Bonding And Shit

Kritvik Bhatt

“No, Kritvik. It’s too personal to share it with anyone else. And… I wanna… handle this myself… just for once. I wanna fight more. Just give me another try. If I fail this time—which I definitely will—then… then I’ll come to you.”

My eyes were wide open as I stared at the ceiling. I was lying down on the bed, my body covered with the brown blanket up until my neck. My arms were beneath my head.

It was nighttime, and everything was in shades of blue and black. The ceiling was visible only because of the pinch of moonlight which seeped in through the curtains on the left of my bed.

My eyes were wide awake, lost in thought. “Today… was a good day for me. I played badminton and stuff, and had a good time with my friends.”

“Would it have been the same with Sana today?”

“I was always worried about her in the background, for some reason. After hearing that there’s something serious in her house that she’s going through… It had made me worry about her. I… I wanted to be with her. But, due to exams and stuff, I was unable to meet her. And it made me furious.”

“I wanna… I wanna be of some help to her. But… I am not gonna act immature like I did back then, no doubt. I’ll make sure she feels comfortable.”

***

The smartphone displayed the time of exactly seven on the lock screen. It then suddenly turned off.

Beside that smartphone was my right arm, which was scribbling vigorously on an open notebook. My eyes, for some reason, were frowning as I was solving that mathematical problem. My hand then suddenly stopped writing and my eyes turned to the open book on my left.

“I finally got it! Damn!” I murmured to myself. I then enthusiastically turned to the notebook again and started to solve another problem, maybe, when something suddenly hit me.

“Maybe I should call Sana.”

Triiing! The bell of the house rang.

I turned to my right at the door, from where the faint voice of the bell entered my room. I then turned to my notebook again.

“Kritvik!” My mother called me, for some reason.

I turned to the door of my room and asked, “Yeah, mom?!”

“Your friends are here!” Her faint shout reached the room.

“Must be Aaryan,” I thought as I pushed my chair back and stood up. I turned to the door, walked to it, twisted its knob, pushed it open, and exited from the white shining room to the darkish living room lit only with the bulbs in the kitchen in front of the doors. I turned to my left at the door, looked at Aaryan standing at the door looking back at me with his ever-serious gaze, and started to walk to him. My feet then stopped. “Wait, lemme get my socks.”

***

The sun was about to set anytime soon. The sky was already dark, but there was still some faint blueness in the dark sky. The streetlights had turned on to light the street. The street was wide open and filled with nothing but apartments and cars on both sides, along with streetlights, obviously.

I wore a red sweatshirt and black pair of pants, whereas Aaryan wore a faint light blue t-shirt with a pair of capris beneath his white sneakers. Both of us had our hands in the pockets of our pants.

“Ya see, pal, Sooraj has an important match soon. So, he won’t be coming for some days.”

“Yeah, man. I understand.” I then turned my head to my right at him. “So, badminton today too?”

Aaryan smiled. “Yeah, pal. That’s the only shit I’m good at.”

“Damn, man. I thought you were good at sports,” I smiled back. “You got a great body, for some reason.”

“Yeah, my mom has given me every green shit there is that can be eaten. She’s very health conscious, ya know, so she’s just like that.”

I turned my head to the front again. “Great, man.”

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.

What succeeded our little conversation was… silence, for some reason. Our footsteps echoed between the two of us, but we didn’t talk. We just kept on walking like that for a couple of seconds.

“So, uh, by any chance, do you watch anime or some other stuff like that?” I asked him.

Aaryan turned to me and grinned. “Ya watch anime?!”

“A lot, man!” I excitedly replied as I looked into his eyes.

“Asshole, I never thought someone like ya would be into that shit!”

“Huh? Do I look that of a nerd, man?”

“Yeah, asshole. Ya do.”

I chuckled. “Damn.”

“What kind of anime do ya like to watch?” He asked me with a smile.

“Uh, I generally watch seinen… and tragedy.”

“Asshole, don’t ya like shonen shit?”

“Yeah, shonen are good, man, but they all… seem so similar.”

“The fuck, asshole?” He was a little disgusted. “Pal, start watching them.”

“I have watched a lot of them, man. But, they all have the same structure. There’s always a teenager who loses something, then he embarks on an adventure or some stuff, and the story goes on.”

“Yeah, but still, each one feels fresh, ya see,” He turned to the front. “I like Tokyo Revolutionaries, where those guys have delinquent fights and shit like that. Perhaps that’s because I too am a part of such a gang, and that I too vaped, and I too had low marks, I have lost fights, and all that shit shown in the anime has happened to me too. So, it’s kinda…”

“Kinda relatable for you?”

“Right. It’s kinda relatable for me, since I’ve been through that shit myself.”

I nodded. “I understand this feeling, man. I too feel the same way when I watch a high-school slice-of-life or some stuff like that.” I turned my head to my right at him.

