The world had shrunk to the circumference of pain radiating from Gangesh's leg. The coppery smell of his own blood filled his nostrils, mixing with the alley's stench of garbage and fear. Aditya's hands were pressed hard against the wound, a desperate, clumsy tourniquet that sent fresh jolts of agony with every pulse. Karan was frozen, phone in hand, his voice a broken record of "Ambulance, we need—", his mind, the great strategist, completely short-circuited by the sight of his friend's life leaking onto the dirty concrete. Sagar paced like a caged animal, his laziness burned away, leaving only a raw, helpless energy.
Then, a new sound cut through their ragged breathing—the frantic slap of running feet.
She emerged from the mouth of the alley, her figure silhouetted against the distant streetlights. It was the girl. Her hair was a wild tangle, her beautiful chaniya choli torn and stained with grime. Her chest heaved with ragged, sobbing breaths. In her hands, she clutched a plastic water bottle like a holy relic.
Behind her, voices echoed, sharp with alarm. "Wait! Priya, stop!"
But she didn't listen. Her eyes, wide with a cocktail of residual terror and desperate gratitude, were locked on Gangesh. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees beside him, ignoring the pool of blood, ignoring the three stunned boys. Tears streamed down her face, cutting clean paths through the dust on her cheeks.
"You… you…" she choked out, unable to form a coherent sentence. She fumbled with the water bottle cap, her hands shaking too violently to open it.
Gangesh looked at her—this stranger whose name he now knew was Priya. He saw the horror in her eyes, the ghost of the trauma she would carry forever. But he also saw her here, alive and free. A slow, weary smile touched his lips. It was a painful stretch of skin, but it was genuine. It was a smile that said, *You are safe. It was worth it.*
Aditya saw the smile. The sheer, absurd audacity of it, in the midst of this bloody mess, broke something in him. The fear and relief and fury combusted.
"You fucker!" Aditya snarled, his voice cracking. He didn't punch him. He didn't shove him. In a gesture of pure, fraternal exasperation, he kicked Gangesh's uninjured leg. It wasn't a hard kick, but it was a kick nonetheless. "Are you sane? Smiling? You have a knife in your leg and you're smiling at girls!"
Sagar, swept up in the same chaotic wave of emotion, delivered a matching, gentle kick to Gangesh's hip. "Get your shit together, bastard!" he yelled, his voice thick. He snatched the water bottle from Priya's trembling hands, twisted the cap off with a violent jerk, and shoved it toward Gangesh's face. "DRINK IT! You lost enough blood to fill a bucket! Drink!"
Karan finally found his voice, yelling into the phone. "Yes! Alley behind the main Garba ground! A man is stabbed! He's bleeding! Hurry!" He dropped the phone, his task complete, and stared at his hands as if he'd never used them before.
Gangesh winced, the kicks and the shouting pulling him back from the surreal edge he'd been on. "Don't call the ambulance, bro," he muttered, his voice slurred. The adrenaline was fading, and a deep, bone-chilling cold was taking its place. The principle had been upheld, but the body was presenting its bill.
It was then that the rest of the world arrived.
Anya and her friends appeared at the alley's entrance, their faces pale and stunned from their run. They had followed Priya's desperate, silent flight, fearing the worst. The scene that greeted them was a tableau of visceral horror.
Gangesh was propped against the wall, his face ashen, his white kurta and pants a canvas of shocking crimson, the dark hilt of the knife a grotesque centerpiece in his thigh. Aditya was kneeling in the blood, his own hands stained red, his face a mask of fury and fear. Sagar was holding a water bottle like a weapon, and Karan looked utterly lost.
The impact on Anya's group was immediate and physical.
Kusum let out a small, choked gasp. The sight of so much blood, the raw violence of it, overwhelmed her high emotional intelligence. Her knees buckled. Suman, her own sharp wit silenced by the shock, reacted instantly, catching Kusum and holding her tight, her own face rigid, her mind, for once, completely blank, unable to process or dismantle the brutal reality before them.
Sandhya stood a pace behind, her observant eyes taking in every detail—the blood patterns on the ground, the terror on Priya's face, the profound fear in the eyes of Gangesh's friends. Without a word, her face a mask of calm efficiency, she pulled out her phone. While the boys were consumed by their chaos, her call to the police was already connecting, her voice low and steady as she gave their precise location.
Anya's gaze swept the scene, and it landed on Gangesh. She saw the knife. She saw the blood. She saw the pale, pained determination on his face. The boy she had publicly scorned for his philosophical blindness was now a bloody testament to a principle he had been willing to die for. The contrast was dizzying. Her fierce pride warred with a stunned, reluctant respect.
The boys were still cursing, a continuous, profane litany against the world, the kidnappers, and Gangesh's own stupidity.
"You absolute idiot," Aditya was whispering now, his anger spent, replaced by a trembling fear. "What were you thinking? You could have died. You could have…"
His words were cut off, not by a person, but by a sound—the blaring, urgent wail of a siren. It tore through the night's silence, a sharp, mechanical counterpoint to the human misery in the alley. Red and blue lights painted the brick walls in frantic, swirling strokes.
A vehicle screeched to a halt at the alley entrance. Doors slammed. Firm, authoritative footsteps approached.
Then, a figure stepped into the light. It was a woman. She wore a police uniform, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, her eyes sharp and missing nothing. She was the Lady Police Officer.
Her presence immediately changed the atmosphere. The chaotic energy solidified into something tense and formal.
"Step away from him, son," she said to Aditya, her voice calm but brooking no argument. Aditya, for once, had no retort. He moved back on unsteady legs, leaving Gangesh exposed under the officer's assessing gaze.
She knelt, her movements efficient and practiced. She didn't flinch at the blood or the knife. Her eyes went from Gangesh's face to the wound, to the terrified Priya, to the group of shell-shocked teenagers surrounding them.
"My name is Officer Patel. I am in charge here," she announced, her voice cutting through the shock. She looked at Gangesh. "An ambulance is on its way. Can you tell me what happened?"
But her eyes were already gathering the story from the scene itself—the lone, injured boy, the crying, disheveled girl, the looks on all their faces. This was not a gang fight. This was a rescue that had gone terribly, bloodily right.
The consequences of the night began to crystallize. For Gangesh, it was a long road of pain and recovery. For his friends, it was the searing memory of nearly losing a brother. For Priya, it was a life debt and a trauma. For Anya and her group, it was the shattering of a carefully constructed opinion, replaced by a complex, unsettling new reality.
As the paramedics arrived with a stretcher, and Officer patel began taking quiet, firm statements from Priya, the two groups—Gangesh's and Anya's—stood in the flashing lights, separated by only a few feet, yet worlds apart, bound together by the bloody, undeniable truth of what had transpired in the dark. The festival of joy had ended, and the long, complicated morning after had begun.