Wait he did for a day. Mitra grew weak and shifted from the floor to the bed sometime in the midnight, mostly as an instinct due to her sore body. She looked tormented as she kept having some sort of seizures, the prognosis of which Sashi couldn't quite identify. She kept waking up screaming from fatigued sleep.
Sashi wasn't particularly enjoying the messy situation. He picked the plate of meal intended for her and walked into her room.
She was sitting on her bed with her back to the wall, her knees drawn up and her arms around her legs, hugging herself into a defensive position. She flinched when she spotted Sashi entering the room.
"Eat," he said softly, setting the plate on the table.
Mitra didn't answer. She looked away to the window that was now open, into the space beyond that.
"I won't fix that now," Sashi remarked.
He hadn't planned on it. Yet, he knew that making a statement like that might get her into at least some sort of action instead of just sitting and moping about on a meaningless past incident. The window might seem like her only escape route and she might choose to act on it.
And once she got out of her stupor, he would take on her.
Mitra stayed still, her eyes not flickering, her mouth not twitching. The lack of response fazed Sashi a little, which he chose to ignore reasoning it with Mitra's current state. Giving her a little more time was the only solution.
He went about his day, getting to his computer store on time, working through like any other day, without thinking of the girl who was struggling in his basement. He got a phone call from one of his minions informing him of the police crackdown on the photocopy store Sashi had asked him to keep an eye on.
Sashi smiled to himself. Mitra's boyfriend and the police were getting faster and better.
He didn't have to worry yet; he still had a multitude of backup options and he might not even have the necessity of utilizing them all.
In the night when he made his way home and checked on Mitra through the CCTV, he saw her sitting in the same posture as the morning. The food, however, was emptied out.
So, she is finally getting back to being herself.
He had a smirk on his face as he headed to the basement with her dinner.
#
Mitra had had a rough twenty-hours. The recurrence of sleep paralysis, nightmares and an absolutely befuddled mind, everything seemed to suffocate her. She desperately wished for Vishal's presence to steady her and comfort her raging thoughts. If only she could talk to him just once and hear him reassure her that she didn't wrong anyone, and that she was still a good person, if not the better one, she would feel like breathing again.
After the first few hours of her mental agony started wearing off, she had felt the pain of hunger and the defeat of depleted energy. She realized she couldn't hurt herself until she got the answers to her doubts and questions from Sashi.
Reluctantly, with a half-hearted self-criticism at her failures of both protecting herself and escaping in every way possible, she reached out to the plate of cold meal and gobbled it up.
Sashi was involved in Lekha's incident. If he indeed had been stalking her since she was six years old, he might have followed her that fateful night too. He was either a witness or one of the culprits. She needed to get the answers from him. And she needed her wits and strength for handling the interrogation.
Maybe, just maybe, I might be able to get some retribution and closure on the whole case.
It was a far-fetched dream, yet one with a slight probability of happening.
And so, she waited for her captor to return to her prison, serenading her agitated and anguished mind herself.
When Sashi's footsteps reverberated in the corridor outside her confinement, Mitra did a quick take on her state. She looked weak, something she could leverage to fool him and draw him into admittance of his involvement. She sat still, her face featuring a beaten look. She didn't move a muscle when Sashi stepped into the room, neither did she look at him.
Sashi paused in his tracks as he studied her immobility and stilled stance.
He wondered if she would be able to absorb any of the words he was planning to spill to her. She might very well be too shocked to forget the actual reason for her misery. His unjustified reflections of mind suggested a scenario of Mitra being overcome with gratitude towards him for saving her, which was like a breather to him after witnessing her downfall.
"How are you this evening?" he asked smoothly as flopped into his chair.
Mitra stayed silent, unmoved and without even an indication of having heard Sashi.
"You hungry?" he asked.
No response.
"You might be interested in knowing how the public is treating you now," Sashi teased with an underlying tone of sarcasm at the surmise in his mind that the tip would nudge Mitra into a comeback.
Mitra controlled herself to her best. She knew he was trying to get her agitated enough to play to his tunes. She just needed to follow her own sketch for the evening.
Public opinion of her? It was very much obvious what it would be like; she had simulated the implications and consequences of the big reveal to the society around her for more than a decade now and knew exactly how it might have unfolded. Her only worry had been how Vishal would be handling it all on his own. Surely, he couldn't have been embroiled in the mess for knowing the truth all along.
Mitra had sworn to never forgive herself if Vishal was incriminated in any manner. She stayed still; her thoughts reigned in perfectly.
"People won't care about you for long, you know, after getting to know your true face," he pushed further.
A wall of silence.
"Your boyfriend seems to be the only one still looking out for you."
Silence again.
Mitra knew she was pushing him into an outburst as much as he was prodding her. She had to hold her footing much stronger.
"Did you lose your voice to talk or your will to live?" Sashi was starting to snap a little.
Mitra kept up her act of melancholy.
Sashi paused. He wasn't sure what would rouse Mitra. If neither her boyfriend nor her dead enemy, or public perception could trigger an ounce of recoil or response from her, then the list of provocations could easily get exhausted.
"Aren't you curious how I know your secret? Something that was left out of all the investigation records?" he asked cautiously, his head tilted forward in anticipation of seeing Mitra flustered at least then.
Mitra flickered her eyes just enough. Yes, he was getting to the crux of her inner strife.
She needed to lure him as methodically as possible.