In a middle-class Kerala household, secrets aren't just hidden; they are buried under layers of tradition, silence, and the paralyzing fear of "what the neighbors will say."
Rukmini stood at her gate in Kowdiar, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She watched the KSRTC bus rumble away, its tail-lights disappearing into the Trivandrum mist. Saurav had gotten off at the same stop, but he wasn't standing next to her. He was standing twenty feet away, under the dark, heavy shadow of a massive rain-tree, his matte-black umbrella making him look like a rip in the fabric of the evening.
"Go inside," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried through the sound of the rain with impossible clarity. "You're already eleven minutes past your usual arrival time. Your father has looked at the wall clock twice."
Rukmini stared at him, her fingers clutching the strap of her bag. "You can't stay here. This is Kowdiar. People here have eyes like CCTV cameras. If someone sees a man following me—"
"I am a shadow, Rukku. People see what they expect to see. And right now, they expect to see a tired engineering student coming home late from a lab session." He checked the silver watch. It was still ticking backward, the metal glowing with a faint, cold light. "Go. 11:15 PM. The backyard. Don't make me come to the front door."
The threat in his voice was enough. Rukmini turned and ran toward her front porch, the wet gravel crunching under her sneakers.
Dinner was a masterclass in domestic tension.
Her father, Madhavan, was a man who had spent forty years in the Secretariat. He believed in three things: the morning newspaper, the evening prayers, and the absolute necessity of a government-approved career. He sat across from her, his plate of rice and fish curry organized with the precision of a file system.
"You're late, Rukku," he said, his voice calm but heavy with unspoken expectations. "The Technopark drive was today. Deepa's father called. She's already moved to the next round. He was asking if you were in the same batch."
Rukmini felt the lie sticking in her throat. Telling him the truth—that she skipped the test to stand in the rain with a man who claimed to be her future husband—wasn't just an option; it was a death sentence for her reputation.
"The test was crowded, Pappa. I'm... I'm waiting for the list."
Madhavan didn't look up. "I hope your name is on it. I saw the kitchen roof today. The leak is spreading. If you don't land this placement, I don't know how we'll manage the renovation before the next monsoon. Everything is getting so expensive."
The guilt was a physical weight, pressing down on her shoulders. This was the quintessential Kerala struggle: the daughter's career wasn't just a job; it was the family's structural integrity. She finished her meal in a hollow silence, the 'clink-clink-clink' of the leak in the kitchen echoing through the house like a countdown.
By 11:00 PM, the house was dark. Rukmini moved like a thief, carrying her laptop and a heavy, coffee-stained 'Signals and Systems' textbook to the back veranda. The backyard was a dark, overgrown patch of jasmine vines and coconut trees, smelling of wet earth and night-blooming flowers.
She stepped out into the damp air, her breath hitching. Saurav was already there.
He was sitting on the mossy edge of the old well, his back against the stone. He looked as real as the trees around him, yet he felt entirely foreign—like a high-resolution ghost in a low-resolution world. He gestured to the old wooden bench near the door.
"Sit. Laptop open. We're losing time."
"My father is in the next room," she whispered frantically, her eyes darting toward the darkened windows. "If he hears you—"
"He won't. I've spent six years learning how to be silent around you, Rukku." He looked at her, his eyes dark and unreadable in the moonlight. "Open the 'Microprocessors' module. You failed the internal because you didn't understand the timing diagrams. I'm going to explain them once. If you don't get it, we do twenty laps of the yard."
"It's raining!"
"Then don't fail," he said simply.
For the next three hours, the backyard was transformed. Saurav was a brutal, clinical teacher. He didn't have the patience of a professor; he had the desperation of a man who knew exactly what the cost of failure looked like. He explained complex logic gates by comparing them to the traffic flow of the city, making the abstract feel visceral and real.
Rukmini found herself working harder than she ever had in her life. It wasn't because she suddenly loved engineering; it was because she couldn't bear the sharp, disappointed edge in Saurav's voice. He treated her like she was capable of being 100%, and that was more terrifying than any exam.
Around 2:30 AM, her eyes began to blur. She leaned her head against the wooden pillar of the veranda, her "medium energy" finally hitting zero.
Saurav moved.
He was at her side in an instant, his hand reaching out to catch her head before it hit the hard wood. But as his fingers came within a hair's breadth of her temple, he froze.
His face contorted in a flash of pure, raw agony. His hand stayed there, hovering in the air, radiating a heat she could feel against her skin. He looked like a man who was starving and staring at a feast he had sworn never to touch. Slowly, his fingers curled into a tight fist, and he retreated five feet back into the shadows.
"Wake up," he barked, his voice sounding cracked and harsh.
Rukmini jolted awake. "I... I'm sorry. I just—"
"Go inside," he said, his back turned to her. "Tomorrow morning. ACE gate. 8:30. And Rukku... if anyone asks, I don't exist. You don't need the gossip, and I don't need the distraction."
The next morning at Anathapuri College of Engineering (ACE) was a social nightmare.
Rukmini walked through the gates, her eyes red-rimmed but her head held strangely high. Behind her, at a constant five-foot interval, walked Saurav.
He was impossible to ignore. He wore a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and a watch that looked like it cost more than the college's entire library. He didn't look like a student, and he certainly didn't look like a professor. He looked like a man who had come to collect a soul.
"Rukku!" Deepa caught up with her, her eyes darting between Rukmini and the man trailing behind. "Who is that? Everyone in the canteen is talking. Rahul said he tried to ask him for the time, and the guy didn't even turn his head. He just... ignored him like he was a fly on the wall."
Rukmini felt a flush of heat in her cheeks. "He's... a family friend. He's helping me with a project."
"A family friend?" Deepa whispered, not taking her eyes off Saurav. "He looks like he's from a movie. And why does he follow you like a bodyguard? He doesn't talk to anyone. I tried to say 'Good Morning' and he just looked through me as if I were made of glass."
"He's very focused," Rukmini said, trying to keep her voice steady as they walked toward the lab.
Throughout the day, Saurav was her silent shadow. He sat in the back of the lecture halls, his presence so intimidating that the professors kept glancing at him, losing their train of thought. During the lab session, Saurav stood by her shoulder. He didn't touch the keyboard, but his silent presence forced her to focus until she completed the experiment thirty minutes before everyone else.
People tried to approach him. They tried to ask him who he was. He didn't even turn his head. He was a man who had erased the world, leaving only Rukmini in his frame of vision.
As the final bell rang, they walked out toward the gate.
"You're making people nervous," Rukmini said, looking at him. "My friends think you're a hitman."
"Good," Saurav said. He didn't look at her. He was watching the traffic, his face a mask of stone. "People are a distraction. You've spent too much time worrying about their opinions. That's why you're a 6-pointer. You're more tuned into the frequency of the crowd than the frequency of your own potential."
He checked the watch. The hands were ticking backward, the seconds vanishing.
"You reached seventy percent today, Rukku. Tomorrow, we go to Technopark. You're going to witness a real-time system failure. And you're going to be the one to fix it."
"Me? I can't even fix my own laptop!"
"You will," he said, finally looking at her. The setting sun caught the dark, faded stain on his shoulder—the one that looked like old, washed-out blood. "Because in the future I come from, you're the only one who can."
He turned and walked away into the crowd, leaving her standing there. Rukmini watched him go, realizing that while her father was worried about a leaking roof, she was currently being mentored by a man who was rebuilding her entire world, brick by silent, terrifying brick.