Meet Indira Devi, an ambitious 18-year-old from India who secures acceptance into her dream university, The London School of Economics. Leaving behind the comforts of her home country, she sets out on a journey to pursue her passion for economics an...
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14th of September, Saturday.
5:00 am.
I hadn't slept all night, not even a wink. Midterms were coming up fast in October, and if I was going to survive, studying seemed like the only option. Besides, with everything going on, sleep felt like a luxury I couldn't afford. So, I surrendered to the only thing that would make me feel productive—studying. Midterms were just around the corner, and Microeconomics had become my lifeline, though it felt like it was slowly suffocating me. Market equilibrium might as well have been a foreign language.
But there was another constant that had my phone buzzing every few hours—Harper. My sister, bless her chaotic soul, was having a meltdown over her wedding. Specifically, the chocolate cake she had to pick for dessert.
She'd been nagging me nonstop about which chocolate cake to pick for the dessert—after she had already chosen the wedding cake. I mean, what kind of person needs two cakes at a wedding? It seemed ridiculous, but I guess that's love for you.
You put up with the bullshit because they're family, and even though I didn't exactly choose her as my sister, there's no one else I'd want more. Plus, her stress levels were off the charts. She'd had at least three mini-meltdowns this week alone, and I couldn't help but feel bad. Planning a wedding seemed like an emotional rollercoaster—one I had to help her ride whether I wanted to or not.
Still, none of that was the real problem. No, my mind was a mess, wandering to places I didn't want it to go. I was fucking jittery, probably because I'd downed two cups of coffee to stay awake while wrestling with concepts like market equilibrium. My brain felt fried, like I'd been running it on overdrive for too long, and all the numbers and graphs were blurring together.
I couldn't focus. Couldn't sit still. So, I did the only thing that made sense in that moment—I decided to go for a run. Maybe the cold air would snap me out of this fog.
I got up, tossing on a black compression shirt and shorts. Aidan was probably still dead to the world, so I didn't bother asking him to come along. Grabbing my AirPods, I hit play on my playlist—'Timeless' by The Weekend and Playboy Carti. This songs had become a borderline obsession for me lately, each beat feeling like a tether, keeping my thoughts from spinning out of control.
The moment I stepped outside, the brisk autumn air hit me like a breath of relief. London in the fall was different—a kind of quiet peace that wrapped around you like an old friend. The streets were still waking up, mist curling around the few joggers I passed. Fallen leaves crunched underfoot, and for a second, I thought about how perfect everything seemed on the surface.
But, beneath that calm, I felt restless.
Without really thinking about it, my legs carried me somewhere else—toward a place that had become strangely familiar in the past few weeks. Indie's apartment. I didn't know if she'd be awake, but the thought of her somehow soothed the chaotic buzzing in my chest.
