It was the next day, at the same time — 2 p.m.

Students shuffled into the DH with the slow resignation of people who had long accepted their academic fate. Bags thudded onto tables. Steel stools scraped against the floor. Soon enough, the various table teachers joined their respective stations, and the class officially began.

Today, they had covered neck triangles in the lecture, and now they were expected to identify the same on dissected cadavers — which sounded far more achievable in theory than in practice.

On Table 1, Dr. Avantika stood at the head, a scalpel held loosely in her hand. Her peppered hair was tied back in a low ponytail, and she began speaking with an air of confidence that suggested deep knowledge… unfortunately paired with a complete absence of coherent structure — anatomically, grammatically, or spiritually.

“So… this… yes… the region where the triangles are because… the triangles are there…” she said, waving the scalpel vaguely in the general direction of the cadaver’s neck.

The students stared back with the glazed patience of people who had transcended suffering and entered enlightenment. They had accepted their destiny the day they were assigned Dr. Avantika for head and neck extremity.

Aryan listened for a minute. Maybe two, if one was being generous.

He tried — sincerely, genuinely, really — to follow her explanation. He truly did. But the sentences didn’t make sense. The words drifted into unrelated tangents about “important structures” without ever clarifying what those important structures actually were.

Someone asked a question.

Dr. Avantika answered and explained something completely unrelated.

The student tried to contest it and re-asked his question.

She explained the same unrelated thing again, but somehow worse.

Aryan blinked slowly.

His face wasn’t annoyed or frustrated. He wasn’t angry. He was simply… recalculating. Quietly weighing his options.

His gaze drifted to the opposite table. The teacher there was actually explaining neck triangles — boundaries, contents, logic — the holy trinity of anatomy teaching. Additionally, a few people he occasionally talked to were sitting there.

He glanced back at his own table, where Dr. Avantika had now wandered into a rant about something that had absolutely nothing to do with neck triangles as a concept, a philosophy, or a geometric shape.

And just like that, the decision was made.

He closed his book gently, almost apologetically — as if he didn’t want to offend the air molecules — and quietly relocated.

Tara was listening to the explanation at her own table and didn’t notice when Aryan joined.

“…and that is all for neck triangles. Now, carefully trace these triangles and memorise their boundaries from the book. Feel free to approach me if you have any questions,” the teacher concluded.

It had been about five minutes since then.

Tara had picked up a skull and was staring at it with the intense focus of someone pretending very hard to understand neck triangles. What she was actually understanding about neck triangles from a skull was known only to her and possibly a higher power.

From the outside, she looked composed. Poised. Chin tilted slightly, as if visualising the neck triangles on the skull from sheer memory and spatial genius alone. She looked like the embodiment of academic discipline.

From the end of the table, Yash felt his heart clench.

He did not know her internal monologue.

'Why are there triangles on the neck. Who invented this geometric suffering. Why the fuck is digastric in the neck. That sounds like something that belongs in the digestive system. Fuck anatomy. I hate this place. I hate triangles. I hate geometry. I am being personally victimised by anatomy.'

Aryan, after the explanation, briefly contemplated returning to his original table — a thought that died instantly the moment he glanced at Dr. Avantika still enthusiastically not teaching neck triangles.

He looked back at Table 6.

His friends were here. The teaching was comprehensible. The emotional climate felt safe.

The decision to stay settled quietly in his chest.

Now, he just needed a stool.

Which was when his gaze landed on Tara.

Or rather — the empty stool beside her.

He approached with a small pause, just long enough to make sure he wasn’t interrupting anything important. His presence was soft, almost careful, like he didn’t want to disturb the space she occupied.

Then, in that gentle voice of his — low, warm, and barely rising above the background noise of the hall — he spoke.

“Is this… empty?”

Three words.

That was all.

And just like that, Tara’s brain short-circuited.

For a fraction of a second, she could only stare.

Because — oh.

Oh.

Up close, his face was even softer than she remembered. Gentle eyes. Dark irises that somehow looked like an endless abyss and also impossibly kind at the same time. The edges of his expressions were rounded — no sharpness, no aggression, no ego. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t demanding.

He was just… asking.

Gently.

Why was he so gentle.

Why was everything about him so offensively gentle.

Her thoughts dissolved into white noise.

'He spoke to me. Directly. We are speaking. WE ARE SPEAKING. Oh my god. Oh my god. Stay calm. Act normal. You are a normal functioning adult human being. Breathe. Why is he so close. Why does he smell like clean laundry and emotional stability. What do I do with my hands.'

“Can I take it?” Aryan asked again, voice just as soft, pulling her out of her haze.

She blinked rapidly, shaking her head slightly to clear the daze. Schooling her face into a neutral, nonchalant, and — most importantly — not-awestruck expression, she nodded once.

“Yes,” she said, trying very hard to sound like a person who had not just experienced a spiritual awakening.

She picked up her kit, which had been resting on the stool.

Aryan took the stool carefully, as if it were fragile.

'It’s not a seismic emotional event, Tara. Get a grip,' she told herself, internally screaming.

“Thanks,” he said quietly before walking away with it.

To him, the interaction was probably minor — something that would dissolve into the background noise of DH by the time the hour ended.

To Tara, it was cinematic- Something that would replay in her head in high definition for the next forty-eight hours and be dramatically recounted to her friends with excessive hand gestures and emotional exaggeration.