Beautiful Pain

Part 1 - Unexpected meet

"Mumma where are my shoes? I'm getting late" she yelled while coming down stairs. "Look carefully it's there on shoe rack..." her mother from kitchen shouted loudly. "No it's not there....oh got'cha " she smiled at her mom awkwardly. Mother looking at her in disbelief. "Come have breakfast first", "No am getting late, I'll eat something on my way" she said this while leaving the house. She's going for her 6th presentation. She had created an image recognition module and now she is on her way to give her presentation.

Meeting is at 11 am at StarLinkks cafe. She is little nervous in her way, blabbering to herself "you can do this, you can do this" just to boost her confidence. Standing on bus stop waiting for bus revising her prepared points, bus arrived. She gets in the bus.

She reaches at the coffee shop. Settling her laptop, reports, herself and necessary things. While waiting for the clients, she again starts recalling the presentation. Suddenly phone rings....

On the phone- "Hello Ms. Hritika, we have reached at the location. Where are you?"," I'm inside the cafe sir, wait let me be there to pick you sir." She goes outside "Hello Mr. Aditya sir and Vishal sir" with that she welcomed her clients, greets them with a bright smile.

Inside the cafe-

They all sit down on the chairs and hritika starts her presentation. "Good morning gentlemen, Thank you for giving your precious time from schedule and allowing me to introduce my idea. This is an image recognition module, which gives the identity of object in front the camera. Module's accuracy rate is about 94% and totally based on python. Time required to identify the object is about 5 seconds but sometimes 20-25 seconds in very rare and exceptional case. "Then she gives some demo about the object and it works really well." Miss hritika, it's a great module, overall everything is good.....but main question arises is that what product will you give with this module? ", "Have you decided anything regarding that?" .With this question, she stays quite for seconds and said "pardon?" Vishal says "my question is - do you have any real product or idea for product on which we invest our money and time?", "a...a..." And she don't have anything to say. So she just stay silent. Aditya says, "I think you haven't work on this. I don't think this module is compatible for any further software or application. So if you find any solution on this we'll definitely look into further collaboration, but for now it is not ready yet. So I'm sorry we cannot accept this proposal." She just smiles at them, "That's fine sir I'll definitely look into it for future scope". With this they both left. She left a sigh in disbelief. "Another presentation + day wasted. Let it be...."

She orders espresso coffee for herself. It is her habit to have coffee for relaxing mind. Hritika started wrapping up her belongings, her laptop, report, notepad while having sip by sip of espresso.

At another corner of that cafe, a group of friends is speaking, laughing together with friends. One guy sudden spoke "Hey guys, what is the plan for the weekend? Mehul let's go on trekking... What say?" Everyone turned to Mehul, he says" why not... it's a great idea. Let's go..." and everyone started cheering. "Hey Mehul, I've heard that you resigned from position in yours fathers company and decided to settle down here?" Archit asked. "Yes he's settling here with us from now on..." Sarang says with excitement.

Mehul and Sarang are college friends. They are very close to each other. Shares everything with each other. So when Mehul decides to come back, the happiest person was the Sarang. Their whole group was formed in college. Whenever they all gets time, they all always hangout together. "Let's order something, I'm hungry!!!" Aditi says. "That's not a big things, you always feel hungry", Archit said and everyone bursts in laughter.

Archit and aditi are couple from college days. They are happy, fun-loving couple. Crazily loves each other. Aditi is friendly with Mehul among all them. A best-best friend kind of bond. Their food arrives on the table and they started to eat and talking about random things.

On the other hand hritika is thinking about her life. "What's gonna happen with me, who knows?" As usual her dramatic blabbering starts, "Mumma surely going to kick me out of the house now. This meeting is also failed... Please God save me today, one last time. "But her unconscious mind screaming loudly that there will be no last time for the god to save you. "Let's go back no need to think more about that..." with that she stands picked her handbag, turned to leave but someone catch her attention standing a little bit far from her, she look at the person carefully and....

"Hey guys, done eating?" Mehul Asked everyone replied yes. "Let me pay the bill it's my treat after all..." Mehul says. "Yeah", Group members cheered. He goes to the counter for paying bill. Turned back and his eyes landed on someone looking familiar. He stop to recognize, his eyes widened when the girl tucked her hairs behind ear. "Hritika!!!" , "She's become even more beautiful...."

She can't believe that Mehul is standing in front of her. Both of them just looking at each other. For them, the time has stopped for a while. Past memories flashing in front of their eyes. Both were lost in moment seeing each other.

After few minutes coming back to her sense she realizes that she was staring at him from past 10 minutes. She looks here and there just to check no one has noticed. She directly starts walking to door 'cuz she don't want to face him." Goddamn what is he doing here? Oh wait, he should not get to know what I am doing here..." With that she starts taking long steps almost running away from him. Holding her laptop and report tightly with both of her hands, handbags hanging on one hand and running like a maniac. He noticed that she's hiding from him, he starts to chase her. But her speed of running was so fast, that she immediately reaches at taxi stand and already stopped a taxi. Gets inside the taxi, taxi driver asked, "Where should I drop you mam?", "I'll tell you but first leave this place" she shouted. He almost reached to taxi but just missed the taxi.

Sarang noticed Mehul while he leaved the cafe in hurry. He started chasing him to know why did he running behind that girl .Sarang reached to Mehul, tap on his shoulder to gain his attention, Mehul slightly bending, holding his knees breathing heavily looked at sarang.

Sarang asked...

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.

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"Who is she?"

To be continued...