NOVEL NEXT Chapter 18: Boyfriend ?
Nitya was ready to face the day on full blast as she knew she would rock the stage when she had the mike in her hands. Her voice really had some kind of power over everyone; whenever she spoke, the person in front was compelled to listen without any kind of requests from her! This was the reason her friends used to tease her that she might become one of greatest leaders the world ever had, if not for the fact that she hated the dark side of politics from the core of her heart. But the twist was that somehow, all of the things she hated intensely ended up falling into her lap, without even asking for it! Take attention for example: she was always among the most popular students of school, college or university, although she never sought attention actively. During her graduation, she had ended up getting selected for the student body, without even contesting because she was nominated, unopposed! This had led to the birth of jealousy in the hearts of many; some of the people who had once claimed to be her friend, had eventually stabbed her in the back. Only because of the fact that she was indeed God's favorite golden child, had she managed to come to the shore everytime, otherwise she had gone through enough storms in her life.
True to character, she had never told anyone the full extent of her suffering; according to her, it wasn't the worst thing to happen! Her tendency of judging the severity of things was just like the way she dealt with weather changes: she had this compulsive habit of saving the last degree of fan speed for the month of June, in case the temperature would rise some more- and if she gets used to the maximum speed before that, she would be left with no alternatives; and the last set of sweaters for January if the cold would rise, for similar reasons, meanwhile struggling with both extremes of temperature on the respective days as well. This era seemed wrong for people like her with pure and emotional hearts, because everyone ended up believing that she was fake. At that moment, she felt like she was too broken to make new friends, to search out for people who needed someone to share anything with, or needed any help. The day she had hit her lowest point, she had decided that she wasn't going to make any more friends in Masters, but had her heart ever listened to her will, being the social butterfly that she was? She might have been hurting so badly that the girl who was able to make friends for life in just one meeting had made a resolution to not make friends anymore. But as everybody knows, rules and resolutions are meant to be broken anyway; she had ended up getting three admirers and five new friends by the time the day was over! Two of those aforementioned friends were girls and the rest were boys, not counting Atharv and Kanan, who had been her classmates in undergrad as well.
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She smiled as she left the college, seeing that brother was already waiting for her in the parking lot. She snuck out from among her friends, careful to avoid their gaze- she didn't want to repeat the same mistakes of her undergrad! She would never let anyone find out that Mehul Jaikar was her elder brother. Like everybody has their lifetime interspersed with a little monotony, a little adventure, a little shock, a little joy, a little sadness against the large backdrop of life; her life consisted of one twist after another, and then a few twists more, adventure, shock, joy, twist, twist, sadness...and if some space was left after all that, then life could be adjusted somewhere in between!
She saw Professor Annya standing there with her brother, in the middle of a discussion. She thought of texting him to let him know of her arrival, so he could reply and tell her how long she needed to wait. But before she could reach for her phone, Professor Annya saw her and shouted her name to the very moment!
"Nitya Jaikar, is that you? Come here, come here; I was just talking about you with Mehul, you really do have a long life!"
Nitya's face turned red out of fear and shyness. What had she been talking about with her brother, that her name came up? And even worse was the fact that she was not even aware of what the problem was; she was afraid that her brother might have replied truthfully to all the questions she had asked him. She hesitantly walked towards them and after reaching there she greeted both of them. She was about to ask what they were talking about, when Profesor Aanya started again "Mehul has told me that you need some guidance; let me tell you that you call me anytime if you want any help. This is the reason I am here, and now you don't have only Mehul sir as your Professor, you have me as well. So try not to bother him all the time, just come to me instead!"
Nitya was observing Mehul's face in the meantime. She knew it had a special kind of effect on him whenever someone told Nitya that she needed to improve something or that her effort was not worthy of something; her brother was always about to pop up. She noticed the colours of his face changing and her hand reached out to hold his hand to calm him down, but she stopped herself in time- if she had done that, Prof. Aanya would know everything. So just put her hand on her head, she knew he would become concerned about the cause of her headache and ask Annya to leave.
Mehul did exactly as Nitya had expected after putting her hand on her head, but Annya was not a new player as well; she had sworn that she would not go anywhere without knowing every detail about Nitya. When Mehul asked her to leave as it was getting late, she promptly replied "Yes it is getting late, let's go Nitya? Hop in my car and I will drop you home!"
Nitya was clueless about how to tackle this when the human headaches of hers also appeared in the parking lot in search of her, and she took a breath of relief as they called out to her "Here you are! And I was searching everywhere for you. And this is great, Sir is also here- I need to ask him something," said Atharv.
"Listen, why don't you guys hop in my car and will drop you all home; and tell you the solutions of whatever questions you wanted to ask." Mehul asked, making full use of the opportunity presented to him.
"That's so nice of you Sir," Kanan replied and all three of them got into the car quickly, leaving Professor Annya alone with her quiet rage.
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Nitya wanted to call her best friend after dinner, but decided otherwise, thinking that she might be asleep. Nitya knew that Suro spent the most part of her journeys knocked out, for fear of motion sickness and it was better to not disturb her. So she dropped her a message and drifted off to dreamland.
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"It's not as cold yet! And don't try to change the topic, why are both of you here; what if the hyungs come to know about this?!"
"And where do you think Ji-hun's Hyungs are? Also, how many times do I need to tell you that it's 'oppa' ('elder brother') for you, pretty girl, not hyung!"
"Hyeon Hyung," she recognised the voice without even looking at the person, as her face was still encapsulated in Ji-hun's hands. She hopped out of Ji-hun's embrace and saw that there were four more people standing there, with huge smiles on their faces.
She hugged all of them one by one, and just after she announced "This is giving me the feeling that the whole Korea is with me now, as half of my family which was miles away is with me again! But wait a minute, Yeoubi hyung is going to kill me. Am I not lovable to you all, that you guys are planning my murder?"
At the mention of his name, Yeoubi peeped out from behind Kaoru. "What exactly do you think of me, young girl?! You literally do match our Ji-hun, as both of you are totally dramatic-" He hadn't even completed his sentence when she hugged him, smiling.
While everyone was looking on with curiosity, someone grabbed her hand and tried to pull her away. She cringed as she heard a raspy voice "Leave her alone, who do you guys think you are?"
She looked back trying to jerk her hand from his grip and looked back at Ji-hun who was there to rescue her, and Ho-jin who was also trying to push that man away.
"Leave my Noona's hand," Ho-jin snapped. The man looked him up and down, momentarily startled by his aggressiveness, but regained his nonchalant expression once again and asked "Who do you think you are, young man?"
"I am her younger brother, okay! Step aside, otherwise the result won't be good." Ho-jin growled.
"Ohh really?" The person spoke with a smirk on his face while Nitya was hugging Ji-hun again out of fear, and everyone else was standing in front of her to cover her.
"Let me introduce myself to everyone present...I am Kim Ji-hun, Nitya's boyfriend!"
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