The first thing Khushi Kumari Gupta noticed about Delhi Elite University was that everything in it looked expensive.

The marble floors. The glass walls catching the September sun like they were designed specifically for Instagram. The students moving through the corridors with the ease of people who had never once worried about whether they belonged. Brands she couldn't pronounce on bags she couldn't afford. Laughter that sounded easy — the kind that came from never having had anything to fear.

Khushi adjusted the strap of her worn dupatta and kept walking.

You earned this, she reminded herself. Nobody gave it to you.

That helped. Slightly.

She had spent three years working toward this scholarship — tutoring neighborhood children after school, sitting entrance exams at 2 AM while her father slept in the next room with a heart monitor beeping softly beside him. Delhi Elite University wasn't a dream. It was a plan. The only plan her family had left. Her father's medical bills had a way of making everything feel urgent, every hour countable, every rupee precious.

Failure was simply not something she had space for.

The freshman orientation was being held in the university's main auditorium — a grand hall that seated eight hundred students and had acoustics good enough to make your own heartbeat sound like a judgment. Khushi found a seat toward the middle, smoothed her kurta, and pulled out a notepad.

She was the only person with a notepad.

Around her, freshmen were on their phones, already forming social clusters based on school connections and last names. A girl two seats down was touching up her lipstick in a compact mirror. A boy behind her was loudly announcing that his father had donated the university's new science wing.

Khushi wrote the date at the top of her page and underlined it twice.

The lights dimmed.

Faculty filed in first — department heads, deans, professors who already looked tired in the way that people look tired when they've been listening to the same speeches for twenty years. Then the student representatives. Then, last, with the kind of timing that made it absolutely clear it was intentional—

Him.

She heard the shift before she saw it. The auditorium didn't go quiet exactly — it changed frequency. Conversations dropped half a register. Phones tilted. Heads turned.

Arnav Singh Raizada walked onto the stage like he'd built it himself.

He was tall — that was the first thing. Then the jaw. Then the eyes, dark and scanning the auditorium with the kind of flat, bored expression that somehow still managed to make everyone sit straighter. He wore a plain black shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and still looked more put-together than every faculty member on stage in formal wear.

He didn't smile. He didn't wave.

He sat down, crossed one ankle over his knee, and looked out at the crowd like he was deciding which parts of it deserved his attention.

Arrogant, Khushi thought immediately, and went back to her notepad.

— ✦ —

The orientation moved along predictably — welcome speeches, university rules, scholarship guidelines, academic integrity. Khushi wrote notes through all of it. She wanted the scholarship terms in her own handwriting where she could underline the important parts, mark the deadlines, circle the consequences.

Then came the student interaction segment.

A faculty coordinator gestured toward the microphone stand at the front. "We'd like to invite any of our freshmen to come up and introduce themselves — share where you're from, what you hope to achieve here."

A long pause filled the hall.

Then, slowly, a boy in the third row stood up. He was thin, visibly nervous, wearing a formal shirt that looked like it had been ironed three times that morning and still somehow managed to be slightly crooked. He walked to the front microphone with the careful steps of someone trying very hard not to trip over his own feet.

"Uh — hi. My name is Rohan Verma." His voice cracked slightly on the last syllable. He cleared his throat. "I'm from Kanpur. I got in through the academic merit program and I — I want to study finance because I believe in—"

"Kanpur."

The voice came from the stage. Quiet, almost bored. But the microphone on the panel table picked it up, and the acoustics of the hall did the rest.

Arnav Singh Raizada hadn't moved from his seat. He was looking at Rohan with an expression that sat somewhere between uninterested and faintly amused. Like a cat watching something smaller than itself wander too close.

"The merit program," he continued, tilting his head slightly. "They've really started letting anyone in, it seems."

The auditorium reacted in an instant — some people laughed, the sharp, nervous kind that happened when you weren't sure if you were supposed to. Others went very still. Rohan's face turned the color of old brick. He stood frozen at the microphone, mouth slightly open, looking like the floor had just dissolved beneath him.

