The notification on the chat popped just as Nalini was about to climb the stairs to her floor. Her foot paused; her eyes flicked to the phone and she swiped up to unlock. There, under the name — Pari, HINS — a classmate she’d texted a few times and liked well enough, glowed a new long message. She opened it out of curiosity. A block of text stared back; it mildly surprised her. What could Pari be messaging her about at this hour?

‘GIRL u know ur friend Aarav, right? we were at the badminton court, and there was this tall fresher — stupidly handsome too, the kind of face South Delhi girls would die over — and he was asking about him. Described him as having a sprained ankle and seeming really, really pissed off. Could only be your guy.’

Nalini’s eyebrow rose as the message registered. No doubt about it — that fresher must be the one Aarav had been fuming about. And now this fresher wasn’t running away; he was asking around for Aarav? Interesting. Very interesting.

Never one to back down from drama — in fact, practically allergic to missing any theatrical moment — she closed that chat and opened the group chat she, Karan and Aarav shared.

“guys,” she typed.

“GUYS,” Nalini sent like she was launching a flare.

Karan, who was also on stairs but answered immediately because spatial awareness is for losers and because he lived to dramatize everything, answered quickly: “what”

Nalini: “that fresher. Aarav’s giant.”

Before she could finish her next thought, Aarav’s terse interruption blinked into the thread: “he’s not my anything.”

She ignored the denial. “As I was saying — the giant. He was asking about Aarav. Pari from badminton told me.”

Karan: “how does she even know who it was”

Nalini: “how many tall freshers with a stupidly handsome face and a golden-retriever-with-a-deathwish do we know? it’s him. the giant.”

Aarav: “what did he want now”

No emojis, but the glare practically radiated off his message. Nalini suppressed an amused smile. It was always so satisfying to see the shorter man heated.

Nalini typed: “nothing. she said he just asked about you, and apparently wanted to apologise for your little… ‘incident’.”

Aarav froze. He had been writing in the library as he checked his messages — because unlike some people, he still tried to be academically responsible — but the text halted his pen midstroke. For the past few days he’d been relieved, because he’d managed to file Nikhil under “annoying footnote” and move on. Now that footnote wanted a promotion to the whole text.

Meanwhile, Karan, having reached his room and flopped dramatically on his bed without changing out of his day clothes, whistled low and rolled onto his stomach. He didn’t even put down his phone. “well, well,” he typed, theatrically, “the giant is on the hunt for our little angel of vengeance.”

Aarav, recovering from the initial shock, felt a surge of hot, pure fury. The audacity. After all he’d endured, after the humiliation and the twisted ankle, the giant — that infuriating, arrogant first year — didn’t even plan to vanish quietly. Instead, he was actively looking Aarav up. Going around asking people. Spreading the story. An apology? Pfft. As if that ignorant, unremorseful, brazen fresher had any idea what apology meant.

His anger made him slam his notebook shut so hard the sound cut through the hushed library. The chair scraped like a warning. Heads turned. Normally, Aarav would have blushed and ducked his head, mortified at attracting attention. Not this time. The fury overrode embarrassment. He shoved his textbooks into his bag like they owed him money, jaw set into a cold line, and started for the door, the motion quick and decisive.

Then he stopped. Just at the threshold, a thought as clear and cold as ice hit him: this is exactly what the giant wants.

Of course. Asking about him, asking around — that was bait. The giant wanted a reaction. He wanted Aarav to storm out like an emotional cannonball, to give him the spectacle he craved. It was calculated provocation, not clumsy curiosity. The absurdity of it made Aarav’s anger curdle into something far more dangerous: deliberate, patient revenge.

He let the door handle go. The instant-hot instinct to charge deflated, replaced by a slow, ice-cold smile that felt like a promise. The move would show the giant nothing. No storming, no dramatic confrontation, no free entertainment.

A message popped from Karan — “aarav is going to run to the hostel building and the first year’s area now.” Aarav tapped his reply with a deliberately languid thumb: “i’m not going anywhere. that is what he wants.” He added another: “if he wants my attention so badly, he’s going to have to work a lot harder than that. ignore him. the best punishment for a performer is an empty theater.”

He locked the phone, slipped it into his pocket, and walked back to his table. He didn’t open it again, even when it buzzed with a flurry of increasingly dramatic messages from Karan and Nalini. The war, he decided, was still on — but he would not be reduced to dancing to Nikhil’s tune. If the fresher desired a reaction, he’d have to earn it. Aarav’s plan was now to starve the boy of his favorite thing: attention.

Nalini read the typing bubbles and grinned. Karan, sprawled on his bed, chortled and picked up his phone to craft a small, gleeful counter-plan — because the two loved a good play and hated a dull scene. Both of them loved it when the situation thickened, even if for Aarav it was an actual kettledrum of irritation, but for Karan and Nalini it was Monday’s entertainment.

You could see the chemistry of it all: Nalini’s delicious hunger for spectacle; Karan’s instant amplification of every small calamity into prime theatre; and Aarav — who, despite the hot-headed exterior, was doing the most dangerous thing of all: he was practicing restraint. For once his fury had been replaced by calculation, and that was ten times worse for the perpetrator.

Because Nikhil loved to provoke. It was his sport. His devil-may-care charm made him think he could get away with poking the beehive and watching the chaos. That spark in his eye, the smug, reckless half-smile — it provoked until it succeeded. On that morning, he had practically leaned in to press the button, to goad Aarav until the shorter man exploded. And for a breathless second, it looked like he might win: Aarav’s fingers had clenched, his face had gone red, his whole body poised for confrontation.

But then Aarav didn’t play. He stepped back, watched the bait as it dangled, and turned away. The show was cancelled.