Chapter 37: Queen of Novel: Blood on the Pitch

1 Year Later

The sunlight streamed through the tall classroom windows, illuminating dust motes hovering in the humid afternoon air. The tension inside the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.

At the front of the class, Mr. Sharma stood behind his wooden desk, tapping a thick stack of test papers against the surface with a terrifyingly slow, deliberate rhythm. The term test results were finally being handed out.

In the second row, Rohan was sweating profusely despite the overhead fan whirring at full speed. He leaned sideways, burying his face in his hands.

"If I fail math this time," Rohan whispered nervously, his voice trembling, "my mom is going to beat me with a wooden cricket bat. I’m dead, Kabir. Absolutely dead."

Kabir, sitting right behind him, chewed aggressively on his eraser, his face pale. "You think your mom is bad? If I fail, my mother won’t even beat me—she’ll just ban me from stepping outside the house forever! I’ll be locked in my room until I’m thirty!"

Ananya sat neatly to Rohan’s right, her pencil box aligned perfectly parallel to the edge of her desk. She looked at both of them with a calm, almost amused expression, adjusting her glasses.

"Well, I don’t have to worry about any of that," Ananya stated smoothly, a subtle hint of pride in her voice. "Because I am going to score full marks as usual."

"Roy, Rohan!" Mr. Sharma called out loudly.

Rohan flinched as if he had been shot. He slowly stood up, his knees trembling, and dragged his feet to the teacher’s desk. He took his paper, closed his eyes, and cautiously peeked through his fingers at the red ink stamped at the top.

His eyes widened.

31 / 50 (PASSED)

"Ali, Kabir!"

Kabir bolted up, snatched his paper, and immediately squinted at the mark.

28 / 50 (PASSED)

"YES! YESSS!" Rohan and Kabir erupted in unison, slapping a wildly uncoordinated high-five right in the middle of the aisle.

"I passed! I actually passed!" Rohan cheered, practically dancing back to his seat. "My mom won’t kill me!"

"I can play cricket this weekend!" Kabir yelled, pumping his fist in the air.

"Silence in the classroom!" Mr. Sharma shouted, slamming his hand on the desk, though a small smile tugged at his lips. He picked up the top paper from the remaining stack. "And lastly... Ananya."

Ananya stood up gracefully, smoothing down her immaculate uniform. She walked to the front, ready to receive her usual praise. She accepted the paper with a polite nod, turned around, and looked down at her score.

Her steps instantly froze.

The blood drained completely from her face. Her hazel eyes widened behind her spectacles in absolute, unadulterated horror.

45 / 50

To anyone else in the room, scoring forty-five out of fifty was an incredible achievement. But to Ananya—the girl whose entire identity was built on absolute perfection, logical flawlessness, and scoring fifty out of fifty—a loss of five marks was nothing short of a catastrophic failure.

She walked back to her desk like a ghost, her hands shaking slightly as she set the paper down.

" My results have been very poor...." Ananya whispered, her voice cracking. "Five marks... I lost five whole marks."

Kabir blinked, looking at her paper, then at his own twenty-eight. "Are you crazy? Forty-five is amazing! I’d give my left shoe for forty-five!"

Ananya didn’t listen. A tear welled up at the corner of her eye, her lower lip trembling. The logical world she relied on felt like it was crumbling over five silly mistakes in geometry.

Rohan stopped celebrating. He looked at her pale face and realized how genuinely devastated she was. He slid his chair closer, leaning in.

"Hey," Rohan said softly, offering her a gentle, warm smile. "Don’t worry, Ananya. It’s just one test. One result doesn’t change anything. You are still the smartest girl in the entire school."

Ananya looked up into Rohan’s bright, reassuring eyes. His comfort wasn’t based on complex logic or math; it was pure, simple, and honest.

The tight knot of anxiety in her chest loosened just a bit. She wiped her eye with her sleeve and managed a small, brave smile.

"Okay..." Ananya murmured softly, adjusting her glasses. "Next time... I will work even harder."

An hour later, Ananya reached her house.

The moment she stepped through the front door, the overwhelming weight of her ’failure’ crashed over her again. She ran straight into the living room, where her mother was folding laundry, and buried her face into her mother’s lap, bursting into quiet, breathless tears.

"Mummy..." Ananya sobbed, holding out her folded test paper. "My result... my result is terrible today..."

Her mother paused, surprised. She gently took the paper, expecting a disaster, only to see the bold ’45/50’ written in red ink.

A gentle, amused smile appeared on her mother’s face. She wrapped her arms around her daughter, stroking her damp hair softly.

"Oh, my silly little girl," her mother cooed warmly, holding her tight. "It’s okay, beta. It’s completely okay. You did wonderfully! Forty-five is a great score. No one can be perfect all the time. Just study nicely next time, alright? Don’t cry."

The following evening, the sun was dipping below the horizon, casting long, dark orange shadows across the neighborhood streets.

Ananya was walking home from her evening tuition class alone. Her shoes kicked rhythmically against the loose gravel on the roadside. Her mood was sour, her brows furrowed in annoyance.

"Rohan didn’t even come to tuition today," Ananya grumbled to herself, clutching her heavy textbook to her chest. "It was so boring without him... And Papa didn’t even come to pick me up! He promised he’d be here by six! I’m so angry at everyone today!"

She turned the corner near the empty municipal ground—a sprawling, overgrown field surrounded by broken concrete walls where local older boys occasionally played evening matches.

The field was silent now, deserted as the twilight faded into dusk.

Ananya walked along the perimeter wall, intending to take the short cut through the lane. But as she passed the open iron gate, a strange sight caught her eye.

Out in the middle of the dusty, unkept pitch, someone was lying completely flat on the ground.

Ananya stopped. She squinted through the dimming light.

It wasn’t just someone resting. The figure was sprawled awkwardly on his side, his legs bent at painful angles. Scattered around him in the dirt were a couple of scuffed tennis balls and a chipped wooden cricket bat.

A sharp, unpleasant smell of metallic iron hung faintly in the stagnant evening air.

"Hello?" Ananya called out nervously, taking a hesitant step onto the dry grass. "Is someone there?"

There was no answer. Only the distant sound of cawing crows settling into the trees.

Driven by an uneasy, churning feeling in her stomach, Ananya slowly walked closer to the center of the dark field. As she drew near, the dim moonlight illuminated the uniform of the figure lying in the dirt.

A faded white shirt. Untucked. Dark blue trousers.

Her heart violently skipped a beat.