkness.

On a breezy monsoon evening half a decade ago, a teenage version of himself was sprawled on grass, shivering underneath a stargazing trail. When a wave of consciousness drifted through Dhruv, he registered a large silver ring the size of a bangle being stuffed in his palm. Though he was gripping it, he had delayed responses as if he was lucid dreaming.

It was in a matter of mere minutes that the celebration party Dhruv had signed up for had turned ugly. Submitting the final exam of school was a mark of an important phase of life ending; so they had to do something adventurous, and mildly dangerous, but Dhruv had not anticipated a life-threatening scenario.

Dhruv had joined his boys' group on a bike ride up to a log cabin one of the boys' families owned in the outskirts of the city. The surrounding homes were on the downhill, while their house had been close to a stargazing trail at the peak of it. From the outside, it seemed like the perfect getaway from the bustling state of the rest of Mumbai. In the cottage, however, the 'party' scene appeared a lot different. Succumbing to peer pressure, Dhruv had consumed a substance far too potent for his system.

When his eyes flickered once more, a frightened teenage boy was kneeling beside him while a backpack had been haphazardly thrown on the ground as if it was disregarded as soon as Dhruv was spotted.

He clasped Dhruv's ice-cold hand and vigorously rubbed. Dhruv had momentarily felt the warmth, but before he could see the boy beside him clearly, he fell backwards into a void.

"Hey! Hey, stay with me," the boy had said, resorting to some firm slaps to bring Dhruv back to consciousness. "I don't know if you're drunk or drugged, so I can't let you fall asleep, okay? Can you count the stars in the sky for me?" The boy's distinct voice did not match any of his friends', which meant he had absolutely no reason to help Dhruv out. Yet the strange boy had wrapped his blazer around Dhruv's shoulders and had not left his side.

Dhruv counted "One," as loudly as he could over his hammering heart, but to the boy's ears, it was meeker than a whisper. The boy pressed a spot under Dhruv's ribs firmly and concluded that it wasn't alcohol poisoning, Dhruv was indeed overdosed on some drug.

There were three straight-forward options: a) calling the cops and an ambulance, which could take hours if not less to reach that remote part of the city, or b) leaving Dhruv as is, which could lead to organ failure and consequently death, or c) blindly trying an antidote without enough information on the consumed substance or the lapsed duration since its consumption, which would show evidences of intervention. Regardless, the situation would involve the police.

Disregarding those consequences, the boy unzipped his bag and pulled out a water bottle. In his hand were a few black capsules that he crushed. He dropped its contents into the sipper. After violently shaking the mixture together, the boy reclined Dhruv against his chest and fed the mixture in through his sipper without letting it settle.

Even swallowing had been a tedious task for Dhruv. What would have taken a normal person four seconds to gulp down had taken Dhruv several small sips with conscious effort, but the boy beside him patiently offered the bottle like he was feeding a toddler.

Once it was empty, the bottle was dropped to the ground and its rumbling sound had startled Dhruv. Mindful of Dhruv's sensitivity to sound, Manik gently said, "Hmm... I see five really sparkly stars lined up underneath The North Star, how many do you see?"

Fairly rough dabs were being administered to Dhruv's back to keep the boy upright, and Dhruv slowly mumbled incoherent numbers while dazedly staring into the darkness. As Manik mindfully counted along with Dhruv, the ringing in his ears and the chilliness around Dhruv were subdued in their effects. The haziness in his brain was beginning to fade.

Filled with immense gratitude, Dhruv acknowledged that even though the meaning of his own name was The North Star, a stranger had won that title in his selfless act of basic human compassion – the brightest star in the void of darkness.

Alia snapped her fingers before him.

He looked up at her distressed figure and mutely gestured, 'what'.

Alia clicked her lips. "I asked, don't you find that fishy?"

Dhruv shrugged. Under no circumstances would he stoop low enough to question Manik's intentions the way Alia or anyone else in the clan did. "It's her handkerchief. See, it says her name in the corner in red, it must be a personal message for her." He justified and ran his fingers over the lettering. "Look, it's even embroidered onto the cloth."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Then, why didn't she stop when I called out for her? No, it's as if she wanted me to see it, to have it."

"That is strange," Dhruv said, rubbing the back of his neck. If Rose meant to give it to Alia, how did she know Alia would be at the post office? After all, the fashion diva had not disclosed her plan with anyone, not even Dhruv.

Could that mean someone else knew more about them and their clan than they themselves did?

He tried to decipher the meaning behind the archaic wording to seek out some clues.

Stars were Manik's favourite pass-time, and in darkness laid Manik's deepest fear. Those words had been specifically chosen as emphasis in the scrambled paragraph. Added to that was the peculiar timing of finding the message: they were on the hunt to find more information regarding the SD card and the starting source of all problems in their lives, the item for which Manik put his life on the line.

Every part of the puzzle they gathered would fit into place perfectly if only Dhruv believed Manik was deceiving them, and had known more than the rest of the clan about what was entailed in the chip.

Alia pointed at the paragraph in her hand. "And the way these words are written, it's as if every line ends with a twist."

"Like a paradox," Dhruv concluded, and Alia shook her head positively, affirmed that she was not over-thinking it.

She had been right in her decision to talk to someone about it, curving her lips for a second as the thought crossed her mind, "What do you think?" She asked, seeking his well-meaning approval.

A bile of guilt was pooling in his belly as he rose questions on his dear friend's authenticity. Yet, in favour of the rest of the clan, he concluded reluctantly, "You might be onto something..." That validation alone crept into a crevice in her heart and manifested into something far more beautiful than she had imagined.

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How wholesome was teenage Manik and Dhruv meeting? :") Apart from the fact that he was a douche to Nandini, I can't find any faults in himmmm, Aiyappa am I broken? :D

What's your take on that message Alia and Dhruv found on Rose's napkin?

I'm really keen to know readers' theories for the plot :P

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