𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑹𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒄𝒐𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑹𝒊𝒅𝒆

PART-69

It felt like just yesterday.

The day she had walked out of school with a reckless, sun-bright smile. Homework behind her, alarms silenced, routines dismantled.

In her chest bloomed a childish dream, innocent and absolute: now she would sleep till her heart's content. No rush. No fear. Just her, her bed, and her pillows. A perfect love triangle - where everyone was loved, and no one broke.

Funny how hope learns to lie so early.

Someone, somewhere, had planted this beautiful falsehood in students' minds - that life becomes easier after tenth. That the hardest part ends there.

Whoever did that had clearly never lived past it.
Because life doesn't get easier. It begins - the real, raw, unfiltered, merciless life.

Seven years had passed since then.

Seven years of stumbling forward. Of learning that survival looked nothing like the dreams that once kept her awake at night. Failures hollowed her out, leaving behind spaces she didn't know how to fill. Success, when it came, arrived timidly, apologetically, as if unsure she deserved it.

There were tears she never spoke of. Smiles she practiced until they looked real. Fights that poisoned the air, and easy teasing that somehow kept her breathing. Fear walked beside her constantly, whispering doubt. Hope followed too, quieter and stubborn, refusing to leave.

There were moments, dangerously quiet ones, when she stood just a step away from giving up. On her dreams. On her hope. On her life. And now, she wondered what would have happened if she had crossed that final fear, if she had simply let go.

Probably nothing, for the world.

People would still wake up. Trains would still run late. Offices would still open their doors. Corruption would still breathe. Crime would still happen. Life would continue, indifferent and intact.

For her, there would have been nothing at all as well. Because she would have been gone.

And yet, everything else would have changed.

Her mother would not be standing where she was now, serving as a gadget officer, carrying her responsibilities with quiet pride. Her father would not be this relaxed, this at peace with the life he had once struggled through. Her brother - annoying, unbearable, endlessly infuriating - would not be the same man who loved her in the only way he knew how.

Her family.

Not perfect. Not gentle. Not even close.

But hers.

They were healing - slowly, unevenly. Fights still erupted. Voices still rose. Tempers still flared. But grudges no longer lingered. Words were spoken instead of swallowed. Silence was no longer used as a weapon. Pain was acknowledged, not buried.

And somewhere along the way, she had learned some truths no one liked to say out loud. One of them was this:

Money mattered.

It didn't buy happiness, but it bought relief. It softened desperation, eased tensions, and opened doors fear had once locked shut. Money, earned honestly, brought peace into fractured homes. It reduced burdens. It created choices.

That was why she was here.

In Patna.

Not hidden behind walls. Not sheltered in false safety. Sent - especially by her mother - to study, to build, to fight her battles from the front instead of watching them from the shadows.

Raghav and Nakul had protested stubbornly, relentlessly.

Not her ambition, but her safety.

News reports had turned fear into instinct. Parents into guards. Homes into cages. The world outside had grown increasingly cruel to women, and protection had begun to look a lot like confinement.