Madly, Deeply! ❤️

 Madly, Deeply! ❤️

 

The watchman was wide awake, unlike in the movies, sleeping. It was 1’o clock already. He was scrolling through reels and the volume was enough to keep him awake for the rest of his career. I took out my phone and connected it to the Bluetooth speaker. I searched for the worst song possible. The worse and loud, the good.

I played Saami Saami, and it reverbed through the speaker in the opposite direction, a few yards away. He looked up and went in the direction of the sound. I jumped over the wall and stood low, while he was distracted. I am inside the college, Rithi challenged me to get in if possible.

I called Rithi and waited for her to pick up the call.

“Call after five minutes”, she said, as soon as she picked up the call.

“I’m in your college”, I replied. My legs were already shaking.

“Oh, great. Go check out our canteen for some donuts. It is the best”, she said, sarcastically.

“Please be serious, which side is your department?”, I pleaded.

“Deepan, am being serious. Let me go take bath and come back for your nonsense”, she said, before doing the worst thing, cutting the call.

I walked up the stairs to the left and came up to the first floor. I almost missed the Pillaiyar before I walked up. I thanked him for blessing me. I called her again, looking up at the building from the round corridor.

“Now where are you, WCC ah?”, she laughed. It wasn’t funny.

“I’ll go bath in the small pool looking thing and dry my clothes over the gigantic French fry looking whatever”, I replied.

“Are you out of your mind! You went there? What the actual F-”, she was disappointed.

“Where’s the photo kept? I’ll see that and run away”, I said.

“Am cutting the call. Erase your call log. Bye”, she sounded serious.

“Rithiiii! I came in, as you challenged me. Now where is it kept?”, I asked. Basically, I came to see myself on the noticeboard. The photo of me she took.

“Just don’t bring in my name, if you get caught”, she calmed down.

“Okay, which direction to?”, I asked.

She directed me to the department of Visual Communication. I started to walk freely as if am strolling in my college. I saw many photos framed in the corridor, and I found my photo between a dog’s photo and an old farmer’s photo. The minimal light falling on my face made me look good, especially the camera in my hands made it look professional. She completely drained all the colours, so B/W set up the right mood. No wonder why she won the first prize for it.

I took a picture of the framed photo and I took a selfie with it, with my tongue out. I video-called her and showed her my proud face. She smiled. That smile was worth all the risk. She kept this picture hidden from me and told me I have to earn it. She told me to go and look at the picture framed in the department. Now that am here, she told me to leave the campus as soon as possible. I started moving.

I heard a loud bang on the same floor. It was at the end of the corridor.

“Is your college haunted or what?”, I asked, while walking towards the sound.

“I swear I’ll kill you if you get caught. You always irritate me”, she was irritated.

I stood before the restroom, with the tag ‘Ladies’ on it.

“Get in, it's fine. I’ve never seen a ghost. Show me properly”, she said. The only thing she was lacking is, is a box of popcorn.

“How many more of these wrongings I should commit today”, I said before I went in. I heard a feeble murmur.

I clasped my phone hard and gulped down. I opened the last stall inside, to find a girl half-unconscious falling out. I dragged her out and patted her face. She seemed thirsty, so I gave her some water from my bag. She gulped it hastily and started to regain her energy. I showed her to Rithi.

“She’s our senior, Chaaru Akka. She can’t talk. She’s the second prettiest in the college but”, she identified her quickly. I was not going to ask who's the first.

“Who-did-this-to-you?”, I asked her, moving my lips slowly and using hand gestures wherever possible.

She conveyed to me that she might have been locked in accidentally, as she took deep breaths in between. They almost kill people here, accidentally?

“Okay-Let’s-get-out-of-here”, I gestured to her. She nodded.

We walked down the building. I got to look at her under the silver light of the Moon and she looked impeccable. Her eyes were tired with lack of sleep, while her sharp nose looked better than mine. She wet her lips and wiped off the beads of sweat from her jaw. She had post-pimple marks on her cheeks. She put the loose strands of hair behind her ears and looked at me.

I turned to the ceiling and started to count the fire extinguishers in the corridor.

“‘Teen Boy Found in a Popular Girls College; Found kidnapping a student’ How would this sound for tomorrow’s headlines?”, Rithi laughed.

Chaaru smiled a little and looked at me. The dark corridor helped me conceal my blushing out of embarrassment. Why do I even like her?

Chaaru stopped me and we dunked. The watchman trailed his torch floor by floor. He should’ve found out the speaker.

‘What we do’, she gestured to me. I shook my head and look at Rithi for a solution. She thought hard before coming up with one. The worst idea ever.

*****

“Who are you both?”, asked the watchman, furiously. His eyes were red, lacking sleep. Or, by seeing cringy reels.

“We both are third-year students, sir. We were in the edit suite working late. Here’s the letter from HOD”, I spoke in my most feminine voice. Rithi’s spare top was tight for me, and the leggings projected my legs like PVC pipes. I wish I had I had a tiny waist like her when the stitches started to give up. Never in my life, did I think I would wear her earrings, when I used to stare at them, on her, for hours. Chaaru helped me wipe off my mustache and beard with a cardboard cutter. I looked dashing enough, with Rithi’s lip balm and eyeliner. And a bit of her foundation too.

He asked for our IDs while I gave him a quick glimpse of Rithi’s duplicate ID from her locker where I found her spare dress. She looked pretty in it, and I became furious when he didn’t find out am not her, even after seeing it. He told me he had to have the HOD letter for his reference. We let him keep that random circular we found on the notice board.

Rithi could not stop looking at me. I don’t know if I looked that good or whatever, she was too stunned to speak and kept smiling. I smiled at her back. Chaaru gestured a heart with her hands, pointing to both of us.

“So, Rithi, what do I get for saving Chaaru and my daring adventure into your department?”, I asked her. She smiled and pursed her lips.

“Come to my home, you’ll have a choice on whose slippers you want to be hit by”, she said. She winked at me.

“Also, thank you for being flat, or else it would’ve been tough for me to match”, I laughed saying this out. She laughed hard, on the other end.