Let's Meet After School

CHAPTER 03: I OWE YOU AN APOLOGY

We all have these moments in our lives when we feel angry over someone or something. We feel like venting that anger on that person or that thing once and for all. But we choose to remain silent, we tend not to hurt the other person by venting our emotions on them. Instead, we swallow those negative emotions and those emotions become a poison... a poison that's waiting to burst out of this body... well, eventually the emotions surface to the top as it's not possible for a human being to vent all those emotions inside and stay calm every single time. So, what happens is that we stay calm for nine times but that one time when we feel that we are about to burst into tears, we are about to just vent this anger on that person... that very moment becomes... wait... why am I giving a philosophical lecture on emotions to you guys?

Let's just focus on our story because our male lead is looking for the girl who he made upset... so, that he can go up to her and apologize for his words.

24th July 2015

Have you ever visited Dadar Station in the evening after 5 pm? Well, the scene just looks like that... the school bell has rung and the kids are just rushing out of the gate. One of those kids is Aarav, who's waiting for Ankita near the gate. But after waiting for some time, he realizes that she's nowhere to be found. As he's about to leave the school area he stops for a moment, he sees Shreya walking out of the school gate.

"Have you seen Ankita?" asks Aarav as he walks towards Shreya.

"Why are you looking for her?" she asks.

"It's a long story... I just wanted to talk to her."

"Wait a minute, how do you know about me being her friend?"

"Uhm... I have seen you both together in the classroom hanging out."

"That seems fishy..." says Shreya in a mysterious tone.

"Uh... let me be honestwith you, after all, you're her bestie. Actually, two days ago I made yourfriend upset. I was angry over something else and then she came pestering mefor accepting her treat... and... by mistake, I vented my anger on her. Ankita didn'tdo anything wrong; she was just trying to be nice to me and I got it all wrong and I was quite upset that day... you are understanding my point of view, right?"

"Do you wanna know what happened when you went home that day after you made my friend cry."

"Did she cry because of me?" asks Aarav in a polite manner.

"I mean she was about to... but I comforted her, I took care of her so that she feels a bit better."

"I'm sorry for that day, it was really my mistake and I want to own it."

"Ha... ha... you want to own it!" says Shreya in a sarcastic tone.

"Will you tell me, where can I find her? I waited for her to come out after school but she was nowhere to be found."

"Ah... she left early today."

"Early?"

"Yeah... she took part in some social activity that was related to our environment. Like... cleaning our surroundings and spreading awareness about it. I guess she must be done by now."

"Where was this social activity taking place?"

"The same street where you people met last time, she was allotted to clean in that zone."

Aarav looks at his watch and starts sprinting toward that street road.

After sprinting for seven minutes, he sees a girl far away who's looking like Ankita. As he starts walking towards her, she starts walking ahead. He shouts her name... only to get his efforts in vain as she can't hear him from that distance.

Aarav starts jogging slowly while he's breathing heavily already. He tries shouting her name but he can't due to the fact that he ran for seven minutes straight and now he needs to rest for a while.

As they are walking ahead at this distance, he notices that there's a road end. He remembers that she will be taking a right turn from that point. Aarav thinks that he can catch up to her if he keeps fast walking towards the end.

Almost reaching the end, he sees Ankita with a lady who seems to be her mom. It lookslike she came today to pick up her daughter. After seeing that her mom came topick her up, Aarav took two steps back and decided not to go ahead today. Hetakes a left turn and kept looking back as she was so close to him... he justwanted to apologize for his behavior but now... he can't... at least for today. He decides to have a talk with her the next day and leaves with a frown face.