Words - 6325.

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Jhavni stared at her laptop screen, the words from the lecture slides blurring together. She sighed, closing the lid softly, her fingers lingering over the edge as her mind wandered.

It was strange how life had a way of pulling the rug out from under you.

She leaned against the desk in her room, staring out of the window as the late afternoon sunlight bathed the city in hues of gold and amber. She twirled a pen between her fingers,  absentmindedly twirled a strand of her hair, her lips curling into a soft smile. It was strange, almost surreal, how much her life had changed in the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of sitting like this, wasting time while one of Shourya’s assignments loomed incomplete. Back then, everything about him had felt suffocating—his cold, clinical voice that dissected answers with surgical precision, his sharp, piercing gaze that made her feel like she was always being judged, and the suffocating aura of perfection he carried.