Celestial Bond

7

Sita🌻

Our professor strolled into the classroom, settled into his chair, and casually announced, "I'm not teaching today, so you can all present your PPTs now."

"Wait, wasn't the deadline tomorrow?" I whispered urgently to Divya and Sravan.

"It was-tomorrow at 5 PM, in his cabin!" Divya hissed back, clearly panicked. "But he's giving us this class to present, and we're not even done! WHAT DO WE DO?"

Sravan, unbothered and still munching on Lays, waved dismissively. "Relax. Just follow my lead. Nod whenever he looks at you."

We exchanged exasperated glances but had no better plan, so we reluctantly went along. When the professor called our roll numbers, we marched up like soldiers headed for battle.

"Sir," Sravan began, his voice dripping with innocence, "our PPT is ready, but we didn't know we'd be presenting today. I didn't bring my laptop."

Lie alert: His laptop was sitting snug in his bag, fully charged and likely prepped to binge-download movies using the college library's WiFi.

"What about your teammates' laptops?" the professor asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Oh, sir, her laptop's broken," Sravan said, pointing at Divya. She nodded fervently.

"And hers, sir, no charge," he added, gesturing toward me. I nodded along, keeping my poker face intact.

The professor squinted suspiciously. "Then charge it and present it last."

Sravan didn't even blink. "Sir, she forgot her charger."

After an exhausting marathon of Sravan's quick-fire excuses, the professor finally sighed in defeat. "Fine. Present it tomorrow in my cabin."

Victory. Sravan smirked as we walked back to our seats, triumphant.

Later, Divya and I headed to the dance club to choreograph for the festival performance.

And, of course, the universe had other plans. The cultural head paired me with the one person I'd been actively avoiding.

"Looks like it's fate," Siddharth said smugly, joining me the day our partnership was announced.

Despite my irritation, I couldn't deny one thing-Siddharth was an insanely talented dancer. Why does he have to be so good?

Yesterday, I told Arjun I'd be performing with Siddharth at the festival. To my surprise, he stayed completely calm about it-not even a trace of jealousy.

"Hey, Sita, should we do this step?" Siddharth asked, gesturing to the lift where he'd grab my waist.

I immediately shook my head. "I already told you-I'm not comfortable with steps like that."

With three pairs in the group and 30% of the choreography done, we had a long way to go.

"Don't tell me it's because your boyfriend is some over-controlling guy who doesn't like his girlfriend being touched by others?" Siddharth whispered with a sly grin.

I scowled at him. "My boyfriend is the opposite of controlling, thank you very much."

"Ah, so he just told you to say that," Siddharth teased. "Or... are you afraid you'd fall for me if I touched you?" He chuckled as we practiced the next move.

I glared at him. "The only thing I'm afraid of is catching whatever makes you so delusional."

"Alright, alright, no need to get so fiery. By the way, did I mention you look beautiful today?" he added, his flirt mode fully activated.