Faculty members shifted uncomfortably. A dean cleared her throat but said nothing.

Nobody said anything.

Because nobody said anything to Arnav Singh Raizada.

Khushi's pen stopped moving.

She looked at Rohan — at the way his shoulders had caved inward, at the way he was now staring down at the floor like he could will himself to disappear. She looked at the row of faculty members who were finding their water glasses extremely interesting. She looked at Arnav, who had already glanced away, as if the whole thing had consumed more of his attention than it deserved.

Something hot moved through her chest.

She put her pen down.

Stood up.

"His name is Rohan Verma."

Her voice came out louder than she'd planned. The auditorium microphone wasn't necessary — the hall was that quiet. Eight hundred people turned.

Khushi kept her gaze forward, her chin level. "He's from Kanpur. He got in through the academic merit program — which, for anyone who might need a reminder, means he earned his seat. Not inherited it."

A beat of absolute silence.

Then Arnav Singh Raizada turned his gaze toward her. Fully. Not a glance — a full, deliberate look, the kind that took its time and didn't apologize for it. The bored expression hadn't changed, but something behind his eyes had sharpened. Like the moment a light changes direction.

"And you are?" he said.

"Someone who finds it fascinating," Khushi said, her voice steady even though her heart was doing something embarrassingly dramatic, "that the most entitled person in this room is the one sitting on stage at a welcome event — making a first-year student feel unwelcome." She paused. "Khushi Kumari Gupta. Scholarship. Since we're doing introductions."

The auditorium was the quietest it had been all morning.

Arnav looked at her for a long moment. His expression didn't shift into anger. It didn't shift into embarrassment. It did something far more unsettling.

It became interested.

"Sit down," he said quietly. Not a suggestion.

"I was planning to," Khushi said. "After Rohan finishes his introduction. Which I believe he was in the middle of before he was rudely interrupted."

She turned back to Rohan, who was staring at her like she had just walked into a fire on his behalf. She gave him a small nod — go on.

Rohan blinked. Straightened. And, voice only slightly shaking, finished his introduction.

When he sat back down, the applause that followed was startled into existence — the kind of clapping that happened when a room didn't quite know what else to do with itself but felt the need to do something.

Khushi sat back down, picked up her pen, and continued her notes.

Her hand was shaking slightly. She gripped the pen tighter.

From the stage, Arnav Singh Raizada watched her for three full seconds.

Then, slowly, he looked away.

— ✦ —

After orientation, in the corridor outside, Rohan found her.

"That was—" he started. Then stopped. "You didn't have to—"

"Don't thank me," Khushi said, already walking toward the notice board she'd spotted near the entrance. "I didn't do it for gratitude. I did it because someone had to."

Rohan kept pace beside her, still wearing the expression of someone who had barely survived something. "He's going to make your life miserable, you know. People don't — nobody does that to him. There are students here who've transferred universities to get away from being on his wrong side."

Khushi glanced back once toward the auditorium doors.

Through the glass, she could see Arnav still inside, surrounded by people who had rushed forward the moment the event ended. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, nodding at something someone was saying. The picture of casual, unaffected authority.

But his eyes were on the corridor door.

On her.

Khushi faced forward.

"He's welcome to try," she said.

— ✦ —

In the auditorium, Arnav watched the girl with the worn dupatta and the painfully steady voice disappear into the crowd.

He had been insulted before. Rarely, and never without consequences. But he'd never been looked at quite like that — like he was simply a problem that needed correcting. Not feared, not impressed, not cautious.

Just... unimpressed.

He picked up his phone, opened the university's student directory, typed in the name.

Khushi Kumari Gupta. Scholarship. Merit. First year. Faculty of Commerce.

Arnav stared at the entry for a moment, then put his phone away.

Interesting.