Armaan ’s POV

I was talking to my classmate Bharat in the corridor while holding my science project when someone suddenly came running and collided with me. My project fell down from hands and got broken into pieces.

“Are you an idiot?” I yelled at the girl standing before me . Her gaze was lowered and she ran inside the classroom, ignoring me.

This science project was extremely important and I had made it for our science exhibition which was supposed to be held tomorrow.

How dare she? She didn't even bother to apologise for what she did .

“Ek tum mera project gira di aur , bina maafi maange aake baith bhi gayi. Ab yeh project kaya tum banaaogi?” I yelled at the girl sitting before my eyes

(First of all my project dropped because of you ,then you even came inside the classroom and quietly sat without even apologising to me . Will you redo my project?)

That girl was resting her head atop of the desk and was most probably pretending to ignore me. The sight of her ignoring me made me even more infuriated .

I shook her a little and yelled at her “Kal tum mera project bana kar laaogi? ”

(Will you make and bring my project tomorrow?)

She raises her head and looks at me with her big bluish green orbs . There was a little wetness in those eyes .

“Quit blabbering , it's all your fault . You were the one standing in my way . ” she yelled with her teary eyes .She was making me mad. I clenched my fist tightly and spat“No I'm not you were the one running like a crazy girl being chased by dogs . Now you have to redo my science project that I spent two weeks making .” She ignored me again and rested her head atop of the desk.

I raised my voice and asked “Now at least don’t you even have an ounce of decency to help me make the project again. The teacher is gonna scold and punish me just because of you.”

Some faint sniffling and sobbing voices landed on my ears . It was her , she started sobbing uncontrollably as big drops of tears fell from her eyes over the desk.

Her gaze was still lowered but I could see her face and nose getting red.

Soon I felt some eyes watching over us .

“Arrey !kaya yaar ladki ko rulaa diya ?”. Pratyush said to me teasingly .

(Oh! buddy, you made a girl cry)

I looked at her , who was crying a baby now and raised my voice at her“Isme itna rone dhone waala kaya baat hai , ek toh galti tumhaara aur ro , dho bhi tum hi rahi ho .”

(What's there to cry? It was all your own fault and now you're the one who is crying!.)

Soon the bell rang and I returned to my desk . As the lunch break was over everybody returned to the classroom.

Oh ! shit ! I didn't do the task our Social Science teacher gave us . I'm not good at history anyways and today she will take our test .

Our social science and English teacher Surbhi Mishra entered the classroom. “Good afternoon mam!” We greeted her in unison.

“Sit down and good afternoon students.” The chair scraped against the floor as she took her seat .

“Madhu, Saransh , Mithali and Anushka. Hopefully you've learned everything I told you all to learn .” “Yes , mam!” they replied in unison.

These were so called Good students of our class who were best in studies . The teacher asked them a couple of questions and then told them to ask questions to all the students present in the classroom.

They started asking questions to each and every student one by one and now it was my turn .

As usual I was unable to reply, history has always been my weak point . Surbhi mam gave me her usual punishment, she asked me to stand beside the door with my hands up in the air. I follow as instructed by her .

“Maanyata, Maanyata!” Mithali called out the name of the girl I was arguing with a few minutes ago. She raised her head , her face was still red and her eyes were still puffy from crying .

Then she proceeded to ask questions from that girl. She was unusually quiet today. She didn't answer anything. She has always been the type of girl who doesn't open her mouth until absolutely necessary. She isn't the best but not as bad at studies as me.

Surbhi mam gave her the same punishment as she gave me. She walked towards me with her gaze still lowered and raised her hands up in the air , standing beside me . As soon as she raised up her hands, her blazer sleeves shifted downwards revealing her slender wrist . I noticed some marks on her wrist as if someone had clenched her wrist way too tightly. She even got some wired skin like marks on her wrist . Some horizontal marks were purplish red in colour while other vertical marks were of skintone. Those marks looked even more severe on her pale skin .

The bell finally rang after forty five minutes of lectures. We finally got to lower our hands and my whole hand was aching in pain . After this period we had our maths classes which was the last class of the day.

I'm not sure why I did this or what got into me but I decided to follow that girl home today. We have been studying together in the same class since we were six years old and even used to live in the same neighborhood and used to go school by the same bus until she moved to a different neighbourhood. In this whole decade I've never seen her smiling or talking to anyone until needed .

I started following her but tried my best to not get noticed by her.

After half an hour of walking , she suddenly started running and went inside a thin dark lane . I followed her behind as she started running in panic .

Suddenly we hit a dead end and she turned towards me and started crying like a baby “Plea…please…. don't hurt me.” she said , sniffling and stuttering .

“I…I'm not here to hurt you. ”

Oh! Shit , Did she notice me earlier and misunderstood my intentions?

She started crying even loudly “Please don't…just don't hurt me. I'm sorry for earlier. Please let me go .” Big droplets of tears started pouring down her cheeks . Her whole face became red , she was shivering and crying like a baby.

How should I calm her down?

I walked towards her and started caressing her shoulder “Calm down, My bad for scaring you. But I'm not here to hurt you. ” Saying this I pulled up the sleeves of her blazer revealing the scars on wrist .

“I…I saw them today while you were standing beside me . I…I just…” I left the sentence incomplete . I had no idea what to tell her , to be honest I myself didn't know why I decided to follow her. She pushed me aside and ran away from there crying.

Oh shit! Yaar . It seems like I scared the hell out of her.

I watched as she ran , her sight fading in distance before she finally disappeared from my sight .

I also left soon and took an auto back to my home since I had missed my school bus earlier .