Besabriyaan

Chapter 59

A R Y A M A N

I was this mysterious kid at school whom never any other kids approached to talk to. Being rescued by members of a catholic school from some part of the world rarely gave me an opportunity to be normal. All my childhood and in adolescence, I was made to believe by the bullies around me that I was rejected by my parents, that I was trash. The walls of the school witnessed the abuse I underwent every minute I passed there and those were the minutes I wished that I were terminated by my parents when they still had a choice.

Years later which felt like centuries, I was discovered and that abused kid found the home he was made to believe was his. The dead parts in him saw a ray of hope that maybe he wasn't a trash but even those rays were accompanied by shadows of the evil. The evil that was present in the house. The evil that hated me every moment since the time I was brought back. The evil that had abhorrence crawling under its skin every time it would watch the parents care for me.

The parents, whose marriage had already fallen apart by then, found another social reason to stick together and it was me and the evil hated that I was the reason. The evil hated me every millisecond I was before his eyes and the evil promised to take away everything that was ever dear to me. Every time the evil looked me in the eye, it claimed that I was just like it; that I was no different; that it saw right through me.

The faint rays of the sun tried to seep in through the heavy drapes and as I sat on the floor of the same semi-burnt room, staring at the ashes, I just realised that the evil was always right. I was just like him. I was no different than him. I was him.

M A N I K

"The hallway cctv(s)?" I asked, jogging on the treadmill.

"Everything is taken care of." My bodyguard and confidante informed. "Also, Mr.Aryaman Malhotra has told everybody that it was probably because of the candle and that he had been careless with it. The hotel staffs tried to dig deeper as to why didn't the alarms go off but a little money and now their mouths are shut."

"Good job." Tapping doubly on the AirPod led to disconnection of the call and increasing the speed, I took up running looking at the wide, sunny city through the glassed wall before.

"Aryaman...is up to something." I thought myself. "He is not the one to sit quiet because whenever in the past he has taken a blame on him for something, he has made sure to expose some dirtier bones in my closet."

In the meantime, I almost missed when Murthy suddenly entered the gym but her reflection on the glass, about to hit the air bike forced my head to stop thinking about all the negative stuffs, including Aryaman.

I don't think she noticed me because stuffing the earplugs, she was mindfully carrying on her business, cycling at quite a decent speed for a girl. Needless to say, I being a classic rascal had to choose the same workout to make her notice me because nobody ignores Manik Malhotra. Starting the bike just on her left, I noticed her surprised and slowly bitter turning face.

"You can't be serious." Irritated, she said to herself looking away.

Acting nonchalant, I smirk. "I don't know what's that supposed to mean but yeah, good morning to you too."

"It's eight in the morning and you never workout at eight in the morning. How am I supposed to interpret this?" She commented, as usual bitterly.

"I don't see a reason why." Biking, I tried to keep my focus at the muted television hanging ahead.

The gym was mostly empty at this time of the morning because nobody and I repeat nobody on a vacation workouts that early in a day. As for my case, I was too high on what I did to Aryaman last night, my nerves didn't let me sleep so I chose to burn some calories but I was glad that I did.