Of Fallacies And Fate

twenty eight | part two

Dedicated to @Witteewat for being an amazing reader and her beautiful comments that light my day up!

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

- Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan 

Quick A/N : I hope you all remember Medusa, the evil teacher who Sam hates, who once reprimanded Sam and Sana and asked Sam to permanently sit beside Soheb.

❢ 28 | p a r t t w o ❢

Samairah always found it difficult to start a conversation.

And when it had been ages, and there was awkwardness in the air due to all the history, albeit a brief one, the difficulty magnified exponentially. So, she just sat beside Soheb in utter silence, after being reminded by Saba that it was her designated place, in Medusa's class while they waited for Medusa to arrive for the class.

"I don't think Medusa will remember", Samairah had argued.

"You are humoring yourself, aren't you?", Saba retorted and that was the end of it. Samairah accepted her defeat. And trotted to one of the last benches, which was already occupied by Soheb and sat.

He looked at her, a wave of incredulity spread on his face, which he was quick to mask and suddenly looked down. Not knowing what to do, Samairah also remained in silence.

A while passed.

It all went in a blur. Medusa arrived. She noticed Samairah being back after a long absence but then was kind enough to not point her out in front of the entire class. Samairah was glad for that, and her hatred for Medusa notched down a bit.

Soheb kept glancing at Samairah. His heart was in a state of tumult. He wanted to talk to Samairah but knew that she asked him to stay away from her. But his disloyal heart chose to disobey his conscience, and he found himself scribbling on the side of the paper.

such silence, he wrote and gently pushed the paper towards Samairah. She already wasn't listening to class, so he didn't feel guilty for distracting her, although there were other reasons he should've felt guilty about, such as not staying away from Samairah, he repressed those feelings.

She rested her gaze on the paper, unmoving for quite a time, so much so that Soheb thought that she had ghosted him and wouldn't bother to reply.

God, it is so lame. Why did I have to write that? I feel so embarrassed.

Soheb's snapped out of his reverie as he heard the scribble of a pencil against the paper. He watched how swiftly yet elegantly she wrote, the way she held the pencil and then he glanced at her face which was blank and devoid of any emotion and decided to look what she wrote.

the utter silence of the untranslated stars

His face scrunched up in confusion as he tried to decipher what she meant.

Suddenly, she tilted the paper sideways towards her and added something as an afterthought.

-e.e. cummings.

Oh, so she is a fan of poetry, he thought. But what would he reply to her now? He had so many questions to ask her, such as where she was all these days, although he heard from Nikhil that she had some 'family issues' to attend to. He wanted to ask, how are you, but then would she even give him an honest reply? She would rather say she's fine and it would be just another small talk.