The Unwanted Spotlight
It had been a full week, and somehow, through sheer tactical maneuvering and a lot of frantic pacing, I had managed to avoid Ishita.
*Somehow.*
It was a feat that was infinitely harder than it actually sounded. The girl was like a persistent, high-glitch rendering error in my daily routine. No matter which corner of the campus I slunk into, she eventually manifested out of thin air.
The cafeteria? I'd find her standing near the coupon counter. The library? She'd be peering over the top of a massive reference manual three aisles down. The secluded campus garden where I usually went to clear my head? Of course, she was sitting right there on the stone bench, adjusting her bag. At one point, the paranoia got so bad that I seriously started considering buying a makeshift metal sweeper to check my backpack for a hidden GPS tracking device.
Today, unfortunately, was tracking up to be no different.
The moment the final lecture bell rang, I packed my notebook with frantic speed, preparing to execute a flawless, high-velocity escape and catch the early train home before a certain overbearing foster sister could intercept me.
But fate, as usual, had a dark sense of humor.
Earlier that afternoon, a sharp chime had echoed through the room as our class coordinator sent a mandatory ping to the batch group chat: *All second-year students are strictly instructed to remain in their respective classrooms after hours. An important administrative announcement will be made.*
So now, the entire room was held hostage, trapped in a state of restless waiting.
The harsh afternoon sunlight cut heavily through the towering, dust-streaked classroom windows, casting long, geometric golden shadows across the scratched wooden desks. The room was a split screen of typical student behavior—one half was locked in low, buzzing group conversations about weekend plans, while the other half sat slumped over their glowing phone screens, scrolling mindlessly through short-form videos. A few isolated souls simply leaned back, staring blankly out at the distant city skyline.
Then, the heavy wooden door creaked open.
Our professor stepped across the threshold, but the sight of him instantly sent a wave of collective confusion through the front rows. He wasn't carrying a single piece of equipment. No worn-out reference textbooks, no thick grading files, no neat stacks of supplementary notes. Nothing.
The visual was completely wrong. For this man, a mountain of academic paperwork was practically an extension of his physical identity. Seeing him cross the room entirely empty-handed felt like watching a soldier march onto a battlefield without a uniform—it made you feel like some vital component of reality was missing.
"Uhmm... As you all are well aware," he began, stopping near the edge of the podium and clearing his throat sharply to command the room's fading attention. "The annual cultural festival and the official freshmen welcome ceremony are just around the corner. I am leaving the specific planning and execution entirely to the discretion of the class committee. Decide on your themes by tomorrow."
And with that brief, clinical directive, he turned right back around on his heel and exited toward the staff room, leaving the entire room to navigate the massive logistical nightmare by themselves.
The exact millisecond the door clicked shut behind him—the room exploded into absolute chaos.
The classroom instantly transformed into a roaring marketplace of conflicting ideas. Dozens of voices rose simultaneously, throwing half-baked concepts across the aisles in a desperate bid to dominate the agenda.
To understand the sudden panic, you have to understand the specific anatomy of our campus events. Our university held the grand cultural festival and the freshmen welcome ceremony on the exact same day. By tradition, the responsibility of creating high-energy entertainment for the incoming batch fell squarely on the shoulders of the second-year students. Food stalls, interactive games, choreographed dance routines, elaborate stage plays—the entire logistical burden was ours. While the third-year seniors technically participated, most of them were entirely checked out, drowning in corporate internships, while the fourth-years were ghosts, completely occupied with placement drives and mock interviews.
Which meant, by default, the heavy lifting landed on us.
"We should definitely do a play! A horror play!" a guy sitting two rows behind me announced loudly, leaning over his desk to pitch his circle of friends with aggressive enthusiasm. "Maybe something like *Beauty and the Beast*—except we skip the beauty part and just go full *Beast and the Beast*, lol!"
The surrounding group instantly burst into a loud, obnoxious wave of laughter, slapping the desk.
"I know, right?!" one of his friends choked out through a grin, throwing a deliberate, mocking glance toward my row. "And the best part is, we already have the perfect lead actor for the monster sitting right in this room!"
Listening to their predictable, low-tier rambling, I let out a heavy, slow sigh, resting my chin in my palm. I had known the moment the professor left that the conversation would degenerate into this specific brand of unoriginal campus targeting. Not that I particularly cared—their opinions meant less than nothing to my daily matrix—but the problem was that the horror concept was rapidly gaining traction across the room.
Students across the central row were nodding in agreement, their interest piqued by the ease of the theme. Some were already shouting out costume ideas, while others were frantically debating which classic movie monsters would require the least amount of budget to replicate.
But just as the consensus was solidifying—
"I completely disagree!!"
