Stairway to Heaven

7. Turbulence

"This is boring." Mateen groaned, while stretching his arms across his desk besides Ammar; who was secretly doing last minute cramming through his slides on phone. He looked up to give Mateen an irritated sideways glance, before returning to his prior activity.

"If you're so bored then give presentation in my stead—" He returned in a hushed tone, to not catch the Professors eye.

"What's there to study for a presentation? You've prepared it yourself, so just read it on spot and explain—" Mateen returned in a detached tone and offered a simple solution, without looking away from the object of his attention.

"—Excuse us! But not everyone is a smartass like you, who aces his exams by studying at the last minute!" Ammar scoffed in response, but Mateen kept his gaze fixated ahead to Hajra; who was attentively noting down her lecture.

It'd been a few months since that last incident and things had turned pretty conventional. Mateen didn't go near her again, but she was never far from his thoughts. The more he tried to solve this mystery, Hajra; the more he found himself loathing her. The feeling of wanting to crush her would grow intense with every passing day and in his head, he would crush her like a bug under his feet and become satisfied. That was all. She was nothing but an annoying Bug to him and he wouldn't be able to rest peacefully until he was able to crush her.

"—Just wait, until I stomp on you and shatter your arrogance into tiny little pieces." Mateen spoke out loud without caring much of it and turned to rest his chin on his folded arms, while boring holes into the back of her head.

"Mateen—My brother, my dear friend—If you seem to have forgotten, then I would gladly remind you, that I couldn't sit my ass down for a whole week. All because my old man had put his surgical hands to great use and artfully altered the anatomy of my gluteus maximus—So, please! Here I am holding my hands in front of you—! Have some mercy on my poor buttocks and stop obsessing over that woman!" Mateen paid him no heed; yet, Ammar kept going on in a hushed whisper.

"You always said girls are stupid and you would rather jump into a pigsty than get involved with one—So, what the hell is so special about this Hajra?! That you can't get over her—" Ammar's cries were falling on deaf ears. Suppressing a yawn, Mateen sat up straight and began going through Hajra's topic of presentation.

"Because she is a bug and the only way I can get her out of my system is by exterminating her—" He retorted calmly and began noting down complicated questions to ask her. Ammar could only watch his stubborn and unyielding friend flabbergasted. He'd hardly ever seen Mateen fixated on something for this long. Otherwise, ever since Ammar knew him, he always had a passive and dispassionate attitude towards life; even more so after the incident 5 years ago. Ammar and Isra had come to know about his complicated life at home through here and there and no matter how much either of them tried getting close to him, Mateen would always have an invisible wall up around himself and would never let anyone in. No one, except Mashal. But she wasn't here anymore.

That's why, when Mateen first showed interest in Hajra, Ammar felt that it might finally allow Mateen to get his feelings sorted out—But maybe there was a lot more to Mateen, than anyone could ever get close enough to find out.

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"I have a question—" Mateen raised his hand for the 6th time since the end of Hajra's presentation. He was only able to get through 4 times because other people's questions needed to be addressed too, but his every question would lead him to asking Hajra few more.

Trying to mask her inner feelings of hatred, she pursed her lips and nodded at him. Even though all she wanted was to punch away that satisfied smirk off of his face. However, without giving into her urges; she successfully managed to end her presentation with a huge round of applause and cheers from rest of the class; alongside the Professor's sigh of relief.