Chapter 1: Classroom Explosion
The projector whined, a dying insect casting jagged blue shadows over three hundred bored faces. The air was thick, a soup of body spray, sweat, and the damp-paper smell of forgotten textbooks. Samarth stretched his long legs under the cramped desk, feeling the metal groan. He wasn’t listening. Dr. Mehta’s droning voice about post-structuralist theory was just white noise under his main preoccupation: the faint, familiar floral scent cutting through the stink from two rows ahead.
Ankita.
Her dark head was bent, but he knew she wasn’t taking notes. Her shoulders were too tense. He watched a strand of her hair, glossy as a crow’s wing, slip over her shoulder. His fingers twitched.
The lecture stumbled to a break. The hall erupted into a cascade of scraping chairs and overlapping conversations. Samarth didn’t move. He just watched as Ankita stood, her athletic frame outlined against the flickering light, and made for the aisle. That’s when he saw it. Tucked under her arm, its corner dented from being shoved into bags—a battered copy of Norton’s Anthology, Volume II.
His copy.
A slow smirk spread across his face. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and unfolded himself from the seat, moving with a predator’s lazy certainty. He cut her off before she reached the doors.
“Going somewhere with my property?”
Ankita stopped short. Her eyes, dark and liquid, flashed up at him. She didn’t bother with feigned confusion. “Your property? This book was on the empty seat. Finders keepers, you arrogant prick.”
“It was on my seat. I went to take a piss.” His voice was a low, amused rumble. He stepped closer, invading her space. He could see the fine gold chain at her throat, the rapid pulse beneath it. The scent of her was stronger now—jasmine and sheer defiance. “Give it back.”
“Or what?” She tilted her chin up, a challenge. “You’ll run and tell Smriti? Let her fight your battles? I heard you two this morning, by the way. Through the wall. My cat was traumatized.”
A few students nearby stopped talking, ears pricking up. Samarth’s smirk didn’t falter. If anything, it grew. He loved this. He lived for this electric crackle between them.
“Jealous, Ankita? You could always just knock. I’m an equal-opportunity satisfier.” He let his gaze drag down her body, slow and deliberate. “Though you’d need to unclench first. All that rage has to be storing somewhere.”
Her voice didn’t rise in pitch. It amplified, filling the space between them like thunder. “You wish you had anything I wanted, Samarth. A monster between your legs doesn’t make you a man. It just makes you a loud, tedious clown. A limp-dicked bastard with a complex.”
The insult landed, but he wore it like armor. He laughed, a short, sharp bark. “Try me. You wouldn’t be the first to be scared. But you might be the first to actually enjoy it. All that noise you make… imagine putting it to better use.”
He reached for the book. She jerked it away, clutching it to her chest. The movement did interesting things under her fitted t-shirt. He noted them, clinically, fuel for later.
“You’re disgusting.” Her words were hissed, venomous. “You think your open-relationship bullshit and your loud, performative fucking makes you interesting? It makes you pathetic. A frightened little boy who needs an audience to feel anything.”
“And you?” He leaned in so close his lips almost brushed her ear. The entire row was silent now, watching. “You despise me so passionately you track my fucking schedule. You know what time I wake up. You know the brand of my shampoo. That’s not hatred, Ankita. That’s a shrine.”
She recoiled as if scalded. Her face flushed a deep, furious red. “You conceited, delusional son of a—”
“Frigid bitch.” He said it calmly, cutting her off. The words hung in the humid air, final and brutal. “All that fire, and for what? Just to burn alone. I offer you a real spark and you’d rather freeze.”
For a second, he thought she might hit him. Her fist clenched white around the book’s spine. Her whole body vibrated with the effort of control. He wanted her to lose it. He wanted to see that control shatter into a million pieces, all for him.
Then, with a force that surprised him, she shoved the book hard against his chest. “Take your pathetic book. And choke on it.”
He grabbed it, but he also grabbed her wrist. Her skin was scalding. Her breath hitched. The world narrowed to that point of contact, the thrum of her pulse against his thumb, the shock in her eyes that wasn’t entirely anger.
“You feel that?” he murmured, for her alone. “That’s what a real heartbeat sounds like. Not all that recycled anger. Something new.”
She yanked her arm back as if his touch were acid. “Don’t you ever touch me.”
“We’ll see.”
Dr. Mehta called the class back to order, his voice strained. The spectators reluctantly turned away, the show apparently over. Ankita spun on her heel, her long hair whipping like a slash of ink through the stale air. She didn’t look back.
Samarth slid back into his seat, the stolen textbook warm from her grip. He opened it. Tucked between the pages on Jacques Derrida, he found a single, bent hairpin. He picked it up, rolling the cool metal between his fingers. A slow, real smile touched his lips, one devoid of its usual cruelty.
The lecture resumed. The drone of theory filled the room once more. But Samarth heard none of it. He was planning. Plotting. The game was afoot, and it was infinitely more compelling than any lecture.
He leaned back, the hairpin a secret in his palm. She was right about one thing. He was a monster. But she was wrong about the fear. He had a feeling, a deep, certain pull in his gut, that Ankita wouldn’t be scared at all.
She’d be the match to his gasoline. And he couldn’t wait to see what they burned down together.