A sharp, authoritative voice cut cleanly through the ambient noise like a blade.
The classroom fell dead quiet in a fraction of a second. Every single head in the room whipped around toward the source of the interruption.
Including mine.
*Wait... Ishita?* My eyes widened slightly as I looked toward the far back corner of the room.
Sure enough, it was her. She had risen fully from her seat, her palms planted flat and firm against the wooden surface of her desk, her knuckles turning slightly white from the pressure. The usual lighthearted, casual expression she carried around campus was entirely gone, replaced by an unusually fierce, deadly serious gaze.
"And don't you think you're all being incredibly mean to Abhimanyu?" she continued without a single shred of hesitation, her eyes locking onto the group behind me.
The guys who had been laughing a second ago looked completely caught off guard, their smug expressions faltering under her direct glare.
"Look, it's just a joke, and besides, the theme is being decided by a majority vote," one of the students from the side row responded, recovery his stance and offering a careless shrug. "It's not like you can just rewrite the plan on a whim."
"Yeah, and you literally just transferred into this batch a while ago, Ishita," another guy added from the back row, his tone carrying a dismissive edge meant to shut the conversation down.
Normally, in the rigid social hierarchy of a college classroom, a comment like that—pointing out a transfer student's lack of seniority—would have ended the debate right then and there.
But unfortunately for them, they didn't understand the fundamental rule of engagement: they were arguing with Ishita.
"What does my transfer status have to do with anything?!" her voice echoed powerfully against the high concrete walls of the room, ringing with absolute conviction. "The core issue here is that you shouldn't be using a class event as an excuse to make fun of Abhimanyu! He's actually a deeply intelligent, incredibly cool guy, just so you all know!"
A collective stun rippled through the rows. Several students blinked in absolute surprise at her intense defense. A few girls in the front rows exchanged sharp, knowing glances, while others slowly turned their gaze directly toward my desk, trying to read my reaction.
I immediately locked my eyes onto the floorboards, completely turning away from the room. *Please... just stop drawing the entire room's line of sight to me,* I mental pleaded, feeling an uncomfortable warmth rise at the back of my neck.
"I mean, no matter how I look at him, all I see is a literal werewolf vibe with those long bangs covering his face," someone muttered from the far left aisle, trying to break the tension with another low-grade jibe.
"Then maybe you should try reading past the first page, because it's pathetic to judge a book by its cover!" Ishita fired back instantly, her response landing like a physical strike.
The atmosphere in the classroom turned instantly rigid, the air growing heavy with social friction. Low, fierce whispering broke out across every single desk cluster. Some students were nodding, quietly agreeing with Ishita's stance on the casual bullying, while others grumbled, annoyed that a newcomer was disrupting the class consensus. A large portion of the room, of course, was simply leaning back with wide eyes, thoroughly enjoying the unexpected afternoon drama.
Meanwhile, I slowly buried my face entirely into my right hand, letting out a silent, defeated breath against my palm.
And just like that... another massive, unavoidable campus war had begun entirely for my sake.
The Price of the Spotlight
The air inside the luxury restroom was thick with the sterile, artificial scent of jasmine air fresheners and bleach. I sat on the closed lid of the porcelain toilet seat, my shoulders slumped, feeling the crushing, physical weight of my own existence pressing down on my chest.
My body felt incredibly heavy. My mind felt even worse.
For the past several months, my schedule had been calculated and packed with such robotic precision that I could barely remember what genuine rest actually felt like. Every single minute of my life was meticulously itemized, written into binding legal contracts before I even opened my eyes in the morning.
* **5:00 AM** — Wake up.
* **5:30 AM** — High-intensity cardio.
* **6:30 AM** — Strict diet breakfast, weighed and measured down to the exact gram.
* **7:00 AM** — Vanity chair. Makeup and hair styling.
* **8:00 AM** — High-fashion photoshoot.
* **11:00 AM** — Press interview.
* **12:00 PM** — Lunch block.
Even lunch wasn't truly lunch. It was simply another line item mandated by my management. Two boiled egg whites. One bowl of raw green salad. No sugar. No fried oils. No junk food. Absolutely no exceptions.
* **1:00 PM** — Public promotional event.
* **4:00 PM** — Choreographed dance rehearsal.
* **6:00 PM** — Studio vocal recording.
* **8:00 PM** — Social media content generation and subscriber engagement.
* **10:00 PM** — Mandatory nightly fitness and measurement check.
* **11:00 PM** — Sleep.
And if an unexpected television appearance, a high-paying commercial offer, or an international fashion event manifested on the horizon, the timeline compressed further until it became a suffocating vice. My weight was constantly monitored. My sleep cycles were tracked. Even the exact ounces of water I consumed throughout the day were logged by a team of handlers.
