The sun had not even risen, yet the speakers were all rearing and going with the Mahalya prayers and songs.
"Just a week left, huh…" Aaron was thinking to himself as he walked to the study, where he was busy drawing the designs for the decorations.
As he reached the doorframe, a small cut on the frame caught his eye.
There were multiple cuts with many names written on them; among them were Aaron's and Ishaan's.
He stood there for a moment, soaking in all the nostalgia that came with the memories.
"Well, let's get this done with, then at least I can guilt trap them into buying me all the food and art supplies…" Aaron giggled as he walked into the room and turned on the light.
As he turned on the light, he was all too determined to finish at least half the designs before starting with the other work, but what he found out was that two designs he had been working on were almost complete.
As he went to see one of the near-completed designs, he realised that although it was not the best work and it needed some touch-up, he couldn't believe that the designs were almost complete.
"Well, it seems it may become impossible for both of us to conceal it anymore" Aaron sighed as he found a brush on the chair that one of the cousins had the first day he came to the house.
As Aaron sat down to start his work, Isabella, unbeknownst to him, stood on the opposite side of the balcony, looking at the puzzled Aaron.
As the morning rolled into noon, Ishaan sat there in his room, all exhausted from a nearly 2-hour call with some vendors.
"I swear to god, are these my exes or what? I don't think I have ever been rejected so many times…. I swear to you, Shantnu da, how do you manage to do it?" Ishaan was lying on the bed as his last bit of energy was drained.
He lay on his bed, his hands covering his face.
"Man, I have somehow secured people for the lighting; I just need one for the snacks" As he lay on his bed, all exhausted, Estella barged into the room with full authority.
"Here, since you were 'Kind enough to consider my feelings', here is me returning the favour" Estella handed a piece of parchment to Ishaan.
"Huh, what do you…. WAIT! WHAT! HOW?!" In his hand was a vendor agreement to manage the food for the puja.
"Well, you just need to ask the right people the right questions" Estella sat down near Ishaan, who was both stunned and a little flushed.
"Man, here I was thinking we were doing great hiding this all… sheesh, I should have been a little less dramatic, I guess" Ishaan gave an awkward laugh.
But instead of following up with his jokes and antics, she stayed quiet for quite some time.
"Why? Is it not because you trust us?" She replied in a softer tone than usual.
Ishaan was caught off guard by how vulnerable she looked.
"Tell me something, Ishaan, why are you pushing yourself so hard ?" Estella looked dead straight into his eyes, eyes which were not ready to hear anything but the truth.
Ishaan tried to laugh it off, but when he finally looked into her eyes for real, he couldn't. "Well, I guess you could say it was because of the chaos that made me want to do it."
He halted for a moment, " A place where my jokes and words were taken seriously when needed and where the chaos of planning and life actually felt manageable, so even if the people who made my home my home are not here right now, it doesn't mean I'll let them down so… "
Estella gave a worried expression.
"Like seriously, I know them too well. Like, if I don't do a better job, I'll never get to hear the end of the taunts from those buffons" Ishaan gave an awkward but genuine smile.
She didn't reply; she didn't have to, as she knew whatever he said was genuine. Instead, she just rested her head on his shoulders and sat there.
—
The aarti bell rang once from the idol room. Then again.
Aaron hadn't planned to stay as long as he did.
The idol room was small — smaller than he remembered it being as a child, which meant he had simply grown. The lamp was the same one. Brass, dented slightly on one side from a year he didn't remember, the flame inside it burning low and steady the way it always did when someone had lit it carefully rather than in a hurry. His grandmother had taught him that. Light it like you mean it, not like you're running late. He had been seven. He had lit it every year since.
He sat down on the mat in front of it. His hands were still faintly coloured from the design work — red at the knuckles, a smear of gold near his left thumb. He looked at them for a moment, then at the flame.
He didn't fold his hands. He never did, not here. Didu had never folded her hands either. She had always sat like this — cross-legged, straight-backed, like she was having a conversation with someone she had known for a very long time and no longer needed to be formal with.
"Thakur", he said. Not out loud. He never said it out loud.
"I think I'm doing alright. Better than last year, anyway. You know what last year was."
The flame moved once, for no reason. The room was completely still.
"The puja will be good. I think. Ishaan's handled most of it. I've done what I can. A pause. You know why I didn't ask them to help. I just wanted — I don't know. One thing that was ours. One thing that felt like home, like it always felt, before everything got complicated again."
He was quiet for a while. Somewhere outside, a dhak drum began its practice run — distant, muffled through old walls, the sound that had marked the start of every important thing in his life.
"She's going to leave."
He hadn't let himself say it plainly until now. Not to Ishaan. Not even to himself, not really. It had lived in the back of his chest for months, quiet and heavy, and he had learned to carry it the same way he carried everything — steadily, without looking at it directly.
