Love for the ex-girlfriend

Royal Palace, Chandragarh

Wiping the mirth from her eyes, Rani Samyukta looked for the person who had written this answer and recalled all that she knew about Mrignayani now. The girl had left a deep impact on the queen on the first day of the competition with her development of a weapon by herself. But since then, her background had come to light adding a lot more depth to her background. A biased part of Rani Samyukta wished that the daughter of that impressive spy really progresses ahead in the contest.

Even though Mrignayani's answer may look shallow on surface, the queen admired the fact that the girl had boldly and smartly used her own interpretation to answer the question instead of trying to play to the gallery. By doing so, she displayed her confidence, quick thinking and ability to take risks when facing unexpected situations.

"Not bad! We have some really competent candidates this time," the queen thought to herself before tugging the pull bell to get an assistant in the room.

Gurukul

Yash was walking towards the library. The sun wasn't as bright yet and the cold wind reminded him that he should have worn a cardigan over his kurta before stepping out. Due to the ongoing QIT competition, the workload in most classrooms was much lesser since almost everyone was involved in the selection process in some way. Yash wanted to use this opportunity to do some research on his financial project. With the written examination conducted today, this marked the end of the second stage. Unfortunately, he wasn't going to be able to help Mriga for the next round, openly.

As had been declared, at the end of stage two, ten contestants would be finalised for the final stage after collating the scores from three different parameters. This last threshold would again consist of two parts but unlike the previous stages, here, the elimination would take place at the end of round one and then would be the ultimate elimination.

The first step was to secure an endorsement from one of the zilla heads who would nominate one candidate's name to be pushed to the next round. Mriga didn't want to visit the Northern zilla head so early because the results hadn't been declared yet. She believed that it would presumptuous on her part to do so. But both Chiranjeev and Abhirath had been adamant that it would be too late if she was to go after the result was announced. She at least, needed to make her first 'pitch' today before going to the chief again if she cleared stage 2. As a result, she was on her way to visiting the Northern zilla head this morning.

Yash wished so badly that he could have gone with her. He was better at polite talk than this girl but there was a big chance that his presence there would instead be detrimental to her candidature. The Northern zilla head and Yash's mother weren't on the best of terms and he didn't want to take a chance at putting her candidature in jeopardy.

Instead, he was planning to go to his mother tonight and ask her again if she would be willing to sponsor Mriga's name from her end. He needed to keep trying, even if she was giving non-committal replies. Mriga had performed really well and it would be near perfect if she got her endorsement from two zillas, reducing the number of final contestants to three from four.

Busy weaving his plan, Yash wasn't very focused on his surroundings till he heard a short cry. The library was located slightly away from the main campus ground which consisted of the lecture halls, foodhall and the dormitories. To save himself some minutes, he had chosen to use a shortcut through the Gurukul's garden instead of going from the official pathway which led to the library. The garden had a thick vegetation all around which acted as a high border fence but Yash was fairly adept at climbing it to reach the side door of the library and had done it with ease multiple times in the past.

Since the garden was filled with tall trees and thick shrubs, it ended up attracting its fair share of budding lovers. In fact, Yash had suggested a tryst to Mriga a number of times in the past but the girl had been always too shy!

Maybe someone was busy being naughty right now but for them to indulge in it during broad daylight, damn daring…

"I won't do it, I won't," a girl's sobbing voice could be heard clearly now and those ambiguous words made Yash halt and hesitate.

Even though it was someone's private matter but if a girl was getting bullied, he won't let it happen on his watch. But if the girl was being coy, then he didn't want to barge in, only to be deemed as a peeping Tom. Yash decided to wait for a minute and get some clarity on the situation. He walked closer to where the sounds were coming from. During the school hours, the garden was inevitably empty, save for those who dared to bunk classes.

As he neared the tree from where he had heard the noises, his feet froze at the next set of words, "The choice is extremely simple to make. Either you clear this round and hope that someone would bother to nominate a nobody like you in the next round or you withdraw now, citing acute illness and I will ensure that your father's failing business gets the much-needed boost, which would be enough to ensure that your next few generations would not lack anything. The choice is yours. Be smart. You only have two hours to decide. If I don't hear from you by then…" the voices ceased after that.