The glittering title of "India's Dior Representative Model" sounded like a dream to the millions of girls who followed my social media accounts. To me, it felt like being locked inside a beautifully crafted golden cage.
Lately, the relentless velocity of the pressure had begun to fracture my physical health. My body was throwing out systemic warning flags of absolute exhaustion. Nosebleeds. Sudden, blinding spells of dizziness. Chronic migraines that throbbed behind my eyes.
Yet, I kept walking onto the sets. I kept smiling for the lenses. Because in this industry, stopping wasn't a luxury I was permitted to choose.
Flipping open my phone, I switched on the front-facing camera to inspect the damage. A thin, stark trail of crimson had stained the pale skin beneath my nose. I reached out, carefully wiping it away with a piece of rough toilet paper, but fresh blood immediately pooled to take its place. A single, bright red drop splattered onto the white tissue.
"...Again," I whispered, a tired, ragged sigh escaping my lips.
The bleeding itself wasn't severe enough to warrant an emergency room visit, but the fact that it was happening with increasing frequency lately was deeply unsettling.
After cleaning my face as best as I could, I tapped the lock button. The bright interface darkened into standby mode, and my lock screen wallpaper flickered into view.
Instantly, a soft, genuine smile formed on my lips—the only real smile I had worn all day.
It was an old photograph. Very old. The resolution was grainy and blurred compared to the pristine, ultra-high-definition standards of modern smartphones, but it remained my absolute favorite possession. It showed me and my boyfriend standing shoulder-to-shoulder beneath the blinding glare of a summer sun. We were smiling, laughing, entirely unburdened by the world. Happy.
Back then, we were nothing more than children.
"...Leo."
My fingertips gently traced the outline of his face across the cold glass screen.
I hadn't seen him in nearly seven years. *Seven years.* Just articulating the number in my head felt completely absurd. I was barely thirteen or fourteen when I packed my bags, left the quiet city where Leo lived, and moved to the chaotic fashion capital of the country. My mother's younger sister had just launched her own high-end modeling agency, and she needed a fresh, marketable face to anchor her brand. She wanted me. My mother had spent weeks persuading me, painting a picture of a glorious future, and eventually, I had relented.
Honestly... I regretted it now.
The years had blurred past at such a terrifying speed that I had barely registered them disappearing into the ether. Six years. Maybe seven. I wasn't even entirely sure of the timeline anymore.
Did he hate me for abandoning him? Had he completely wiped me from his memory? Or... did he already have someone else walking by his side now?
Those intrusive thoughts always found a way to crawl back into the dark corners of my mind whenever the studio lights went down. At first, during the early months, I had tried calling him every night. Then I resorted to endless text messages. Then I began pleading with my mother for updates every single month.
But every single time I asked, I was met with a shifting, perfectly logical wall of excuses.
"Leo is incredibly busy with his own modeling career now," my mother would say smoothly.
"His agency handles him with an iron fist."
"He's constantly traveling for international campaigns."
"Your schedules simply don't align right now, sweetie."
"Don't worry, he's doing exceptionally well."
Sometimes, my aunt would step in to reinforce the narrative. "We're actively arranging a private meeting between the two agencies." "Just wait until this current seasonal project wraps up." "Wait until your contract clause becomes a bit lighter next year." "There will be plenty of opportunities for you two to catch up later."
And every single time... I chose to believe them. What other choice did I have?
Whenever the isolation threatened to break me, my mother would offer her standard comfort: "Leo always talks about you. He knows exactly how hard you're working out there. He doesn't want you distracting yourself with worry."
Those promises were the fuel that kept my engine running. So, I buried my doubts deep within my chest. One year bled into two. Two years became three. Before I could even process the passage of time, nearly seven years had simply vanished into smoke.
Looking back now, none of those corporate excuses sounded inherently unreasonable. Yet, despite all those pristine assurances and grand promises... I had never been allowed to cross paths with him even once. A cold, strange uneasiness began to coil tightly inside my gut. At the time, I had desperately convinced myself that it was just an unfortunate string of bad timing. Just logistics. Nothing more.
Then—the sharp sound of high-heeled footsteps echoing against the marble tiles outside my stall shattered the silence.
"Did you hear the news?" a woman's voice drifted over the top of the divider, accompanied by the rustle of clothing. "There's yet another romance scandal breaking on the feeds involving one of our prime models."
"Which one this time?" a second voice chimed in, sounding thoroughly exhausted.
"The one and only Karuna Pathak. What is this now? Her twentieth public scandal? Public relations must be losing their minds. Or maybe her thirtieth?"
I furled my brow, my grip tightening on my phone.
"That's not even real truth," the second woman scoffed, a lighter clicking out in the main area. "Agencies deliberately engineer things like this to keep their talent trending in the search metrics. If you want mainstream fame, sometimes your personal reputation is the sacrifice the board makes."
