when 77 met 32 [ishman ff] [shubish]

2025

The next day arrived quicker than anticipated. Rishabh it seemed had already alerted shubman about the matter at hand. The air inside virat's room was thick with tension. "what did you find?" shubman asked, breaking the suffocating silence. "did Rishabh not already tell you?" virat asked. "he did tell me a few things but I didn't quite get it." he replied.

"ishan is being deliberately targeted and the next target is going to be Rishabh." Suhani explained hoping to have cleared some confusion. "you said something about the letters? Ishan never told me about those." Shubman said. "maybe he did not want to raise a false alarm?" hardik added helpfully.

"false alarm??? He was getting fucking warning letters? he could have told me about them we could have done something about it." Shubman sounded not just pissed but hurt too. Of course, he did. "things already in past can't be changed, but we can change the future into our favour with hard work. Mulling over the past is not the solution we need right now." rohit said hoping to calm shubman down.

"he did not tell anyone about it before and he still refuses to talk to people now. how the hell can a person help him if he just refuses to talk." Shubman said. His voice raised by a unit. "Everyone that has being sacked refuses to talk shubman, even the people that had left cricket years ago are afraid of the unknown force." Suhani said.

"Do you have a plan?" shubman asked. "Before we proceed with whatever this is, I need my question answered." Abhishek said grabbing shubman's attention. "what?" "few days ago, I saw you leave practice in a hurry speaking to someone on call. Who was it and what were you talking about?" Abhishek asked looking at shubman.

Shubman thought for some time gathering his memory he finally spoke, "it was Rishabh. Rishabh is being followed I hope you already know about it. So, he calls me whenever he feels something weird. It was probably one of those conversations you caught. He had called me when he had that masked stalker experience too, right Rishabh?"

Shubman said looking at Rishabh. Without missing a beat Rishabh nodded in a yes that looked quite sincere. "alright then, let me ask again, do you have a plan?" Shubman asked again sounding dead serious. "I need to speak with every member on that list and that includes ishan, if that sounds like a plan to you." Suhani replied.

"how do you plan on doing that?" shubman asked. "right now, I have no idea about that but if we want to speak with anyone of them, we would need to know about what is holding them back from speaking freely or in this case speaking at all." Suhani explained

"threat so strong that a person refuses to talk to anyone has to include family." Virat said making everyone agree with him. "wait I remember about something ishan had told me not long ago." Rishabh said, everybody looked at him with anticipation.

"I remember calling him not long after he had decided to quit cricket. We talked for a bit but I felt like he was rushing the conversation. At first, I felt like maybe he didn't want to talk to me at that particular time but no, every time I called, he made different excuses to cut short from the conversation."

"shubman was acting out in front of media at the time quite a lot, I remember ishan asking me to make shubman sit still and not come into public's eye too much. I already told you'll about this, right? But the main thing is, ishan sounded like he was warning me about something."

"he called me once after a few of the ict members had spammed his missed call list, he told me about how he wanted to speak with them all, how he missed everyone so much but couldn't speak to them. He told me that they would be associated with him and that would create problems."

"at that time, I thought that he was saying this because of that argument with the management. I thought that he was saying it because he thought the management would not be lenient towards anyone that had anything to do with him. But what if it wasn't about that at all?"

"what if he was being threatened in the name of family and friends? I mean that could definitely be the reason for his aloof forefront recently, right? Suhani remember I mentioned how ishan is not doing this deliberately, to you once? I really thought that it was because of the management, because of his issue."

"This runs deeper then what it looks like." Rishabh completed, his words didn't bring the shock with them, everyone had already thought about his reason at least once but to have it in open like this was a different thing.

"We can go with that of course, but we still don't know how deep does this threat goes." Virat spoke. "we needed the base reason for their silence and now we have it, that would be enough to make them speak." Suhani spoke turning a few heads. "how do you plan on doing that?" shubman asked.

"leave that on me. I will go speak with them in a week or two. I will record our conversation for you'll to listen on but after I meet these people, I would need to meet ishan too." Suhani said the last part looking right at shubman. As if on cue shubman nodded, "I will try convincing him but as you know he doesn't really speak to me anymore."

"try your best." "I will." "Suhani, how exactly do you plan on speaking with these people?" abhishek asked this time. "I am going to use some connections that I had made down the line, don't worry about it." Suhani replied, convincing no one at all.

"should we conclude this meeting then?" hardik asked. "I think we should do that. Also, you guys try your best to speak with ishan, okay? Abhishek please conclude the meeting." Suhani said, her eyes sparkling with an unknown light.

"we... we now know that the threats might have been regarding family and friends, so, we are going to use this information to speak with all the people who have already been victims to this. We will also try to arrange a meeting with ishan." abhishek said his eyes losing their focus. Abhishek it seemed, wasn't convinced with suhani's reason but didn't question it anymore.

When they left the room after the meeting, all of their eyes had a sparkle in it. They knew what they were doing and they knew that they needed to get to the bottom of this no matter what. Shubman fell asleep that night quite comfortably, for the first time in months. He wanted to wake up fresh and help ishan come back on the team. Even if ishan refused to do that himself.

He wanted to make everyone responsible behind this pay. He would make them pay if karma didn't. Maybe this was the reason ishan was scared of speaking to him. He knew that shubman would not take any warning letters or threat calls sportingly. Shubman was impulsive, not usually, he wasn't. But if it was about ishan he was.

Virat had a very similar thought process to shubman minus the aggression (some of it). Yes, you read it right. Shubman had more aggressive thought process then even virat in this matter. Maybe Suhani was right about adding him in on this last. Abhishek on the other hand looked like he wanted to say something but then swallowed his words and went to sleep.

Newsflash: he couldn't. so, he got up and started walking around like a goalless soul. He had made done with his fate of walking aimlessly until the dawn when he saw Suhani walking in front of him, on call again. Like anyone else would, he walked behind her.

"I need your help." she said. "No, I am not coming back just tell me if you can help me or not?" he listened on. "alright I'll text you the details tomorrow. Don't tell your boss about this." She said before ending the call. As she was turning around abhishek walked several steps back. Staring right at her. They stood there facing each other in the dead of the night.

"good night, abhishek." Suhani said with a tight-lipped smile before walking past him inside the hotel again. And abhishek was left alone with his thoughts once more.