He didn't shout. He didn't glare theatrically. He simply existed with a stillness that pulled the air taut, like a wire waiting for a bow.
Meera's laugh died in her throat the moment she saw him. Aarav Malhotra up close was a study in silent danger: the precise slope of his nose, the slow calm of his breath, the way he held himself as if the world were a chessboard and every person a piece already assigned. Up until that moment, she had thought of him as a story element — a foil to her mischief, a granite statue to tease. Standing in front of him, camera strap digging into her palm, she felt small in a way she hadn't planned.
"You think this is funny?" he asked again, but there was a new edge to it — not anger, exactly, but a steady, enclosed intensity that made her stomach hollow.
"It was a photo," she said, attempting a smile that felt too tight. "A silly one. Lighten up, Malhotra. Maybe people need a laugh."
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. "You made me look ordinary," he said, each word deliberate. "You made yourself visible."
She blinked. "Visibility is… good? Progress? Also, I'm not sure you count as 'ordinary' in any database I know."
Aarav's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. There was, Meera realized with a jolt, an expression that belonged not to humor but to someone cataloging a curiosity. "You don't understand," he murmured. "Not yet."
"Then educate me," she said too quickly. "Because I'm not sure I care about your dignity more than the rest of the campus." She tried a joke. It landed thin. The corridor hummed with the low, collective curiosity of students who had sensed the charge between them; whenever Aarav stopped, an audience formed as if magnetized.
Instead of answering, he folded his hands around the paper cup and took a measured sip, his gaze never leaving her face. Meera felt like an insect under a microscope. Part of her flared with indignation — who was he to make her small? — and part of her, stupidly, was intrigued. Why him? Why this level of focus? She had pranked presidents of student clubs before and watched them sputter and smile. No one had ever stared at her like that.
"You've made a joke out of something I protect," he said finally, voice low. "And now, you are visible to me. That changes things."
"What things?" Meera asked. Her tone was sharper now; she needed to carve space with words. "That you get an honest laugh at your expense? That students stop whispering when you walk in? I'm doing the campus a favor—humanizing the untouchable."
He stepped closer, the crowd giving him the width he moved in. Meera felt the air around him thicken, like heat over concrete on a summer afternoon. "Visibility forces responsibility," he said. "And responsibility forces response."
She wanted to laugh at the rhetoric, to toss out a quip about law-school slogans. Instead, the words lodged like pebbles in her chest.
"Is this about ego, then?" she asked, trying to keep the conversation light. "Because if so, I can take it down. I can delete the post."
"No," Aarav said. The decisive "no" sliced the air. "This isn't about deleting a photo."
Of course it wasn't. Her hands were suddenly aware of the weight of the camera strap against her skin, of the hurried feel of her pulse. "Then what do you want from me? An apology? A public retraction? A witch-hunt?" Her voice rose before she could stop it. Students at the far end glanced toward them; gossip is its own kind of audience.
His expression softened for the first time, but it wasn't warmth. It was the look of someone considering the logistics of a plan. "Notice," he said simply. "Pay attention. Don't be careless."
Meera's patience thinned. "Notice? Are you lecturing me? You could have just— I don't know—asked me to take it down? Threatening people isn't exactly your style."
He regarded her with slow amusement. "I don't threaten." His voice was a flat plane of accuracy. "I state. I ensure."
Her laugh came out brittle. "Oh. Right. 'Ensure.' That's comforting."
The corner of Aarav's mouth lifted minutely. "You'll understand," he promised, "when something you deem small becomes something that could break you."
She opened her mouth, intent on answering, on telling him that she didn't break easily, that she'd been bruised and stitched more times than he could imagine — and that none of it had made her smaller. But as she watched him, the veneer of confidence started to chip. The thing that frightened her wasn't the size of his words. It was their certainty. He spoke as someone who had rearranged outcomes before and expected similar results now.
"You're being dramatic," she said, because drama was better than fear.
"I prefer precise language," he corrected. "And actions."
Silence lengthened between them. Meera watched his silhouette, the steady rise and fall of his breath, and felt irrationally that if she took one wrong step, the world would tilt. A student who had been whispering nearby cleared his throat and, out of politeness or fear, moved along.
Aarav stepped back, folding his coat around himself like armor. "You will see," he said. "Not because I want to hurt you, Meera. Because I cannot allow you to be careless."
"Why are you so invested?" she shot back, unable to help the ache of curiosity. "Why bother at all?"
He looked at her then, fully, and for a flicker, the mask of cool shifted to something almost human. "Because you don't pretend," he said. "You look at things straight. You joke when you are scared. You do not bow. And I do not like things I cannot control."
There it was, blunt and naked: the root of him. Meera wanted to be furious, to retort that she didn't belong to anyone's control. She wanted, too, to understand the taut line of longing that she suddenly imagined beneath his habitual calm. Instead, she said what she could: "You're impossible."
"Consistently impossible," he agreed.
She wanted to walk away, to reinsert herself into the safe anonymity of the crowd. It would have been easy — a step, a turn, a theater of indifference. But arrogance and curiosity warred in her chest. The prank had been a spark; now it felt like tinder spread under dry brush.
"Enjoy the attention while it lasts," she muttered, and turned to leave, pretending the tremor in her hands was from the brisk morning air and not from the shock of being so intently measured.
His voice stopped her a half-step later. "I'll be watching, Meera Joshi. That's a fact."
She wanted to laugh it off. She wanted to deny the effect of his words and the strange thrill coiling through her. Instead she kept walking, phone buzzing with new comments and messages, yet the noise around her had a new, thin edge. As she melted into the crowd, she felt watched. Not merely seen, but mapped.
When she reached the stairwell, she paused and leaned against the cool concrete, closing her eyes for a second to steady herself. People would call what happened next pity, prudence, or protection; she didn't know yet what to call it.
She slipped her hand into her camera bag, thumb finding the familiar curve of the strap. Somewhere behind her, across the corridor, Aarav Malhotra eased forward like a tide. The game had shifted. The joke had stopped being hers.
And in the pocket of her bag, a new fluttering of notifications started: students commenting, a thread forming, a dozen different takes on the photograph — funny, harsh, brave, risky. Meera scrolled with one thumb, heart beating in a rhythm she didn't like.
Visibility, he had said. Responsibility, he had added. She shivered, and for reasons she couldn't yet untangle, the words settled into her bones like a warning and a promise all at once.