Flames Of Fire ✗ (A PaNi FF)

Chapter 23

Parth

My black collared shirt, which had a sweat patch too over the pectorals, was tugged away while eyeing the shining stars in the air–ignoring the one right behind me.

"It's fairly simple. I'm done with games." The voice was a tapering clasp of metal in the tensed stratosphere. I had said it. Sweat beads that formed like mildew over my forehead seeped into my left eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" came her frail reply, as if her shallow breath couldn't spare another word.

I twisted my neck to the side, absorbing the blur of her dark kurti on her shaky frame. "It's over."

The hair on my back rose like warriors on a battlefield, brisk and straight as I uttered two innocent words that could wreck hearts when joined together.

Her slender figure was behind me, holding a jar of fireflies that she adored close to her chest; teary globes that carried the universe's worth of oceans slaughtered me with their perforating gaze.

If someone split up with me over one sentence as vague as mine, I wouldn't hesitate before peeling her skin off like a potato and feeding it to rodents. She had to be just as furious, if not any more.

"Parth, yeh tumhare lines nahi hai."

Oh, for fuck's sake!

The useless dinosaur Vikas restlessly flapped into the scene with a paper copy of the scene, destroying the draconian aura of a breakup we'd set into seamless motion. What was fucking wrong with our spontaneous performance? No minor improvisation could be overlooked by those creatives; as if we were scripting their death in words by switching things up! I made sure I rolled my eyes but not under his cautious scrutiny, didn't want to get fired, na-ah.

"I know..." The man was at eye level with me, though his brains seemed far less progressive for his age. "...but it sounds nice, right? Curt and to the point?"

Ayaz's eyes filled with sheer sympathy; he witnessed Vikas' obsession with perfecting my scenes from the day I signed up for the first episode of Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya. Being, now, interminably targeted for even the minutest interferences sucked the profound confidence he built in me, brick by brick, over the years.

Utkarsh was an indifferent witness, as always–a kiss-ass.

"Listen, fans will boycott our show if you act like this. Just do as the script says."

My grunts turned into abuses for myself. Him having blatantly called me out on it in front of the entire team instigated the last nerve holding me back from drilling his head into the camera rolling for the scene. What sort of self-respecting man would have put up with his shit for so long?

Today, he tipped the brink.

I seethed with unfathomable resentment for the fruitless man and his puppet team's attitude towards budding actors making their mark in the industry. It was just unfair. I rocketed out of the shooting frame and towards my vanity van.

Niti was flabbergasted and so stood quietly for a few moments, tilting her head to decipher something. Maybe even she knew nobody could point fingers at me for how realistic that scene was. She was swayed herself, as was I.

The dingy mudded pathway leading to my private space was sprucely lit with a couple of sodium vapour lamps on either side at such a dark hour in the day. As I dodged the several dense bushes and other overgrown shrubs in the way, a warm hand gripped my elbow and swung me around before halting.

She turned to keep an eye out for spies. The uncontrollable fury bubbling within me hurried off, yanking her delicate frame along to a place out of human sight.