POV:Aanya
The air in the kitchen was still. Almost sacred.
The table where her mother once measured spices and stitched school blouses was now covered in paper trails and pain.
Aanya sat at the center of it all, flanked by open folders, old letters, and a USB drive that still felt warm in her hand.
Across from her, Reyan leaned forward, scanning each page like it was a landmine. "It's real," he said. "All of it."
She didn't answer. She didn't need to.
The forged complaint.
The journal entries.
The sealed staff records.
The truth was stacked right in front of them. And it reeked.
---
He slid a brown envelope toward her. "I found this in my mom's storage box," he said. "She was a clerk at the District Education Board. Kept everything. Even things she wasn't supposed to."
Aanya opened it carefully.
Inside were transfer records. Contracts. Confidential reports.
Mr. D.S. had been moved twice in four years. The notes on his files were vague—phrases like "disciplinary concern" or "reputation risk." No detailed reason. No real consequences.
"He didn't just disappear," Reyan muttered. "They kept moving him. Covering him."
Aanya flipped to a sheet marked Internal Memo: Sensitive Staff Movement.
There, underlined in red:
> "Handle quietly. Escalation not recommended."
She felt something in her gut twist.
"He's been protected," she said. "All this time."
---
She stood suddenly, pacing. "You knew back then, didn't you?" she asked him.
Reyan looked up slowly.
"Not everything," he admitted. "But… I knew something was wrong. Naina changed. You changed. And when she left, the teachers acted like it was nothing."
"Did you ever ask about her?"
He hesitated. "I wanted to. But I didn't."
Aanya stared at him. "Why?"
He looked ashamed. "Because I didn't want to be the one who saw it and did nothing. But I was."
She said nothing. The silence between them was not angry—it was thick with the weight of what should have been done.
---
She returned to the table and pulled a document from the bottom of the pile. An unsigned letter.
Typed. Precise. Cold.
> To whom it may concern,
In the interest of student morale and institutional reputation, we recommend an internal relocation of Mr. D.S. to a neighboring district. Further investigation is not advised.
Aanya read it twice.
"This," she said, "is how you erase someone without making a sound."
Reyan nodded. "It's how they erased her."
---
They worked late into the night—digitizing pages, sorting by dates, mapping names. Aanya cross-checked every mention of complaints, rumors, and transfers. Patterns emerged like bruises beneath the surface.
At 2:47 a.m., she found a name she didn't expect.
Principal Radhika Sen — the woman who had denied the first report, who told Rukmini to "stop imagining things."
She was now on the State Child Safety Board.
"I'm going to expose them," Aanya whispered. "All of them."
"You're sure?"
"No," she said. "But I'm done being quiet."
---
Reyan didn't speak for a long moment. Then he reached into his bag and handed her something small.
A school photo.
St. Mary's, 2008.
Aanya. Naina. Him.
Back when none of them knew how bad the world could get.
"You kept this?" she asked.
"Never threw it out," he said.
She stared at it, tracing Naina's face with her finger.
"Let's make sure she's more than a memory," she said.
He nodded once. "Let's make her the reason it all comes down."