2
Sneha finally tore her gaze away from Ayan to look at Adhira, her smile tight and overly bright. "Hi! Adhira, right? Ayan's little sister."
"Just Adhira is fine," Adhira replied evenly, gesturing to the open spot beside her on the sofa. "Thanks for coming over. I'm really struggling with memory allocation and pointers."
"Oh, right. Code stuff." Sneha waved a perfectly manicured hand dismissively as she sat down, the overpowering scent of jasmine settling heavily over the coffee table.
Ayan, completely oblivious to the thick tension already brewing, clapped his hands together. "Alright, I'll leave you two geniuses to it. I've got a thermodynamics assignment that's calling my name, and by assignment, I mean a FIFA tournament with the guys online. Yell if you need snacks."
He turned and headed down the hall toward his room. Sneha's eyes practically glued themselves to his broad shoulders, watching his every step until his bedroom door clicked shut.
Adhira cleared her throat loudly. "So. Pointers."
Sneha blinked, snapping her attention back to the laptop screen.
She leaned in, barely glancing at the lines of C++ Adhira had painstakingly written out.
"Right. Pointers. Honestly, babes, you're overthinking it.
It's just, like, variables that store addresses.
You just slap an asterisk on it and you're good. "
Adhira stared at her. "Slap an asterisk on it. That's your technical breakdown?"
"Pretty much," Sneha said brightly, already leaning back into the sofa cushions and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "The professors make it sound way harder than it is. Anyway, since we're taking a little breather...how is Ayan doing? He always looks so stressed on campus lately."
"He's fine. He's in his final year," Adhira said, her voice dropping a fraction of an octave. She tapped her pen against her notebook. "If we could just look at line 42? I keep getting a segmentation fault."
Sneha leaned forward, pretending to look at the screen, but her eyes slid sideways to Adhira.
"A segmentation fault usually means you're accessing memory you shouldn't.
Speaking of accessing things... does Ayan usually hang out at home on weekends?
I feel like I never see him at the off-campus parties. "
Adhira's jaw tightened. The pen in her hand stopped tapping. "He's engaged."
Sneha let out a breathless, forced laugh, waving her hand again. "Oh, please. The whole campus knows about that 'arranged by the parents' thing. But like, they're just family friends, right? It's not a real relationship. Does he actually even like her?"
The sheer audacity of the question hung in the air.
Adhira felt a hot, sharp spike of anger flare in her chest. Kavya wasn't just Ayan's fiancé; she was Adhira's best friend, her practically-sister, and Ayan was absolutely, sickeningly in love with her.
But more than that, Adhira was disgusted by the absolute lack of respect Sneha was showing her, her time, and her education.
Adhira slowly placed her pen down on the table. She reached over and calmly snapped her laptop shut.
Click. Sneha blinked, startled by the sharp sound. "What are you doing? We were just getting to line 42."
"No, I was trying to get to line 42," Adhira said, her voice eerily calm but laced with venom. She stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. "You were trying to get to my brother's bedroom."
Sneha's jaw dropped, her cheeks flushing a dull, angry red. "Excuse me? I am taking time out of my busy schedule to help you..."
"You're taking time out of your schedule to use me as a Trojan horse," Adhira interrupted, her dark eyes flashing.
"Let's get one thing straight. My brother is incredibly taken.
He is obsessed with his fiancée, who, by the way, is ten times the woman you are and doesn't need to fake an interest in coding to get a guy's attention. "
Adhira picked up Sneha's designer tote bag from the floor and shoved it into the older girl's hands. "You don't know the first thing about C++, and I don't have the time or the patience to be your matchmaking service. The door is right behind you."
"You're a brat," Sneha spat, dropping the sweet facade completely as she snatched her bag. "Good luck failing your semester."
"Good luck finding a personality," Adhira shot back smoothly.
Sneha spun on her heel and stormed out of the apartment, the front door slamming shut behind her with a rattling thud.
Adhira stood in the center of the living room, her chest heaving, absolutely seething.
A second later, Ayan's bedroom door swung open. He poked his head out, looking wildly confused. "Did... did Sneha just leave? It's been ten minutes."
Adhira whirled around to face him, her eyes practically shooting laser beams. "You!" she pointed a highly accusatory finger at him. "You are a menace to my academic career!"
Ayan stepped out entirely, his hands raised in surrender. "Whoa, whoa! What did I do? I found you a tutor!"
"You found me a predator disguised in lip gloss and cheap perfume!
" Adhira yelled, throwing her hands up in the air.
"She didn't teach me a single thing! She told me to 'slap an asterisk' on the code and then spent the rest of the time asking about your weekend plans and whether your engagement to Kavya was real! "
Ayan's face went completely blank for a second before morphing into an expression of sheer disgust. "Ew. Are you serious?"
"Yes, I'm serious!" Adhira marched over to the coffee table and aggressively opened her laptop again.
"I kicked her out. Honestly, Ayan, I complain about guys treating me like a piece of meat, but girls are just as bad with you!
I cannot deal with this. I am failing! I need a real tutor.
Someone who actually cares about the subject and couldn't care less about you or me. "
Ayan rubbed the back of his neck, looking genuinely guilty. "Look, Adhi, I'm really sorry. I had no idea she was like that. I just thought, since she was a girl, you'd be more comfortable."
"I am comfortable with competence," Adhira huffed, dropping back onto the sofa. "Find me someone else. Anyone. I don't care if it's a guy, as long as he's not going to stare at my chest or ask for my number. I just want to pass my exams."
Ayan stood silently for a moment, chewing on his lower lip as he thought. He watched his sister, seeing the genuine stress radiating off her shoulders.
"Okay," Ayan said finally, his voice shifting from defensive to entirely serious. "I know a guy."
Adhira immediately eyed him with deep suspicion. "Define 'a guy'."
"My best friend," Ayan said, walking over and leaning against the table. "Shreyash."
Adhira frowned. She knew Ayan hung out with a tight-knit group, but she never paid attention to them. "The one in the Computer Science department?"
"Yeah. He's the batch topper. He eats, sleeps, and breathes code," Ayan explained. He held up a hand as Adhira opened her mouth to protest. "And before you say anything about boundaries or guys being creeps...listen to me. Shreyash is... different."
"Different how?"
"He's terrified of girls," Ayan said bluntly.
"I'm not kidding, Adhi. The guy is practically a monk.
He's incredibly shy, he minds his own business, and he barely even looks up when someone talks to him.
We literally have to force him to go out with us.
If you want someone who is going to look strictly at your laptop screen and nothing else, it's him. "
Adhira hesitated. She hated letting guys into her personal space. But Ayan wasn't just her brother, he was fiercely protective of her. He would never intentionally put her in a situation where she felt objectified or uncomfortable. If Ayan trusted this guy this much, maybe she could give it a shot.
"Does he actually know how to teach?" Adhira asked, her voice softening just a fraction.
"He's the only reason half my batch passed our basic computing electives," Ayan promised.
"I'll talk to him. We can set it up at the library on campus so it's a neutral zone.
And hey," Ayan's eyes softened, "if he does a single thing that makes you uncomfortable, you tell me, and I'll break his keyboard over his head. Deal?"
Adhira looked at her brother, taking a deep breath to steady her lingering frustration. She looked down at the blinking cursor on her screen, then back at Ayan.
"Fine," Adhira said. "Set it up."