Chapter 2: The First Crack

The library smelled of old paper and printer ink, the kind of smell Aanya had grown to love over four years. It was past eleven at night, and the reading hall had long emptied out except for her corner table, buried under half-finished code printouts and a laptop with a battery that beeped every few minutes like it was scolding her for staying too long.

Her final year capstone project was due in six days. A machine learning model that could predict early-stage crop disease from leaf images—her idea, her architecture, her three months of sleepless nights. Her phone buzzed.

Rhea: “Are you still at the library? Kabir said the deadline moved up. Can you send me what you have so far? Just so I can understand the structure, promise 🙏”

Aanya smiled at the praying-hands emoji, the same one Rhea had used a hundred times before. She didn’t think twice. She zipped her project folder and sent it.

Aanya: “Sent! Let me know if anything’s confusing, I can walk you through it tomorrow.”

Rhea: “You’re a lifesaver. Don’t know what I’d do without you 💕”

She meant it as comfort. She always did.

What she didn’t see was the group chat two threads over—one she wasn’t part of—where Rhea had forwarded the same files to three other classmates, each of whom would submit “individually restructured” versions for their own capstone requirement.

She didn’t see Kabir, sitting across the hostel common room with his laptop open, scrolling through the very same folder, muttering to his roommate, “She makes it too easy. I don’t even have to think anymore.”

He didn’t say it with cruelty. That was the strange thing about Kabir—when people spoke about Aanya behind her back, it rarely came from hatred. It came from comfort. The kind of comfort that stops noticing the person being used, because using them has become routine.

The next morning, Professor Bhatt called Aanya to his office.

“Sit,” he said, sliding a folder across the table. “Your defense presentation—I want you to lead the department showcase next month. Industry recruiters will be there. This is a big opportunity.”

Aanya’s chest tightened with the kind of joy she rarely let herself feel too loudly. “Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you.”

“I know you won’t,” he said, and for a moment, something flickered across his face—concern, maybe, though she didn’t understand why. “Just… keep your work close, Aanya. Good ideas attract more than admiration.”

She laughed it off as she left his office. “I trust my people, sir.”

She didn’t yet know how heavy that sentence would become.

That evening, Kabir took her out for dinner at the small Chinese place near campus that had become “their spot” over the years. He ordered her favorite—chili garlic noodles—before she even sat down.

“You’ve been buried in that lab for weeks,” he said, sliding his hand over hers on the table. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” she admitted, guilt pricking at her. “It’s just—the showcase is huge, Kabir. Recruiters. Maybe even funding.”

“I know.” He smiled, that easy, disarming smile that had made her fall for him in the first place. “You’re going to be brilliant up there. You always are.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, and for a moment the exhaustion of the last three months melted into something warm. She didn’t notice his phone light up on the table—a message from Rhea.

Rhea: “Dinner date? Must be nice. Some of us are stuck redoing OUR projects because someone’s original code doesn’t match our writing style 🙄”

Kabir turned the phone face-down without reading further, laughing softly to himself as if it were an inside joke that had nothing to do with the girl beside him.

“What’s funny?” Aanya asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just something Rhea said. She’s stressed about the deadline.”

“I’ll help her tomorrow,” Aanya said instantly, already reaching for her bag to check her notes.

Kabir watched her for a second too long, something unreadable behind his eyes—guilt, maybe, buried under years of practice at not feeling it.

“You don’t have to fix everything for everyone, you know,” he said quietly.

Aanya looked up, surprised. “I don’t mind.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

It was the closest he ever came to warning her.