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Aadhya comes back to consciousness slowly, with a dizzy sensation and having no idea of where she was. Her whole body ached, and her head felt as if someone had smashed an iron barbell into it. She was lying on her side, her head pillowed on the softest feathered pillow. And when she does finally recognize that she's in a completely foreign landscape... far from the familiarity of her cozy home in London, Aadhya sits bolt upright on the bed with her heart going like a triphammer.
Aadhya was naively hoping that last night was just some long and absurd dream. But the unfamiliar yet plush and orderly-looking Renaissance bedroom made it hard for her not to accept her strange situation. A grandfather clock sat at the corner of the room, reading the time as 10'o clock.
With a resigned groan, she falls back onto the pillow and screams into it in pure frustration, and the sounds come out muffled.
Just as she was trying to figure out why and how she was here and when she could possibly go back, someone barges into her bedroom. Well, not really hers. But allegedly hers.
"Oh, Good," Reena Desai says when she sees her on the bed, wide awake. "You are awake." Now that she's a little soberer, Aadhya could tell Reena's speaking a different language. Kannada, maybe, she guesses. But for some reason, she could understand such a foreign language clearly.
And Aadhya thinks by now she should stop being surprised by everything associated with weird.
"Um, Good Morning," is all Aadhya says in reply with an awkward raise of her hand and a smile that looked like a grimace.
There is a twitch at the corner of her mouth, but Reena fights down the smile, settling to scowl as though she remembered something unpleasant. "Do you remember what you did yesterday?" She demands, folding her hands as she tries to look intimidating.
"I..." But Aadhya couldn't get a word out. Of course, she did. She flirted with the hero, for god's sake. A hero who was supposed to fall in love with Reena and probably marry her in the future. "I am sorry," she apologizes, looking at her hands with heavy guilt.
Reena sighs at her expression, stepping forward until she's at her bed and is sitting beside her. "Alright, you are forgiven," Reena says finally. And, somehow, it gave Aadhya an impression that she was never even angry at her in the first place.
"Really?" Aadhya's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Both at her instant forgiveness and the language that spills out of her lips, unbidden. "Just like that?"
Reena rolls her eyes, making herself a little more comfortable on the bed as she turns to her. "Of course. I would never stop talking with my little sister because of a brutish rogue," Her sister says with a wave of indifference.
Brutish rogue. It takes her a second to understand who she was referring to. Her eyes went wide when she dawned on the realization. This can't be, Aadhya thinks to herself. It wasn't how the love story goes. Even when she had seen the movie, Aadhya thought there wasn't much interaction between the protagonists. The times they two were in each other's presence was very limited and often ended curtly.
But now that she's here, maybe she can change that. Hmm, who knows, perhaps, that is why she is here in the first place. To add some color and romance to Rocky's dim and bloody life.
So in an attempt to handle the damage control, Aadhya says, "There's no need to be so harsh on him. Maybe... maybe, he doesn't really know who we are. And he was very drunk too-"
"Are you taking his side right now?" Reena inquires with narrowed eyes, staring at her with such intensity that Aadhya immediately shakes her head negatively.
"No. Of course not," Aadhya lies aloud. How can she say to her that she's not prioritizing the hero or anything because she has a crush on him but just saying it out of professional integrity?
Reena looks pleased with her choice of answer. "That's what I thought," she says. "How dare he walk into the party I threw and ruin it. I will never leave that guy alone. You just watch... the second Kamal finds him, I will make it so that he will rue the day he met with us."
Aadhya's eyes go to the left, remembering the name and matching it with the person she had seen on the screen. Yes, she did know Kamal. Still, Reena's warning left her jittery. So she pushes a little. "Can't we just leave it alone this time? Revenge only ends in bloodshed."
"Well, I want it to end in bloodshed," Reena wouldn't back down. "You came back to India after 3 years. And the party was hosted in your honor. Aadhya Desai's honor. No one who likes to live their lives peacefully in Bangalore would dare to crash it." Well, that's news to Aadhya. So, seeing as her character wasn't in India for a long time, even if she did anything against the norms, no one would doubt her or think it otherwise.
Good. Good.
But on the other side, this meant Reena hated Rocky's guts more than they had shown in the film. Which was bad. Very, very bad. But seeing as her attempt at damage control only served as fuel to the fire, Aadhya drops the topic for now. "Alright, alright, forget about him. How about we celebrate my homecoming today and just go around the city. Let's just go out shopping or something." Yes, shopping would fix every bad mood. And even though Aadhya had never been to Bangalore before, she had an impulsive curiosity to see how India was in the 80s. "It will be like a sibling date, hmm?"
Reena looks convinced after some time, nodding her head in agreement with Aadhya's impromptu plans.
"Super. Give me half an hour, and we can go." At that moment, her stomach makes a growling sound, blushing Aadhya's cheeks in pink color.
Reena smiles at that. "Go and get ready," she says with a fond look in her eyes. "I know a good place for breakfast. I think you will like it too."
Aadhya sends her a beaming smile at that. "You are a godsend. I love you," the black-haired girl confesses cheerily, kicking her sheets back and getting up from the bed. After blowing a kiss in her new sister's direction, Aadhya walks into the ensuite with a light skip in her chest.
Because she decided, she had figured out the whole game.
All she needs to do is make the main protagonists have an epic love story and a happy ending, and she can go back to how her life was before.
