Thursday Morning — Three Days Before the Gala

He hadn't slept. Not really. Not since he started counting.

Awake, technically, since around three—that particular kind of not-sleeping where the body lies still and the mind does not. He'd stared at the ceiling long enough to know every crack in it.

At six he gave up, showered, dressed.

Stood at the bathroom mirror with his hands on the sink and his eyes on his own face.

He looked like someone who hadn't slept.

He went downstairs.

Meera was already in the kitchen. She looked up when he appeared.

"You're early."

"Couldn't sleep."

A second of stillness—her eyes moving over his face, reading something there—then she turned back to the stove. "Sit. Ira has her mock test today. She was asking if you could go over a few things with her before she leaves."

"Is she up?"

"She will be in twenty minutes."

He sat at the table and drank his coffee slowly. The house was quiet the way it is before everyone else wakes up—a different kind of quiet than night, less weighted.

When Ira appeared she was already in uniform, hair half done, notes tucked under one arm. She dropped into the chair across from him with the energy of someone performing calm they didn't quite feel.

"You look terrible." Her eyes swept him once, bluntly, the way only she could.

"You said that yesterday."

"Because it keeps being true." She spread her notes on the table. "Okay. Organic mechanisms. My brain went completely blank on SN2 reactions last night and I just need someone to walk me through it once."

He pulled the notes toward him.

For the next fifteen minutes they worked through it—him explaining, her asking, the back and forth finding its own rhythm. She was good. Better than she gave herself credit for.

"Stop second-guessing the things you already know."

A short, almost defensive tilt of her chin. "Easy for you to say. You've never second-guessed anything in your life."

He didn't answer that.

She gathered her notes, shoved them into her bag, then paused in the doorway. Something in her expression shifted—lighter, like she'd just remembered something good.

"Oh—Bhai. Saturday. Anaya di's performing."

His hands stilled on the table.

"She's incredible. I've seen her practice once, two years ago at one of Ma's events. I was helping set up and she was just—" Ira shook her head, the memory softening her face. "You'll see. It's not like normal dancing. It's like she's saying something."

"Mmm."

"She's really sweet too. Helped me with genetics once, just out of nowhere, because she overheard me complaining about it." A small smile at the memory. "You should meet her properly. I think you'd like her."

"I should get to the hospital."

She grinned and disappeared.

He sat at the empty table.

Then stood, picked up his coat, and left.

RIMS — Morning

The day moved fast the way busy days do, which helped.

Three emergency admits before noon. A surgery observation that ran long. A junior resident who'd made a charting error that needed correcting without humiliating him in front of the team—which required a particular kind of patience Ekalavya had to locate somewhere beneath the exhaustion.

He found it. Did the work. Kept moving.

It was during a lull between consultations—standing at the nurses' station, pen moving across a chart—that he heard two nurses talking as they passed. Not loudly. Not to him. Just to each other, the way people talk in corridors.

"...she's performing Saturday. Have you seen her before?"

"Last year's function. She's extraordinary."

"Mrs. Raivansh's favorite. Foundation sponsored everything."

He kept writing.

"Lost her whole family young. Still top of the class every semester."

"She never talks about it. You can just tell, though. Something behind the eyes."

They turned the corner. Gone.

The pen stopped.

He wasn't imagining it anymore. Everything kept pointing to her. And he didn't know what he would do if it was true.

He put the pen down.

Picked it up again.

Neil found him at lunch, eating with the focused joylessness of someone fueling a machine.

"You look worse than yesterday." Neil sat down, watching him.

"Thank you."

"That's not—" A slight lean forward, elbows on the table. "I'm saying it because I'm concerned, not because I enjoy telling you that you look terrible. Though I do, slightly."

Ekalavya almost smiled.

"Talk to me." Neil's voice dropped. "No deflecting."

"I'm adjusting. Being back is harder than I expected."

"Is it Raghav coming back next month?"

A pause.

"Partly."

Neil was quiet for a moment, jaw shifting slightly—working through what he wanted to say.

"Whatever happened eleven years ago—I never knew the whole of it. You didn't tell me and that's fine. But Lav." His eyes stayed steady on him. "You came back carrying something and you've been carrying it since you walked through the door. I can see it."

Ekalavya looked at his food.

"I know."

"Is there anything I can actually do?"

"No. Not right now."

Neil nodded slowly, didn't push. That was the thing about Neil—he knew when pushing helped and when it didn't, and he'd always known the difference with Ekalavya.

