The first thing Siya noticed about her new college wasn't the towering library or the buzzing canteen or the seniors who walked around like they owned the concrete under their feet. It was the silence that fell over a group of first years the moment someone said his name.

"Ekansh Rathore," a girl named Priya whispered, like the syllables themselves might summon trouble. "Final year. Topper since first semester. Also, avoid him at all costs."

Siya laughed it off, assuming it was some harmless campus legend built around a genius with an attitude. Couldn't be the same person.Her mom would have surely told her. If not her mom , then the devil who shall not be named mom would have definitely told her.

Anyways she had bigger things to worry about, new classes, a hostel room, a life to rebuild from scratch. She told herself the name meant nothing.

She was wrong within the week.

She saw him properly for the first time outside the chemistry lab, and every drop of blood in her body went cold before her brain caught up to why. He'd grown taller, sharper around the jaw, the softness of the boy she remembered replaced by something colder, more deliberate. For one absurd, hopeful second, she thought he might smile at her the way he used to.

He didn't.

"Well," he said, voice flat and precise, like he'd rehearsed the exact amount of disdain to put into it. "Look what the monsoon dragged in."

"Ekansh." His name came out smaller than she wanted. "I didn't know you went here."

"Clearly." His eyes swept over her, unimpressed. "You always did have a talent for showing up places you weren't wanted."

"That's not fair."

"Fair." He said the word like it tasted bad. "You want to talk to me about fair."

"I don't even know what I did—"

"That's the funniest part." His mouth curved, but there was nothing warm in it. "You genuinely don't remember. Must be nice, rewriting your own history so cleanly."

"Ekansh, whatever happened, we were children—"

"We're not children now." He stepped closer, just enough to make her chest tighten. "So let me make this simple, since apparently you need things spelled out. You don't talk to me. You don't sit near me. You don't ask my friends about me, and you definitely don't tell anyone here that you used to know me, because the version of you I knew doesn't exist anymore. Do you understand?"

"You're being cruel for no reason."

"I have plenty of reason." His voice dropped, quieter, almost worse than shouting. "You just weren't paying enough attention to notice."

He walked off before she could respond, leaving her frozen in a corridor full of strangers, her throat too tight to swallow.

She didn't say a word about it until that night, when Ananya flopped onto the bed across from her, still scrolling through her phone.

"Okay, so," Ananya said, not looking up. "Riya from my stats class says you got publicly destroyed by Ekansh Rathore today. In front of, quote, 'half the chemistry corridor.' Is that true, or is campus gossip exaggerating again?"

Siya stared at the ceiling. "It's true."

Ananya's head snapped up. "Wait. You know him?"

"Knew him," Siya corrected quietly. "A long time ago. We grew up in the same colony. Practically raised together."

"Shut up." Ananya sat up fully now, phone forgotten. "You were friends with the campus ice king?"

"Best friends," Siya said. "Since we were, like, seven. He used to come over every day. My mom basically treated him like a second kid." She paused, picking at a loose thread on the blanket. "Then one day, when we were fourteen, he just stopped talking to me. No fight, no explanation. He just disappeared. And now apparently he hates me enough to make it his personal mission to humiliate me in public."

"Did you ever find out why?"

"No." Siya shook her head slowly. "I've been asking myself that for six years."

Ananya was quiet for a moment, studying her roommate's face. "That's not campus rivalry, Siya. That's personal. Really personal."

"I know," Siya said, and turned off the lamp before Ananya could see exactly how much that scared her.