Reality Ever After

Chapter 65. Forever Rose

Hey guys,

Here's a new update. This was is more than 7000 words long. So it's a really long one.

Unfortunately, yesterday I ended up reading one of the updates on MaNan and it really disturbed me and my whole image of Manik in my head was shattered. But I was determined to not let that happen and I ended up focusing my energy on writing this update. I hope you guys enjoy it.

This is a fun one after the past few serious ones.

Please don't forget to leave your thoughts on this one.

Love,
-SV
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A week had passed since the heartfelt conversation between Manik and Nandini and since then, Nandini had not looked back. She had dived back into her studying like no tomorrow. Although her insecurities still stayed within her somewhere deep down, she decided to not dwell on it too much. Her conversation with Manik had made her see that she was probably seeing things from only her point of view and maybe she needed to give Chacha and Chachi the benefit of doubt. But more than anything, Manik had managed to bring her lost motivation back. He made her realise that she couldn't give up already. Money and other things could be managed at a later date but nothing would be possible if she didn't do well and she didn't get her grades right. She knew that she needed to have a discussion with Chacha and Chachi too but she didn't know how to. And so, she ended up procrastinating that conversation till she found the courage to have it. She also kept telling herself that she was busy with preparing for exams right now and she would talk to them once her exams got over. Manik tried telling her about not pushing this but she didn't listen because firstly, she didn't know what to say and secondly, she was scared that conversation went down south again like last time and if any of her assumptions ended up being true, then she didn't know how she would deal with it. Hence, procrastinating seemed like the best option at that moment. And since she was kind of avoiding awkward confrontations with Chacha and Chachi, she mostly spent all her time at Manik's to study.

On the other hand, Manik was more than happy to spend most of his time with Nandini. But it came with a cost. She not only was back to torturing him with 5 am coffees but now, she was also forcing him to study for his exams. He remembered how she had gotten so furious when she had found out that he had not even bought his theory exam textbooks until 2 weeks before the exams. And obviously he had no notes from classes, because he didn't attend any. She had then forced him to go to a bookstore at 7 am and buy all his textbooks so he could study from them. But Manik was never the one who would study from textbooks. He was always street smart and always managed a simpler way to get his work done. For exams, he only studied all the important notes/summary of the concepts from professors, which he had the photocopy guy in college to make extra copies of. But Nandini was not convinced of this approach at all. How could he go so underprepared for exams! And hence, she was now making him study from the textbooks too. But Manik was Manik, who refused to take things seriously. He usually surfed on his phone which was hidden behind his book or he dozed off 10 minutes after he opened his textbook. But he had to give it to these textbooks, he was getting the best sleep of his life after reading these books. Of course, it was second in rank compared to the sleep he got with Nandini snuggled into him. But this was good too.

However, he didn't care about these stupid things at all. He just wanted to ensure he was paying enough attention to her, showering a lot of love on her and taking lots of care of her. The fact that she had come to a conclusion that she wasn't good enough for him and wanted to break up with him only meant that she was not in the best state of her mental health and he wanted to fix that. He knew how it felt when you didn't love yourself enough or believe in yourself at all. And at times like these, it's comforting to see someone else believe in you for you to start building the blocks of your own self-confidence. He remembered going through this when he was a child and at that time, he didn't have anyone who would believe in him and give him the attention he needed to make him believe in himself again. He had had to somehow gather his own self in whatever way he could and he didn't want Nandini to face that too and therefore, since the day they had that conversation, he was showering her with so much love and affection that she was either blushing like a tomato or teasing him about being super cheesy or yelling at him for being so chipku for disturbing her. But it was all worth it when he saw that small smile playing on her lips every time he did something cheesy or cute. And that made everything worth it.