The Vile.

Chapter : 86

I'll Be Waiting.

The auditorium that holds way too many important memories, is filled to every corner and unexpectedly enough, everyone is smiling at him. The past years made him extremely vulnerable at facing people, specifically a huge crowd like this, so all he feels right now is an extreme uneasiness.

"What's going on?" He thinks to himself and turns towards the stage only to be more surprised.

The stage is decorated with too many colorful lights and beautiful flowers. The decorations immediately remind him of Sudha. She likes all these things and that's when his eyes fall on the huge glittering words hanging from the backdrop,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANUJ.

His heart stops beating, his whole body goes rigid. Birthday? Is it? Because it has been ages since he remembered that particular day. And a celebration in this auditorium? No, it's impossible that Vasudha remembers those days, those practically unimportant days for her. She can't, she can't have arranged all these things. Then who? Maya? But she knows that he doesn't like celebrating things like this. What's happening?

The stage is filled with all his close ones, Ojas, Nihal, Maya, Raghu chacha, there is Abhay as well, sitting on his wheelchair but there is no Sudha, neither is Ansh. And then the thought hits him hard. Ekansh, his little brother, is dead, he killed him himself, because that's what he deserved after whatever he has done to so many people.

No, this celebration, all this attention, this much love, he isn't worth it. He has done nothing to be loved. His breathing becomes heavier as he starts hyperventilating, and that's when two girls enter the stage. One he knows, Zoya, the girl with curly hair and the other girl he doesn't. She's a little on the healthy side, wearing glasses and....and a school uniform?
Both of them are wearing school uniforms. Uniforms he has seen earlier, uniform he saw her wearing every time he dreamt of her.
Both of them enters the stage, one holding a huge cake and the other holding something wrapped in a glittey wrapping paper.

At the very end enters Vasudha. Her hair tied back in a neat ponytail, her light brown eyes warm and affectionate and she is wearing the uniform as well. Immediately his head inclines backwards, he pulls his trembling lower lip inside his mouth, biting hard on it. The jumbled up emotions have skyrocketed as his eyes tear up.

She sees him, sees how he is finding it difficult to process everything and immediately takes the stairs that lead to him. The more she runs the more he feels it, the guilt, that was buried somewhere deep within him. The lost, destroyed, way too old conversations resurface.

"How about you and your friends join me for the meal upstairs at the V.I.P hall?"
That day he had asked. Now as he looks at her he knows that she remembers, she remembers every bit of it. He struggles to breathe as the flashbacks keep coming back.

"A-about that, I think that might look kinda awkward on our part sir, there are other students we have befriended here. They will be expecting us outside as well."
That's what her reply was.

He remembers the pride he felt that day, he was proud that a girl of her age knew the value of what's just and what's not.
He still remembers approaching her, approaching a girl for the first and last time in his entire fucking life. Back then he had hope, he had belief.. everything that he lost with time, just how he lost her for good.

"I hope to see you again. I wish to know you more. And I would like to have that meal with you sometime soon. But that time, only you should be there, only you and me. What say?"
He had offered.

The memory of accepting and digesting his first rejection by his first crush, his first love, is still fresh. He still enjoys the fact that a tiny girl, that his Sudha was back then, had the audacity to reject his offer on his face,