Forever Love

42

       " To love is to accept a soul entirely, not wishing that the person was otherwise, nor hoping for change, nor clinging to some ideal past. To love is to cherish the individual standing before you presently-charms, quirks, and all. To love is to give someone a piece of your heart that you will never, ever reclaim."

---Richelle E.Goodrich

    Aaradhya step into the classroom and walked towards the middle row of seats as usual, but keenly sensed that there was something wrong with the atmosphere in the class..

Several classmates were looking at her quietly, and quickly lowered their heads after meeting her gaze. A few of her friends saw her and gathered around with anxious faces.

“What’s the matter?” Aaradhya asked them.

Swetha took out her phone, tapped twice on the screen, and handed it to Aaradhya; "Here,Look at this post. Now it has been forwarded a lot.”

Aaradhya took the phone and looked at it.

This was a long twitter post. It was published twelve hours ago. The publisher has a blue verified badge.

The post title was very eye-catching: “Gold digger abandons her broken boyfriend”.

Aaradhya squinted her eyes and continued to look down.

That day Aaradhya's department has a basketball match with other department. After playing for sometime, she returned to stands and watched the others play.

After a while, when Aaradhya was distracted, she suddenly heard Keerthi's cry of ‘be careful’. She looked over only to see a black shadow rush over and hit the boy sitting next to her who stood infront of her who knows when, directly on his head. With a dull sound, the basketball fell to the ground and rolled to one side.

The boy gritted his teeth and held onto his head. His eyes were red, and tears looked like there were ready to flow out.

With a ball flying over at such a fast speed, it would naturally be very painful. That boy seems to be someone who is afraid of pain.

From another court, two senior boys from another department ran over to collect the ball. Clearly, one of them had thrown the ball.

Keerthi and others run towards the stands and stood infront of Aaradhya, wanting to teach them a lesson.

In such a situation if they had manners they would come over to apologise. The method of apologising would also be different. Some would realise that they had injured another person and feeling bad, they would rush over apologising profusely while asking if they’re ok. Others would just think that it was not unusual for the ball to hit another person and would just casually throw out an apology before picking up the ball and walking off.

They happened to be of the latter group,

One ran over and casually said “my bad” before heading over in the balls’ direction.

Another boy said, “It looks like it hit him pretty hard. That junior still hasn’t lifted his head. Is he crying?”

The boy shrugged indifferently, “It’s just being hit by a ball. How painful can that be for a man like him?”

They were still a few metres away from the ball when they suddenly saw a figure agilely pass them and pick up the ball. The figure looked up at them expressionlessly with a cold look in her eyes.

The corner of Aaradhya's mouth twitched as she repeated his words. It was spoken very lightly but they couldn’t help but feel that it was spoken very coldly: “It’s just being hit by a ball. How painful can that be?”