New Beginnings

29- The Truth

Twins left for college, even before I could come down for breakfast. 'Yeah yeah, I know you are angry, there's no need to be obvious', I thought, rolling my eyes.

"Give it a few days, everything will go back to normal", Aunt consoled me when I sat down at the dining table with a sad frown on my face.

Nodding at her silently, I diverted my attention towards food. Though I didn't have much appetite, I ate my regular intake of food, not wanting to make Uncle and Aunt worry more after yesterday's fiasco.

Seeing me unconscious, did a number on them. They kept glancing at me worriedly and asked me if I was okay, every few seconds.

"I..I am going to college. See you later", I stood up and left for college after bidding them bye.

Tanya met me at the entrance of the college itself, when I reached.

"Is everything okay at home? Are you okay?" she fired the questions, as soon as I was at one hand distance from her.

"Almost okay", I answered with a small smile.

She immediately saw through my lie. Coming forward, she took both my hands in her's to offer comfort.

"I trust you, okay. Even if no one does, you are not alone", she said reassuring me knowing exactly what my thought process would be in this situation.

I gave her a tight hug for being there for me.

"Where's Riya and Nikhil?" I asked not finding them with her.

"Riya is not coming today as her Mom is ill and about Nikhil, he told me he reached already but don't know where that idiot has gone",she answered.

I removed my mobile from my pocket to call him, but before I could dial his number I saw him running towards us.

He came to an abrupt stop upon coming near.

"Manav", he spoke before stopping as he was breathing heavily, from all the running.

"What about Manav? Please don't tell me, something wrong happened with him because of yesterday's ficaso", I asked, worriedly biting my finger nails.

"Nothing happened to that bastard", Nikhil said angrily.

"What are you talking about, Nikhil? and why are you calling him names?" Tanya asked him looking taken back by his behaviour.

"Wait. I will show you why he is a bastard", saying this Nikhil showed us a video of Manav standing with his friends laughing about winning a dare.

I took the mobile from him and saw the whole video.

They were laughing saying Rishi would never guess his beloved Manav would do this to him.

"But Manav, won't you be also made fun of, along with Rishi?" one of the guys asked.

"I am the not the popular one, am I? Rishi thinks that our relation was exposed but what all this people know is that Rishi was with a guy. Who was that guy, no one has any idea about it", Manav replied with a smirk.

His friends patted his back in encouragement and asked, "How did you even come up with all this?"

"You know how I hated his popularity. I wanted to end it so badly, so I became his friend to know about any of his weakness.

"I so hated that Rishi. Always roamed around with a smile on his face, like there was no problem in his life. His 24/7 cheerful smile irritated me. So I came up with this plan and got into relationship with him.

"This way his popularity and his smile would go down at the same time. I was going to do this after two months or so, but his sister saw us yesterday. So I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone.

"Rishi would lose everything and all the blame would go to his sister as apparently no one else was aware of our relation", Manav said, laughing and high-fiving his friends, looking downright evil.

Seeing this, I was enraged. I gave the mobile back to Nikhil. I wanted to hit Manav till he lost his conscious.

But before Manav I had to think about Rishi.

"Don't tell Rishi about this, I would rather have him hate me than be heartbroken", I told Nikhil.

Nikhil smiled sheepishly running a hand through his hair after hearing me.

"What did you do?" I asked him warily, scared of his sheepish expression.

"I already sent that video to the twins", he said looking at me with a guilty face.

"You are an idiot", Tanya and I yelled at him simultaneously.

Saying this I ran inside the college to find Rishi. Don't know in what condition he would be.

On my way I crashed into someone. I just hurried away, not bothering with him as I wanted to find Rishi at the earliest.

"Wow, you don't even apologize after making someone fall", the guy said standing up from the floor, he had fallen.

"Look I don't have time for this and we both crashed, it wasn't my mistake alone", I told him turning slightly and started walking away again.

"Someone's got an attitude", he spoke in a sing song voice.

Hearing him, I stopped and turned towards him, annoyed and irritated of his talks.

"Look mister, I don't know what your problem is but don't make my already bad day worse", saying this I left from there cursing my luck.

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