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Chapter 11

"Do I really have a crush on Aarush?"

In the digital era, where everything can be typed in any app, Nisha has her diary where each page is filled with questions. If there was a satisfactory answer to it, it was also written there. It was a diary given by her mother at the starting time of her puberty. From that day till now, she has written many questions in that big diary. As she wrote this question in it, she felt a little relaxed as she let the time to give her answer.

As she looked through some pages, she saw questions like...

"Am I ugly?" This question was written after getting bullied by a classmate for her light brown skin. With that, the answer was, "Not at all. I am beautiful."

Another question was "Am I too skinny?" This question was written after going through a long period of sickness. The answer was, "I am healthy now."

As she looked through more, her eyes caught attention to a question written in 9th class that was especially highlighted: "Do I really deserve love and care?"

There was no answer written about it. For a second, Nisha was thinking deeply and then came back to reality as she heard the door opening. She closed the diary, put it inside the wardrobe, and acted like nothing in front of Riya. Riya also didn't pay a lot of attention because she was late for morning classes.

Riya grabbed her bag and asked, "Are you sure you wanted to go this much earlier to college? I mean, are you fine now?"

"Yes sis, actually we were going to discuss some ideas for the upcoming competition...so that's why," Nisha explained because she got a message from Aarush last night to be present for this same reason.

"Oh...that's why you were working since yesterday evening.... then did you come up with some idea?" Riya asked, curiously.

"Ah...yes I did. I will explain to you it later." Nisha said with a smile, and she was confident that Aarush would also like this idea.

"Okay...now go and get ready. I will drop you at the college. No need to go by yourself." Riya said while leaving the room.

"Sure, give me just 10 minutes," Nisha said and locked the door to get changed and open the shared wardrobe. First, she hides that diary behind her clothes and quickly gets changed into a grey sweatshirt. As she got completely ready, she grabbed her books and laptop and headed downstairs.

After 25 minutes or something, she was in front of her college. She got another message from Aarush saying, "Meet the US in the basement class."

"US? What does that mean?" Nisha thought over that one word as she headed towards the basement class, but in between those thoughts, she was also imagining how Aarush would react to her idea. As she pushed the door of class, she met with her two classmates and 2 seniors from the MSc 2nd year. As Aarush saw her, he signalled for her to come inside the classroom.

"Finally, you are here.... meet our other team members." Aarush said while looking at them and introducing their seniors, Kiran and Saniya.

"Wait...what...." Nisha asked herself because according to her, until now they were only two working on ideas, and then with the speed of light she remembered what was mentioned in the competition rules and guidelines that 'to have more than 2 participants in one group'.

"Hi, Nisha," Saniya said while shaking hands formally. Nisha also greeted me formally.

"Why didn't you introduce her to us earlier?" Kiran looked at Aarush and asked.

"Were you even in the college for that?" Aarush replied with a smirk because both seniors were out of town for individual matches of badminton. Nisha heard their conversation carefully and then interacted with all of them.