The bell's ring faded into the distance, swallowed by the chatter of the courtyard. Dev and Meera stepped out from behind the library, neither speaking. The pencil test had wrung the air hollow between them — not awkward, just… stretched. Like they were both trying to hear something the world wasn't ready to say out loud.
The playground was already alive with noise. Boys kicked a muddy football. Younger kids chased each other between puddles. Teachers stood under the shade near the staff room, waving off complaints they were too tired to consider.
Dev and Meera joined the flow automatically. It would've looked strange if they didn't.
"Don't stare at anything weird today," Meera muttered. "Act normal."
"I am acting normal."
"You look like you're counting people's heartbeats."
"…I might be."
She shot him a warning glance, but before she could add anything, a sharp whistle cut the air — the P.E. sir, yelling at someone near the basketball pole.
A boy in a red house T-shirt had climbed halfway up the metal frame to retrieve a stuck ball. Wet shoes, slippery metal — the kind of foolish dare that usually ended with a scolding and a bruised elbow.
Except Dev felt a tug in his chest.A tightening.A pressure that didn't belong.
He stopped walking.
"Dev?" Meera whispered.
The boy reached higher, fingers just brushing the ball.
The world thickened again.
Dev felt it before it happened — like the moment in a film where the music warns you before the scene does. The air pressed in on him, sound folding into itself. Even Meera's voice dulled, as though she were speaking through cloth.
Then the boy's shoe slipped.
One foot lost grip.His body tilted backward.Arms flailed.
A gasp rippled through the students watching.
Dev moved.
Not consciously.Not bravely.Just instinct — like something inside him knew the timing of things better than he did.
He stepped forward, and the world… dragged.
Not fully frozen.Not fully moving.
The boy's fall stretched long, wrong, as if someone had pulled the moment like elastic. His shirt rippled unnaturally slow. A droplet of water shook loose from his hair and hovered mid-air.
Meera's fingers brushed Dev's sleeve, but her touch felt delayed, like her hand arrived a heartbeat after she meant it to.
Dev reached the pole.
The world snapped.
Sound slammed back into place — the shouts, the scuff of shoes, the rush of wind.
Dev grabbed the boy's wrist just as he dropped past him, yanking him toward the pole instead of the concrete. The boy hit the wet ground hard but not dangerously, more startled than hurt.
Students crowded around instantly.
"You okay?"
"What were you thinking, idiot?"
The P.E. sir marched over, red-faced and furious.
"Who told you to climb—"
He froze mid-rant when he saw Dev, then exhaled heavily. "Good reflexes. Someone else would have ended up taking him to the clinic."
Meera stared at Dev from a few steps away. Everything about her face said she'd seen the same thing he felt — the stretch, the slip, the moment bending.
Dev's breathing was uneven. His palms were damp. His heartbeat felt out of rhythm with the world around him.
The boy Dev had caught mumbled, "Th-thanks."
But Dev wasn't listening to him.He was listening to the faint echo behind the teacher's words — a half-second off, like the world had spoken twice.
Meera walked up beside him.
"Dev," she whispered, voice steady but eyes wide. "You didn't just react fast. You reacted… before."
He swallowed.
"I know."