"Yeah, I get that," the first voice replied, her tone dropping significantly. "But I heard from the upper floor that her very first scandal... the one from years ago... was actually real."
"Do you actually know anything about that? You've been her personal manager since the early launch phase, right?"
"I don't have corporate permission to discuss the old files," the manager whispered, her voice dropping into a low, cautious murmur that barely carried across the room. "But I'll tell you this much."
"Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with that entire relationship."
"What do you mean?"
"The boy... he nearly died in a catastrophic accident right when she signed."
A heavy, suffocating silence descended over the restroom. Then—
"What?!" the second woman gasped, her tone laced with genuine shock. "Wait... she would have only been thirteen or fourteen years old back then." A horrific realization bled into her voice. "Oh no. You mean *that* boy? The one from the old hometown files? Oh my God... now the dots are finally connecting."
"Shhh!" the manager snapped fiercely, interrupting her mid-sentence. "Keep your voice down! Don't repeat that name to anyone. Our CEO completely buried that entire story years ago. There was a massive legal commotion behind closed doors, but she utilized her connections and handled it before the press could get a scent."
The second woman let out a long, heavy sigh. "Poor kid. He was only thirteen. What a terrifying, monstrous industry we work in. I don't think I'd ever want my own child to enter modeling."
"Yeah..." the manager agreed, her boots shifting against the tile. "I couldn't even begin to comprehend what that boy's mother must have gone through back then. Wealthy people can literally purchase lives in this business, wipe the ledger clean, and act like absolutely nothing happened. Then they walk around the industry pretending their hands are clean."
"Just like Karuna."
My chest tightened so violently it felt as though an iron band was crushing my ribs. The air in my lungs turned to ash.
The sound of rushing water echoed through the space as a nearby sink was turned on. Then came the steady, rhythmic cadence of footsteps moving toward the exit.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
The casual conversation was drawing to a close. But then, one final, lingering question echoed through the empty marble room.
"What was that boy's name again? The one from the accident?"
There was a brief, agonizing pause.
"I think it was something like Leo," the manager's voice drifted back one last time. "He had distinct, stark white hair from birth. Looked almost British."
My heart stopped dead in my chest.
The faint sound of the main restroom door clicking shut signaled their departure. Absolute, dead silence returned to the space.
Slowly, my strength deserted me. My knees gave out, and I collapsed heavily back onto the porcelain seat, my entire body turning ice cold.
"Leo..."
The name echoed endlessly, bouncing off the interior walls of my skull like a siren.
A sudden, warm sensation trickled rapidly down my upper lip. Blood. The nosebleed had returned, returning much heavier and faster than before. Deep red drops splashed violently against the back of my trembling hand, before dripping down to stain the pristine white floor tiles below.
My breathing turned shallow and uneven. My pulse accelerated into a frantic, erratic rhythm.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
The sound of my own heartbeat was so incredibly loud that it completely drowned out the ambient hum of the building's ventilation system.
"White hair... they were explicitly talking about Leo..."
The pristine restroom began to tilt and spin. At first, it was a slow, sickening rotation, but then the velocity increased exponentially. The tiled walls seemed to lean inward, the fluorescent ceiling fixtures twisting into abstract streaks of blinding light. My vision began to blur around the edges, darkness creeping in like spilled ink.
A chaotic collision of questions slammed into my consciousness, tearing my mind apart.
What had happened to Leo seven years ago? Why was I left completely in the dark? Why was my aunt directly involved in suppressing the narrative? Why was the truth hidden from me by my own mother?
I needed answers. I needed the raw, unedited truth. Right now.
Forcing my trembling muscles to comply, I dragged myself to my feet, but my legs immediately buckled beneath my weight like wet paper. A massive, violent wave of dizziness crashed over my brain so intensely that a sudden spike of nausea hit my throat.
I reached out blindly, my fingers wrapping around the cold metal doorknob of the stall. The metal felt distant, muted—as if I were trying to touch an object submerged deep underwater. My peripheral vision darkened to pitch black, the floor tilting sideways at an impossible angle.
I stumbled blindly forward, forcing the door open. The moment my boots crossed the threshold of the stall, my knees completely collapsed. Tears tore down my cheeks, hot and unstoppable, burning against my skin.
The only concept left intact within the wreckage of my mind was his name. *Leo.* What did they do to him?
The brilliant, harsh lights of the restroom began to dim rapidly. Darker. And darker. And darker still. The spinning world rose up to swallow me whole.
The final sensation I registered was the dull, heavy impact of my body crashing hard against the cold, unforgiving bathroom tiles. Then, the absolute darkness consumed me completely.