The walk to LT2 was silent.
Aarav was pointedly looking down, his gaze blank in a way that was somehow worse than when he was actively fuming. Usually, if he was angry, he would at least complain about it. He would rant, pace, glare at innocent walls like they had personally offended him. This version of Aarav - quiet, stiff, and visibly thinking hard enough to melt through his own skull - was infinitely more unsettling.
Karan and Navya exchanged a concerned look over his head.
Karan had already quietly recounted the entire morning disaster to Navya over text while Aarav was still busy internally planning several felonies. Normally, the two of them would have been laughing by now. Relentlessly. Possibly to the point Aarav threatened to stop speaking to both of them for a week.
But oh boy.
This was serious this time.
Aarav was not even ranting.
That was how you knew it was serious serious. Aarav did not shut up about things that irritated him. If he was silent, it meant the problem had bypassed irritation entirely and gone straight into psychological damage.
Navya decided to break the suffocating silence before Aarav spontaneously combusted in the pathology corridor.
"So," she began, her voice deliberately light, as if the morning had not involved a six-foot-two fresher calling their already unstable friend shortcake in public. "I met my room children yesterday."
The words cut through the silence, though not nearly enough.
"They were... fine," she continued, trying very hard to sound casual. "Terrified, but fine. One of them had somehow already found out my full name, city, and school. It was almost sweet. In a deeply concerning, borderline-stalking kind of way. But that's the tradition."
She let out a small laugh.
Karan immediately joined in.
"Ha. Stalking. Very normal. Very wholesome."
"...Yeah."
The silence returned almost instantly.
The attempt had been so awkward it almost deserved applause.
Navya winced internally.
Karan stared at the ceiling for a second like he was asking the universe why he had been cursed with being emotionally invested in a dramatic person with zero coping skills.
And still, Aarav said nothing.
Navya and Karan exchanged another urgent look over Aarav's head.
Well, at least Aarav being short had one practical advantage. They could communicate entire conversations over him while he was sulking.
Navya opened her mouth again, trying to think of literally anything that might redirect his brain before he started dissociating into a murder trial, and then suddenly it clicked.
She grabbed the idea like a drowning person grabbing a life raft.
"Oh, right - what about your room children?" she asked quickly. "You guys haven't met them yet, right? It's been what, almost three weeks now?"
That finally got a reaction.
Aarav looked up.
He blinked once, and some of the murderous fog in his expression shifted.
Room children.
Right.
He and Karan had room children too.
Since the two of them shared a room, they also shared the same pair of assigned juniors. The sacred and deeply ridiculous hostel tradition dictated that every senior had designated juniors, and at some point, the senior was expected to randomly appear in their room like an underpaid ghost and interrogate them. Meanwhile, the juniors were expected to somehow discover their room bosses' names, hometowns, and preferably blood group before that happened.
It was unnecessary.
It was dramatic.
It was objectively absurd.
And to Aarav, it was important.
Because of course it was.
Nikhil had been a problem. A very large, very smug, very annoying problem. But being reminded of this shifted Aarav's attention toward something that, in his mind, was far more pressing than being psychologically harassed by an overgrown fresher with no survival instinct.
The change was almost immediate.
The rigid line of his shoulders loosened slightly.
His brows unfurrowed.
The furious scowl softened into irritated responsibility.
"You're right," Aarav finally said.
His voice was not entirely normal yet, but at least he was speaking, which at this point felt like progress worthy of medical documentation.
"We didn't."
He paused, adjusting the strap of his bag.
"I guess it slipped our minds with..." he trailed off, clearly refusing to say with the giant menace ruining my life.
Then he continued, more firmly.
"With recent events."
Karan very wisely did not smile.
Aarav glanced at him.
"That is still an oversight on our part," he said, with the seriousness of a man discussing surgical ethics instead of mildly bullying first years in a hostel room. "We should go today. After dinner."
Karan nodded immediately.
"Great. Perfect. Amazing. Finally something normal."
He spread his arms dramatically.
"A nice, healthy, rule-abiding, deeply hierarchical interaction. Just two responsible seniors visiting their juniors. No puddles. No emotional warfare. No sunshine."
Aarav shot him a glare.
Thankfully, it lacked the previous homicidal intensity.
Progress.
Small progress.
But progress.
"Yes," Aarav said, mostly to himself this time.
He straightened his apron, adjusted his backpack, and visibly latched onto the new task like a drowning man grabbing driftwood.
"Anything to take my mind off him."
Navya bit the inside of her cheek.
Karan looked away.
Neither of them said it.
Because saying it out loud would absolutely make things worse.
But somewhere in the back of both their minds was the exact same thought.
That sentence alone probably meant Aarav was already far more doomed than he realised.
And somewhere, somewhere beyond human comprehension, the universe itself was probably laughing.
Because after the trajectory of the past few weeks, Aarav thinking he was about to have one normal evening was honestly the funniest thing of all.