My Encounters With The Prettiest Eyes

6. Revelations and Rumors

Revelations and Rumors

Sunday, 8th October 2023

"Hey, what's it called when you look at something with your eyes almost closed?" I asked, squinting to demonstrate.

I was still working on the chapter that covered the previous day's conversation with Sanjana and Naira. I didn't want to forget a single detail, so I had started writing about it right away.

Naira turned around and shrugged, "I don't know."

"Squint," Sanjana J said without looking up from her phone.
"Squint?" I repeated to confirm.

Sanjana nodded, finally glancing up.

"I mean when you kind of close your eyes, like a cat trying to see something better. Is that squinting?" I attempted to describe the expression.

Sanjana nodded again, pressing her lips together in that way she often did.

I thanked her and noted down "squint" to describe my expression when I had squinted at Sanjana's phone the previous day to read the timetable.

"What are you writing?" Sanjana J asked, noticing my typing.

"I'm working on a book."

Her eyes widened slightly, and she covered her mouth with her hand—a gasp, as she later described it to me. Though she hesitated, I wrote it down as "gasp," believing it to be the opposite of a sigh, as someone once told me. But Sanjana had that faint smile on her face, so it didn't quite fit.

"So, are you going to publish it somewhere?" she asked. I told her I was considering it in the future and mentioned the five books I had already written.

"Six books and three girlfriends," I exaggerated. Naira shook her head, saying it was a bad joke.

I went on to tell them about Esh... with whom my current relationship was so bad that we might end up killing each other the next time we met. Sanjana mimicked my words by pointing her pen towards Naira's neck, playfully acting out the scenario.

"The second one was the spectacled girl, the one I send a chocolate photo to every year on my birthday."

"Why do you send it to her?" one of them interrupted.

"Yeah, why?" the other agreed.

"Because she doesn't send me one, so I remind her it's my birthday," I explained.

"So, are you planning to publish it online now? On Wattpad?" Sanjana asked.

I admitted I was hesitant, mainly because all my previous books, including the current one, used real names and were entirely non-fiction. Honestly, I was too scared to face another scandal.

"What's the harm in that?" she said, "...nothing will happen." While Aarna was busy creating a profile on Wattpad, I showed Sanjana J the PDF of the first chapter of my first book titled "First and First."

To my surprise, she even started reading it, still shocked that I had actually written a book. As she went through the first page, she asked if I tore out an entire page whenever I wrote a line wrong. I denied it, explaining that I always tried to write everything without mistakes, carefully framing each line before finally writing it down.

"What's childish about it?" she asked, lifting her head from my phone.

I realized she had reached the part where I mentioned the nursery rhymes we were made to sing as ten-year-old kids during the morning circle. I found it childish, but eighteen-year-old Sanjana didn't seem to mind singing nursery rhymes, which made Naira laugh.

"Hey, he's even written about us in his book... I mean, he's mentioned us once or twice," Naira told Sanjana.

I chuckled internally, knowing they had no idea just how many times both of them were actually mentioned in my book.