Miracle in the making

Chapter 35

As soon as Sakthi and Aadhi entered her room, she closed the door behind them and hugged Aadhi tight. He sensed that she was nervous and her body was shivering under his embrace. 

Aadhi: Sakthi... It's ok if you want to continue some other day. I am not going anywhere.

Sakthi: Illa I want to get it off my mind today. But, I am really worried about your anger and how you might react.

Aadhi: As I promised, I will not do anything stupid. Trust me.

Sakthi: Hmm... your hearbeat calms be down. Everything seems to be perfect when I hug you.

After a while, she pulled out of the hug and both settled on the bed.

FLASHBACK IN ITALICS

"After my meeting with Rahul, he never reached out to me again. I did not think much about it. But a couple of weeks later, I started getting stalking messages on my facebook account. I got messages about each of us with pictures. It was as if nothing none of us were safe anymore. The message was clear - they wanted us to back out from the contest.

I was shaken and I did not know what else to do but talk to my friends. I shared those messages and also told them about my meet with Rahul.They were all shocked to see those pictures. We tried to find who was behind this, but we failed. We did not want to assume that it was Rahul.

After a few weeks, we let Sathya know about this issue and he asked all of us to stay out of social media until Clash of Bands was over. We all agreed, deactivated our accounts and started to focus completely on preparing for the performance.

The contest happened in Bangalore over 1 week. We finished our qualifying performances and the final face off was between us and Breathless, as expected. We gave our best and the results were to be announced the next day.

There was a celebration right after the final performances in which most happening singers and musicians across the country performed and a dinner party where we could interact with them.

We were all having a lot of fun at the party. I did not realize that my drink was spiked and when I went to use the restroom, someone tried to sedate me. I don't even know what their plan was but I was very close to being unconscious. Maybe it was to portray as if I had a drug problem, or maybe to blackmail my friends to withdraw from the contest. 

All I remember was Athreya coming in when I was screaming for help.Thankfully, he found me at the right time before anything happened and took me out of there. Unfortunately, he was also one of the judges. Someone took a video of him helping me out of there in that condition and made it look like I was...."

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she said those words.

"I was seducing him to win the contest."

"Just before the announcing the winners, the video was released on the internet and we were disqualified. I was slut shamed and no one including my so-called friends trusted me. No one believed Athreya either when we tried to explain. Breathless were announced as winners."

She was breaking down in front of him and he wanted to ruin the lives of every single person who called her names.

"Athreya did the best he could. He somehow got the video completely removed from all the websites so that there was no trace of it anywhere.

If anyone told me one day could change someone's life forever, I would have laughed. But, it happened to me. In front of my eyes, my life completely toppled upside down.