"Okay." A beat. "I'm here. That's all."

They finished lunch.

Evening — Outpatient Department

His last consultation ran late.

On his way out he passed through the corridor near the OPD waiting area and saw her—the same student, two days running now—crouched at eye level beside a small child who was crying. Not loudly. Just that quiet, persistent crying of a child who'd been frightened for too long.

She was talking to him softly. The child was listening, eyes fixed on her face, the crying gradually slowing.

She reached into her coat pocket and produced a wrapped candy—the kind of thing that had no business being in a medical student's coat pocket, and yet made complete sense—and held it out.

The child took it.

She straightened, said something to the mother, turned to go.

She didn't see him this time. She walked past him, her attention already buried in her notes, the faint scent of cherry and hospital antiseptic trailing in her wake.

Ekalavya remained rooted to the floor, his eyes tracking the sway of her white coat until she disappeared around the corner.

Then walked to the exit.

Raivansh Mansion — Dinner

The house had the particular warmth it got when Ira had had a good day. She was talking before she'd even sat down, dissecting the mock test question by question with the energy of someone who'd been saving it up all afternoon.

"Question 17—bhai, exactly what you said. Exactly." Her hands came up briefly, emphatic. "I could have hugged you."

"You can hug me now if it makes you feel better."

"I will, don't test me."

Meera was laughing. Even Aarav looked lighter than he had in days.

Ekalavya ate. Let the conversation move around him. It was enough, just now, to sit inside the warmth of it.

Then Meera, to no one in particular:

"I spoke to Anaya today. She's ready for Saturday."

The table kept moving. Ira asked something about the decorations. Aarav mentioned a guest he'd forgotten to confirm.

"She's been practicing for weeks." Meera's voice settled into something quieter, more careful. "The piece she's doing—she choreographed it herself. It's about—" A small pause, reaching for the right words. "Moving through loss. She said she wanted to do something true this year."

Ira looked up from her food. "That's going to destroy everyone in the room."

"It might." A smile.

Aarav reached for the water. Ira asked if there would be decent food at the gala or just the decorative kind.

Ekalavya looked at his plate.

Moving through loss. Something true.

He finished his dinner quietly. Excused himself when it felt possible to do so without drawing attention.

His Room — 10:00 PM

Ira knocked twenty minutes later.

He opened the door. She was in pajamas, leaning against the doorframe with the studied casualness of someone who'd worked up to something.

"Can I come in?"

He stepped back.

She came in, sat on the edge of the desk chair, looked at him directly—no preamble, no easing into it.

"You left the table again."

"I was tired."

"Bhai."

He sat on the bed.

"I know something's wrong." Her voice was even, but her hands were folded tight in her lap. "You don't have to tell me what. But you've been somewhere else since you got home. And whenever the gala comes up, or Anaya di, you get—"

"I'm fine, Ira."

"You get quiet in a different way. Not your normal quiet. A bad quiet."

He looked at her.

Seventeen. Sharp. She saw more than he'd given her credit for.

"It's complicated." A beat. "There are things I'm working through. About being back. About things that happened before I left."

"Eleven years ago."

"Yes."

She didn't ask more than that. Just sat with it.

"Are you going to be okay Saturday?"

Ekalavya looked at his hands, his fingers tracing the scars on his knuckles. "I don't know."

Ira was across the room before he could exhale—the sudden, fierce hug she'd used since she was six years old, like she thought she could hold things together through sheer grip.

"You're not alone, Bhai." Her voice was muffled briefly against his shoulder. "Whatever it is. Okay? You have us."

He put his arm around her. Didn't say anything.

She pulled back after a moment, rubbing her eye with the back of her hand in that way she did when she didn't want him to notice.

"Go to sleep. You look genuinely awful."

"You have a gift for comfort."

"I know." Moving toward the door. "Night, bhai."

"Night."

The door closed.

He sat in the quiet for a while.

Then he went to his desk, opened his laptop.

The search bar sat empty.

His hand rested on the keyboard.

He closed the laptop.

Turned off the light.

Lay down.

Two more days.

Outside, the city made its ordinary sounds. Somewhere in it, in a room he didn't know the address of, a girl was probably still awake—practicing, or studying, or both. Doing the thing she apparently always did: putting her head down and working.

He didn't let himself think past that.

He stared at the dark ceiling until sleep came. The answers didn't.

Two more days.
And whatever he'd buried would finally have a face.