After last night’s emotional rollercoaster—I expected peace.
Or maybe numbness.
Or, ideally, memory loss.

Instead, I woke up to a notification.

Not from her.
Not from Grandma.
From the class group.
Homework.

You know, these days homework doesn’t feel like learning anymore.
It feels like teachers just ran out of ideas and went—
“Hey, why not dump our existential crisis on these kids?”

Today’s gem?

“Track your academic growth over the last five years and prepare a self-evaluation project highlighting your strongest areas.”

Wow.
So basically:
“Remember everything you forgot on purpose, gather all the evidence that you existed, and make a PowerPoint out of your traumas.”

Nice.

Anyway, that meant I now had to dig through five years of textbooks, notes, and report cards.

Which sounds simple…
Until you realise that “five years ago” could be hiding under a king-size bed with twelve years’ worth of emotional clutter.

And of course, that bed lifts like a treasure chest—
If treasure meant piles of dusty notebooks, broken pens, half-torn worksheets, random scribbled poetry, and chocolate wrappers I apparently couldn’t let go of.

So yeah, I opened the bed.

Not emotionally. Physically.

That giant slab of wood and metal that pretends to be just a bed but secretly hoards the entire academic history of a my childhood.

Folders. Crumpled notebooks.
A broken ruler.
A plastic abacus.
Why is that even here?
Did I ever use it? No. But here it is—sitting like a forgotten math trauma.

Everything was right where it should’ve been—
The school ID's, the tear-soaked chocolate wrapper in the drawer, even the dried-up rose folded inside a Physics textbook I never finished.

Everything… except that one stupid rough book.
The one I gave to Grandma when she asked for “waste papers.”

And of course, that’s the one that survived.
That’s the one she decided to pass along.
And that’s the one that ended up in the hands of her—my so-called mother.
The judge.
And me? Apparently, I’m the criminal.

Crime?
Being interested in Surya.

No trial. No jury. Just a quick character certificate based on half-torn doodles and a few lines written about a boy who never even looked guilty.

Honestly, I could’ve laughed.
If it didn’t feel like someone had dragged my heart out and graded it in red pen.

Anyway. Focus.

My mission: Find five years' worth of proof that I’ve “grown.”
Not taller. Not wiser.
Just academically mutated into someone worthy of a progress bar.

I started sorting.

Pile 1: Random worksheets with no names.
Pile 2: Question papers with passive-aggressive red ink.
Pile 3: Certificates of participation—aka elegant ways to say “you showed up.”

And then—finally—report cards.

The holy grail.

I stacked them. Year-wise. Or so I thought.

Picked the first one up, expecting the usual 90-something.
You know, the numbers I was raised to believe were “acceptable.”

But no.

50%.

I blinked.

Rubbed my eyes.

Still 50.

Um. Excuse me? Since when did I flirt with failure?

Impossible. I never scored that low. Even during my dramatic phases.

Next report: 100%.
Okay, what is this? A joke? A simulation? 

Coz it's even more impossible. I’m not a fantasy novel character or Am I in someone else’s movie?

I checked the names.

And that’s when it hit.

First report? Not mine.

Dad’s.
Second one?
Her's.

And both were from class 8.

Same school name.
Same emblem.
Same year.

I paused.
Held the cards together.

A weird thought crawled in.

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

So they studied in the same school?
Same class? Same time?

I looked around the room like someone was about to jump out and confirm it.
Nobody did.

But my brain… oh, it started running.

I squinted at the cards.
Then stared into the void like a detective in a bad soap opera.

Was her’s eighth-grade crush… my dad?

I wasn’t sure.
But I wasn’t not sure either.

And that’s a dangerous place to be.

Because once you start seeing connections—everything starts looking like a clue.