Inquest (Completed)

Crossing The Threshold

Dhruv and Akshata stood outside the closed-bedroom-door, each sticking a ear to the door, facing each other. The rapidly rotating ceiling-fan muffled the conversation a bit, but they could roughly make out the sentences which mom spoke: "For how long will the party go on?", "Okay, and what will you all eat?", "Which other school-classmates are coming?", "Okay, but...", "Okay, I'll send him..." When the voice seemed to approach the door, the eavesdropping-pair absconded hastily: each to their bedroom. Mom headed to Dhruv's room to find him seated on the edge of the bed, holding a pad with an old half-solved Sudoku and a pencil. He raised his head to meet eyes with mom.

"You can go." she said, handing him his phone.

In a fit of joy and gratitude, Dhruv got up, embraced mom and thanked her. An omniscient smile crept on mom's face. Dhruv realized what his reaction could imply, stepped back, smiled awkwardly and blushed a bit. Mom turned around, took two steps towards the door and stopped. "By the way, I heard two sets of footsteps scurrying when I was coming out of the room..." she said, looking back over her shoulder, and then departed from Dhruv's field of vision, leaving him worried. He still had that smile and the blush. He was perplexed and happy simultaneously. He opened Whatsapp, and saw Krupa's message:

"So u're coming."

"Yeah! Thanks!"

"Mention not... <eye-wink-emoji>"

---

Now Dhruv had another thing to worry about: Krupa's birthday gift. He wondered what he could gift her. He tried to recall whether she had ever hinted anything she would have liked to have. Nothing occured to him. He decided to take 'Expert' advice. 'After all, only a woman can know how another woman thinks...' he declared to himself.

Mom suggested chocolate. Akshata nodded along ['After all, who doesn't like chocolate?']. Dhruv didn't think chocolate would be a 'personal' gift. He asked for more suggestions. "If you had been acquainted with others in her friends-circle, y'all could've together gifted her something together... But you aren't..." Mom said. Dhruv said okay. He didn't have the contact numbers of Radhika and Parvathi, or anyone else. Even if he could contact them via Facebook, he thought they might want to exclusively gift her something by themselves. Dhruv returned to his room, lost in thought. He decided he'll go shopping on Sunday, one day prior to her birthday.

The next day evening, Dhruv was checking Facebook posts on his phone while travelling in the train back home, and a red-dot lighted up above the Messages icon. It was from Radhika. Dhruv was surprised. She asked him whether he's attending Krupa's party, and he said yes. He knew she was attending, so he didn't ask her the same question. They exchanged contact numbers. Radhika informed him about the Whatsapp-group [which Krupa didn't know about], containing those who were attending Krupa's party, and said that she's adding him to it. He agreed to be added, after some hesitation.

Dhruv said bye to Radhika and checked Whatsapp only after reaching home. He saw all the new numbers and new people in the group. He couldn't think of anything to say on the group. Everyone greeted him, and gave their names. He greeted them back. Radhika told him keep their whatsapp-group a secret from Krupa. She first asked him whether he would like to contribute to the gift that they all were buying together or whether he would like to gift her something by himself. He promptly agreed to contributing. Radhika explained that they were going to buy a photo-frame with a collage of everyone's face, with Krupa's in the centre. She told him to mail his pic to Piya, and shared Piya's e-mail ID. The photo-frame would be delivered to Piya's house, and she would get a photo-printout of the collage, insert it in the frame and bring it directly on Krupa's birthday. Dhruv didn't have particularly many selfies. He sent Piya the pic which he thought would be best.