“Relatable ones are the best, right?” He asked me as he turned to me.

“Yeah, man.”

“By the way, I got mathematics’ half-yearly tomorrow, so I’ll leave early today.”

“Yeah, asshole. Nerds like ya gotta study too.”

“Yeah, man. I wanna finish the new anime about that superhero, whose friend died and then some stuff happened, but I just don’t get the time to.”

“Asshole, that anime is so fucked up.”

“Huh? It’s good.”

“It’s fucking boring, asshole.” He turned to me. “He’s just crying and shitting in every episode.”

“But, that’s because… because he’s new to this hero world, so he’s taking his time to adjust.”

“I’d rather watch a fucking Indian daily soap than that shit, pal. That asshole never fights and always fucking runs away.”

“Yeah, but… that’s important for character development, man!”

“Perhaps. But I like Tokyo Revolutionaries, ya see. It’s fucking better than that shit in my eyes.”

I nodded as I turned my head to him and looked in his eyes. “Maybe you like those anime with intense fight scenes, huh?”

“Right.”

“Yeah,” I then turned to the front. “Maybe that’s why you won’t like that anime, because it’s not an action series, for some reason, but rather an emotional tragic story with some superhero stuff built in it.”

“Yeah, perhaps.” He turned his head to the front too.

The stars were twinkling in the night sky as the two of us walked through the street. Both of our backs were walking beside each other beneath that sky.

“So, pal, how many anime have ya watched?”

“Huh? About fifty, maybe. I don’t know the exact number.”

“Fuck, that’s a lot more than me!”

***

“Huff! So he’s not coming, huh?” I asked.

“Yes, dear. He has a test tomorrow, like I said, so he is studying for that,” The feminine robotic voice warmly replied.

“Okay, miss. Thank you.”

Beep. Beep.

Aaryan stood behind me as I stood at the electric doorbell in front of his bungalow. He had his hands on his waist, frowning as he looked at the little metallic box. “That asshole doesn’t study whole months, and he gotta study only on a day like this,” He angrily said.

I turned backward at him. “Leave it, man. He did come yesterday, after all.”

“Even Aakash refused to come today, pal. What now?” He asked me, a little frustrated over the matter.

“Actually, I gotta go too now. I still got some chapters to prepare.”

“Yeah, pal, we got nothing to do anyway.”

“Yeah.”

Aaryan turned to his left, and both of us started to walk away from the gate of Rohit’s house.

“So, man, what have you decided for class eleventh?” My faint voice reached the balcony of the bungalow which was on the first floor.

On the balcony, the figure of Rohit stood as he looked downward at the figures of the two of us walking away. He had just his eyes tilted down instead of the face, maybe because of his attitude or some stuff, man. He had his arms on the railing of the balcony. “These motherfuckers…”

A little gust of wind blew from his right to left as he continued staring at our figures walking away to his right.

The image of him standing inside the badminton court with Aaryan on the other side appeared in his mind, for some reason. He remembered the same poles on both sides which had lights turned on, the shot which he played when he jumped up and smashed the shuttle damned hard, and how he laughed with me on the other side of the court, and how Aaryan and I were bent to the ground, laughing, and everything else that happened the prior night.

Rohit then smiled as he looked at our figures walking away. He thought, “To be honest, I got some shit to take care of, motherfuckers.”

Rohit then turned to his back and started to walk into the room brightly lit with the dazzling modern bulbs. As he walked in, he closed the door behind his back. Click!

“We didn’t play that day, since his friend Aakash and Rohit, both refused, after all. And I had to leave early too. But, we had a lot of fun, talking about anime and stuff together. It feels great to have a topic on which you can talk to your friends like this, man.”

***

Rohit Sharma

“I’ve been silently looking at you for so long, man. You… You always seem so… stressed, and… and worried.”

That motherfucker Kritvik stood in the front. His face seemed worried about me as he asked me that.

My eyes were wide open as I glared into his eyes. To be honest, our eyes were just some inches away from me. My eyes then closed. I tightened my lips, and then I opened my eyes again. They had turned red. The lump in my throat was rising, and I was unable to control my emotions. They were about to fucking overflow.

“R-Rohit…?”

I turned my head down, covered my fucking face with my palms, and started to sob.

“R-Rohit…” He patted my left shoulder.

“To be honest, ever since… ever since you’ve noticed my depressed behavior, I… I’ve always wanted to tell ya about this shit. But… I never got the time, and… and the fucking courage ya need to speak this shit out. Well, motherfucker, y-y’are the first one to notice it, so-so I guess I can trust ya on this one.”

***

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The sunshine came all inside the room through the curtains in front of the balcony on my right. I was lying on the bed, my black blanket covering my body until my neck. The alarm was ringing on the bedside table on my right. My eyes were wide open, and they were fucking red as they glared at the ceiling with those dead red looks.

Beep. Beep. Beep.