I was passing down the street when I heard someone call my name.
"Navya!... Navya!.."
I looked around to see who it was when my eyes landed on the same old lady, to whom I had handed the umbrella.
She was standing in front of her shop, facing me, her hand waving weakly, signaling for me to walk back to her.
I started in her direction, opposite to where I was going earlier.
The nearer I got, the more clearly I saw how pale and sick she looked, with wrinkles all over her face.
Once I reached there, she held me by my arm gently and handed me a brown packet.
"My child, can you do me a favor by dropping this off at that house there?" I looked at the slightly visible three-storey house she was pointing at, across the street.
Looking back at her old figure and her restless eyes, made me feel obliged to do so out of respect, even if it took 10 minutes of my time at the park.
"Sure, aunty. Anything else I can help you with?" I asked her as I stepped down the stairs of her shop.
"No, Navya. Such a sweet child you are. God bless you." She smiled as I greeted her and left with the packet in my hand.
I planned of handing the packet over to the first person I'll get by the door. But the universe had some other plan.
I reached the doorstep and was about to ring the doorbell when I heard someone shouting inside. It was a woman.
"I gave you one thing to do, look at what you have done! You can't perform a simple task properly, and you plan on being an architect? Hah! Look at you, you are nothing but a good-for-nothing loser!"
These words hit me hard, even though they weren't meant for me. There was silence for a few seconds.
"What?!" I heard her once more.
I thought I'd hear the other person speak in defense; instead, I heard footsteps that came closer to the front door with each second.
I decided it was best for me to leave the packet by the doorstep and head-off the porch.
But before I could react, the door creaked open. I felt a sudden push on my left arm and fell hard on my butt.
"Ouch!" I screamed with pain, just to realize that my left palm had a cut from the tiny glass container, inside the brown packet, now shattered with the tablets inside the container spreading everywhere.
The cut was small but it stung too bad.
A beautiful girl wearing a baby pink kurta pacing towards me with a worried look, is what I noticed looking up at the front door with hope of help.
"Are you okay?" she asked me as she helped me to my feet.
I stayed quiet and looked back in the direction from where I was pushed to see the person had already rushed away. I wish I did the same earlier.
She took me inside to clean the wound and made me sit on the sofa. I waited until she came back with the first-aid kit.
With immense pain in my left palm, I got my mobile phone with the other. As I looked at the time, my phone's battery died.
"Not again! I only got it fixed two weeks ago." I murmured, then kept it back.
I looked up at the wall adjacent to where I was sitting and saw a clock hanging on the wall. '03:45 p.m.' It read. I had been here for 10 minutes already.
I was scanning the room when my eyes fell on a picture in a photo frame, kept on the bookshelf.
I went closer to have a better look at it, and what I saw made my heart skip a beat.
A group of kids, smiling at the camera, and a child caught my eye. Something about that one child was different. I leaned in closer and realized he had those same pair of eyes. My stomach churned.
~
I thanked her, Mira, for fixing my wound and stepped out of the house. For some reason, I could feel that this wasn't the last time I'd be here.
When I reached the gate, I noticed a few droplets of blood near the entrance, probably left by the person who had run past me earlier.
Whatever Mira had said rushed through my head.
"None of my business," I thought, and got my phone out.
I tried switching it on; luckily, it worked. '4:15 p.m.', I saw.
15 minutes to my tuition to begin, but I decided to skip that day.
I walked past the park to go tell Aunty about the packet first, but I saw her giving someone the umbrella I had handed over to her and then heading inside the shop.
A guy with a yellow sweatshirt on, along with a pair of black cargo pants. I could see sideways that he had a buzz cut, talking on his phone, facing backwards while also holding the umbrella.
Upon reaching there, words instinctively blurted from my mouth, "Excuse me? Is that yours?"
With his reflex, he then turned around, and my heart skipped a beat.
There he was, Vivaan Dixit, after ages, in front of me with the same pair of eyes that had been haunting me for so long.
"Navya? Hi."
All I did was glance at him. Our smiles met naturally, like the polite touch of hands in a formal handshake, yet there was an unspoken familiarity in it, like old friends reconnecting after years. Beneath that ease, however, I felt a subtle tension — a question I wasn't ready to answer.
Somehow, I had the distinct feeling that whatever had brought us here wasn't finished with me yet.