"Please make way ,I'm in a hurry please," Priya yelled while rushing down from the staircase.
The monsoon thunder rolled in just minutes before the third class bell, wrapping the campus rooftops in a metallic drumbeat. Rain hammered the iron sheets overhead, echoing sharply, as if a thousand stones were being poured onto the hallway. Water streaked down cracked window frames, crawling over the cement to form a crooked little river on the floor.
Aarav paced the corridor, the camera lanyard looped tight around his neck, and the jacket pulled up to shelter his beloved lens. He walked with measured steps,two hundred and thirty-seven from the lab door to the auditorium entrance, carefully to avoid the puddles and mud blooms between drains. The camera, a battered secondhand model from Dubai, wore a fine scar across its rim, one he'd never dared to buff out. Flaws meant safety; flawed things could not be further ruined.
Students clustered at the entrance to escape the rain, some groaning over forgotten homework, others dabbing their soaked sneakers. Aarav circled quietly, checking settings,1/125 shutter, f5.6 aperture, and ISO 400,the comfort of numbers in a day that felt unpredictable. Numbers never bumped into you, and they never apologized.
"Make way!" a voice yelled from the staircase, bright and breathless, charged with humidity. Aarav looked up in time to see a girl rush forward, clutching a prop box marked "Drama Props" in red marker. Her yellow raincoat fluttered like a flag behind her.
Right, left, left again, and they both tried to sidestep, only to miss step in unison. The narrow doorway forced them into a clumsy dance. In the next second, the corner of the box caught Aarav right in the chest.
There was no thunder this time, just the brittle crack of glass. His camera slipped out of its protective cover, the lens skidding onto the concrete. Shards scattered in the water like tiny ice needles.
The raincoat girl's hood fell back, revealing a face slick with rain, eyes wide and unexpectedly fierce. Props tumbled from her box: a paper lotus painted with cheap gold dust that bled down her wrist in the storm. She opened her mouth to speak but only drew a shaky breath.
Aarav crouched low, collecting the biggest piece of glass, calmness steeling his jaw as his father had taught: never lose composure, never shout, never judge before assessing the damage.
"I'm sorry," the girl said, kneeling beside him, shadowed in the wet doorway. Her voice was soft, heartbeats away from breaking.
"How sorry are you?" Aarav didn't look up, counting glass fragments in his palm.
"I have money," she answered uncertainly, fishing in her pocket but pulled out only a soggy playbill, a date smudged away.
"Or I can help you find a secondhand lens. Chor Bazaar is open today, and I know the place"
"It doesn't open on Fridays," Aarav cut in, pocketing the last piece. "And you crashed into me, not just my camera."
She bit her lip, the color draining under the rain. Then, with sudden bravado, she reached for his camera, quick as a point guard going for a rebound.
"What"
"Wait, don't move," she said, flipping the switch to playback mode. The screen glowed, casting blue light in the dim hallway. The last shot on the camera, taken just before the crash, showed her own startled face, rain-soaked, framed against the haze outside the auditorium. In the distant background, just beyond the school's wall, a factory chimney poured pale yellow smoke into the sky, looking snakelike.
Her expression in the photo was even more startled, almost pierced by the truth she'd accidently captured.
Aarav froze with shock . He hadn't pressed the shutter but cameras. Don't lie.
"This shot is mine now," she whispered, holding the camera close. "I'll get you a new lens, and that's a promise, but this picture I can't give it to you, I need it."
"But of what use exactly?" he asked.
"It's for the school magazine's environmental section," she explained, voice nearly drowned out by the rain. "That smokestack's been running twelve hours a day, and nobody has photographed it."
Aarav recalled his father's warnings never get involved in politics and never to mention the factory to anybody.
He reached for his camera, feeling the smoothness of her palm,ink-smudged and tense.
He said only, "Do what you want," turning toward the side exit as the rain beat a rough rhythm on the auditorium curtain.
Behind them, the monsoon slowed. Outside, the sky grew darker, the smoke from the factory bisected by a flash of lightning, then quickly merged again. Aarav saw a gold-painted petal stuck to his shoe, the color already washed out to gray by the rain leaving a little scar, just like his camera and that felt like the beginning of something