Love of a mask

The bell rang

The day at school was hectic, to say the least. After I dragged Charvi out of the class, I took her to my regular spot when I was bunking classes or just trying to avoid my friends at school.

Throughout the entire conversation, I noticed that she was more interested in the conversation than I had assumed she would be.

There we talked for 30 minutes we ended up skipping 10 minutes of the class after lunch. Midway, we realized how we'd forgotten to eat lunch.

As it turned out, she and I shared the same favorite authors: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dazai, Kafka, and many more. But the talk about novels and authors was just a part of the conversation. I ended up learning a lot more about her as a person too.

Like how her father had been transferred to this place so she had to switch schools so all of a sudden.

How she gets all nervous and anxious when met with a crowd and I even got her to admit that she got nervous and weird when I had dropped that cringe-worthy pick-up line on her.

How pathetic she was.

We exchanged contact information, something that freaked us both out was how she and I had the same last four digits in our number. Even had a great laugh about it.

These coincidences, although freaky, were something that would help me a lot.

As if in due time she develops feelings for me, she would start taking these coincidences as a lot more than just that.

Girls often romanticize everything in common between them and their crush, or lover if they're their first. Sometimes even when they're not as long they're deeply involved with each other.

After returning to class I was scolded by the teacher, but Charvi wasn't as she was a new student and well, a girl (The teacher was a male.)

The scoldings were the least of my worries though as I was welcomed in by the glares of many classmates and the very audible whisperings of our classmates that made the ears bleed of both me and Charvi.

Shubham went on a yapping session during a free period which I somehow managed to survive through my mastered technique of ignoring.

Our last period was games in which the boys played football and the girls handball. I am usually put as a striker in the team as I am considered a good player by Shubham who pushes me into participating. But when the teams were being split I noticed how Charvi had started moving away from the girls' group to a shade near the tree.

I informed Shubham that I had a stomach ache and was about to move in her direction when a hand placed on my shoulder, I looked behind and there stood Shubham with a grin spread across his face.

"Go get 'em, tiger!" He said.

"Kill yourself!" That is what I wanted to say, but I didn't.

I simply frowned with a nod and walked away to where Charvi was seated. I noticed she was zoning out, staring at her feet that kept tapping the ground. I walked over sneakily grabbed her shoulder from behind and let out a "Wah!" right next to her ear making her tremble in silence.

After that I went ahead and sat next to her without permission, seeking permission would've made me appear fragile.

She continued looking at her feet while trembling as I sat there looking at her. "What's up?" I asked casually, looking down at her tapping feet.

No response.

I looked up at her and found myself confused to see her lightly shivering and hugging herself. It was just a little harmless scare I had thrown in her direction as a joke, but it had brought out a response from her that was something even someone easy to scare wouldn't give out.