"At the end of the year, she goes back and becomes a queen. That's her life. That was always her life. I knew that from the beginning."
The lamp flickered.
"I'm not asking you to change it. I know that's not how it works." He looked at his hands again. The red dye. The gold. "I just — I want to ask you one thing."
He had to find the words carefully. He always found words carefully. It was the one space where he didn't sketch instead.
"I don't know if I'm the right one for her. I think about it. I think she's — she's everything, you know that. She holds herself together even when she's falling apart. She makes me feel like I'm worth something without ever saying it, like she's trying to convince me. And sometimes I think — what does she get from this? From me?"
The question sat in the room.
"I'm a seventeen-year-old who sleeps four hours and draws on everything and can't walk into a crowd without scanning it first. She's going to run a country. I don't know what I'm going to do after school. I think sometimes I might just be a chapter she needed—something warm before the weight of everything else."
He wasn't sad about it. That was the strangest part. He was just honest.
"So I'm not asking you to make her stay. I'm not asking for that. I'm just asking — let her enjoy this. This week. This year. Whatever time is left. Let it be good for her. Let it be something she gets to carry with her when she goes back to all those rooms full of people waiting for her to be perfect."
A beat.
"That's enough. That's all I'm asking."
He stayed there for another minute. The lamp burned. The dhak continued somewhere outside, finding its rhythm.
Then he stood up, pressed his palms together once — not formally, just briefly, the way you say goodbye to someone you'll see again soon — and walked out.
His hands were still faintly gold near the thumb.
He didn't notice Isabella on the other side of the doorway.
She had not meant to hear it.
She had come to find him, had followed the lamp's light down the corridor, and had stopped at the threshold when she realised he was already there — already mid-sentence, already somewhere she hadn't been invited. She should have left. She knew that. She stood there anyway, one hand on the doorframe, not breathing loudly.
By the time he finished, her eyes were wet.
Not because he had said something sad. Because he had said something so completely, devastatingly selfless that it had landed somewhere in her chest as a stone dropped in still water, and she could feel the rings of it spreading outward, and she did not know what to do with that.
She stepped back before he turned. Let him walk past. Let him start down the stairs, mumbling about designs and lighting and all the small, manageable things.
And then she followed.
As he started to walk down the stairs, he mumbled to himself, "Last few designs later at night and need to supervise the structure and the ligh…" He started to feel lightheaded, and before he could gather himself, he lost his balance.
After a few seconds, when he realised he had not fallen, he opened his eyes and saw Isabella standing behind him, holding him.
"Izzy", Aaron spoke, "What are you…"
Before he could speak, Isabella spoke under her breath, "No more. It has now crossed the line"
As Aaron tried to arrange words, Isabella had already forced him to sit on the steps and was practically forcing him to lie on her lap.
"Izzy, not right now, I have some work…" he couldn't finish his sentence, at least not when Isabella stared at him with eyes that looked like they were about to pierce straight through his soul.
Without much resistance, he just lay there.
"So well… ahm… I mean, what are you doin…" Aaron tried to speak, but Isabella cut him short.
"What are you trying to prove, you, dumbass… Am I that unreliable?" Aaron was stunned as Isabella's eyes welled up.
He looked at her with unspoken words, which he couldn't frame in his 4-hour sleep-induced mind.
"A place where I was appreciated… A place where expectations were not on me alone. This is what this place and this festival mean to me," Aaron replied in a low, strained tone.
Isabella didn't move or say anything, just looked at him.
"We felt a need to do this ourselves, maybe because we were obligated to or maybe just because we wanted the one event of our year to be the best it can be… who knows, what I can say is I didn't tell you anything not because you were unreliable, it was quite the opposite, you see" Aaron replied as he tried to wipe Isabella's tears.
"What do you mean?" Isabella asked, holding his hand.
"You helped me find myself when I had lost sight of myself; you helped me gain the trust and confidence I once lost, all while you yourself struggled to carry expectations", Aaron spoke with firmness.
"So the reason you didn't want me to help you was…" Isabella asked suggestively.
"Yes, because I knew it was the last festival you would be able to enjoy like crazy before you have to assume the throne, so…" Aaron averting his eyes.
After a brief moment, a very strong head flick landed on his head.
"OWWWW, what was that for?" Aaron asked.
"You know it goes both ways… How do you expect me to enjoy it if my future king is trying to unalive himself, and helping you would kind of be an interesting event for me to understand your culture?" Isabella said suggestively.
Aaron felt a bit flustered hearing her say that, and before she could hurl taunts anymore, he simply lay on his side quietly as Isabella patted his hair.
After a moment, he gave in, and after a few long days, he finally slept in her lap with a soft smile.