Epilogue

One year later.

The three of us were in the food court near our offices, it was quite close to Arjun's as well. They were kind of dating. For real now. They were something that I didn't want to get involved, because it was awkward. She was my best friend and he was my brother. But if he broke her heart I wouldn't hesitate to punch his nose.

Shruthi had been surprised, that time. But she didn't react vehemently like I thought she would. She'd listened to our side of the story patiently. She took in everything, and didn't judge us. Of Arjun's lies, she'd only said one sentence.

'Poor guy! How horrible must he have felt when he did these things!'

Which surprised the both of us, and had completely toppled Arjun over, for he now only looked at her with starry mooney heart eyes, which was quite disgusting. She, for her part, played hard to get. He'd confessed to me just a week ago that he was in love with her, and always had been.

They were going to be okay, I knew that somehow.

"Are you coming to the movie?" Shruthi asked me.

"No, please, you guys enjoy. But don't have dinner for I'll be cooking! It's a new recipe today!" I beamed. Somehow I'd gotten a few hobbies that I enjoyed now, and was useful as well.

My father was paralysed from the waist down, and couldn't move much, and couldn't speak more than a few words. Something to do with spinal cord damage.Apparently it didn't happen very often, and the doctors weren't optimistic.

Arjun and I gave away the wretched money to various orphanages and kept a small portion of it towards father's medical expenses. Arjun and I took turns taking care of him. In his words,'it's the ultimate revenge we can give him. He'll just have to live with the fact that the people he hated are the ones taking care of him.'

"We should get going then." My brother said.

"Dude, what's the hurry?"

"It's about time,now." He said. "For the movie."

The two of them stood up, although I knew Shruthi was still hungry, which was weird. Anyway, I stood up to send them off. My brother had begun to say something, but stopped.

"I didn't-" I began,but I only stumbled, and the coffee in my hand flew in the air and landed on the shirt of the guy standing in front.

"Ohmygosh! Sorry, so sorry! I was just talking to my bro-" I began, waving my hand nervously. "Is it hot? I'll wash your shirt-umm, is there anything I can do?"

"Calm you shall be hmm?" The guy said, looking at me amused. One look at him and you could tell he was naive, innocent, and normal, like Shruthi.

Maybe that's what I'd always wanted. Some normality

"Thou shall not quote Star Wars. Very rough, course, and irritating." I said. The guy broke into a laugh which was like the clamour of bells, very intriguing.

I saw my brother smile at me knowingly, from the distance.

He'd tripped me on purpose.