The shutter caught more than light; it caught a crack in the perfect.
Meera Joshi had learned early that the best photographs were the ones people didn't know you were taking. The stolen laughter, the wrong angle, the moment someone believed they were alone — those were the frames that made her stomach flip and the campus magazine editors light up. So she wandered the canteen that morning with her camera slung like a talisman, hunting small, messy truths.
He was everywhere and nowhere — the rumor that lived in the corridors: Aarav Malhotra. Law prodigy. Debate champion. The kind of man whose name carried a hush, whose arrival straightened shoulders and smoothed wrinkles in the room's collective armor. People respected him and feared the quiet baritone of his praise. Meera had seen him a dozen times in lecture halls and panels, cool and controlled, a statue dressed in a perfectly tailored blazer. He was the kind of person who made brilliance look effortless; he was also, the campus whispered, impossibly proud.
Which is why catching him unguarded felt like striking something bright and illegal.
She'd been waiting near the old debate hall because the light there that time of morning was merciless and beautiful. Students flowed in clusters: coffee in hand, backpacks slung, voices low and quick. Meera was half-listening to Priya rant about a professor when movement at the far end prickled her attention. Aarav walked in — deliberate, composed. He paused, adjusted his blazer, and reached for a paper cup as if he'd done this a thousand times. He turned his face away just as a gust of air caught him and, of course, he sneezed.
It was an ordinary human moment, a crease in the marble. Meera didn't have to think. Her finger flexed. Click. The photo looked ridiculous and honest: Aarav with one eye squeezed, mouth mid-scrunch, a stray napkin caught under his hand. The world sometimes needed a reminder that marble could cough.
She grinned without meaning to. "Too good," she muttered and, on impulse, uploaded it to the campus forum with a caption that was equal parts mischief and mercy: Even kings have noodle days.
It spread like a small, warm leak across campus. Notifications lit her phone in the lecture room like a tiny chorus. Laughing emojis, tags, forwarded screenshots. Priya elbowed her, delighted.
"You're evil," Priya whispered with a laugh. "He'll kill you."
"Let him," Meera said, half-joking, but her stomach thrummed with the little electric thrill of transgression. A good prank was a rite of passage. Aarav was untouchable — maybe the point was to touch at least once.
By the time she stomped her chai cup into the bin, the banter had turned to gossip. The picture was on every screen; the captions were mercilessly inventive. Meera basked in the afterglow of having nudged the campus narrative for a second, the sort of feeling that made you stupid with boldness.
Then she looked up.
The corridor felt colder. Students all seemed to hold their breath the way people do when an ambulance passes. He was at the far end, and the room obeyed his presence — a choreography Meera had seen before, only now it was pointed straight at her. Aarav stood with his back to the sunlight, silhouette severe, eyes like smooth stones catching the light. He wasn't moving quickly, weren't there were no dramatic strides — he just was, and the crowd shifted politely around him.
Her grin dried on her lips.
It should have been impossible for him to notice. She had expected, in some childish corner of her mind, that the prank would land like a pebble and then the pond would forget. But his gaze, once it found her, didn't wander the way anyone else's did. It shaped itself to her like a compass needle finding north.
Meera felt the hair lift on her arms. For the first time, she realized how small and exposed she looked, camera still warm in her hands. The humor that had buoyed her all morning curdled into something harder.
She tried a joke that tasted too loud in her own ears. "Relax, Malhotra. You'll live," she called, aiming for casual and landing somewhere between insolent and nervous.
He didn't smile. Instead he folded the paper cup in his hand and stepped forward with a quiet that made the corridor seem to shrink. People stepped aside a few inches as if avoiding splinters. Meera watched him close the distance with the same fascination she felt when watching a pattern emerge in a spilled cup of coffee.
There was no warning flourish. No dramatic accusation. He stopped when the space between them felt like a rope.
"Did you enjoy that?" he asked — not loud, exactly, but low enough so that only she could hear. His voice held an unhurried calm the way a locked door holds the cold. It set the color in Meera's cheeks to something she couldn't command.
She swallowed, forced a laugh. "It was just a photo. People sneeze, you know."
His face was unreadable, but his eyes held a slow appraisal that made her feel both seen and very small. "You made me look ordinary."
It was absurd. He, Aarav Malhotra, called ordinary his injury. Meera felt her own smile turn brittle. "Congratulations," she blurted, because sarcasm was armor. "You're human. What a relief."
He tucked the cup back under his arm with perfect composure. "You have no idea what you've done."
Her smugness fluttered; curiosity and a prick of fear nudged in. "Uploaded a sneeze. Not exactly high treason."
"Wrong," he said, almost softly. "You made yourself visible."
The phrase landed in her like an unexpected cold wind. Meera's pulse punched at her throat. Visibility was exposure; exposure demanded reaction.
Students murmured at the fringes; a couple craned necks, drawn to an unspoken charge between them. For a second, she wanted to run — laugh it off and melt into the crowd. For another second, the idea of embarrassing him felt delicious and dangerous.
Instead she clenched her camera strap and tried to reclaim the tone of the morning. "Well, if being human is a crime, consider me very guilty."
He tilted his head, and the smallest of curls formed at the corner of his mouth — not amusement, not quite, but the shadow of a smile that suggested consequence rather than forgiveness.
"I'll be watching," he said, very plainly, as if that settled things.
Meera opened her mouth to retort, to promise she'd enjoy the visibility while it lasted, but the words died. His gaze held hers with a weight that felt like an obligation or a warning — she couldn't tell which.
When she finally tore her eyes away and scuttled down the corridor, her phone buzzed in her palm: a notification, another screenshot, a new cascade of comments.
She laughed then — a little too high, a little unsteady — but the sound had no light in it. The photo had been a spark. The corridor had become strangely cavernous. And somewhere at the far end of that cavern, Aarav Malhotra had decided to look right at her.
Her grin vanished.
Oh no.