The next few days fell into a rhythm none of them had planned but all of them needed.
Isabella took over the unfinished designs without asking permission — just sat down beside Aaron one morning with her own pencil and started filling in the borders he hadn't gotten to yet. He looked at her work, said nothing about the slightly too precise lines, and adjusted his own to match her pace instead of the other way around. By the second day, neither of them mentioned whose idea it had been anymore.
Estella's approach to Ishaan's contact list was less subtle and considerably louder. She sat cross-legged on his bed with his phone and a notebook, squinting at his handwriting like it was a code that had personally wronged her. "Why does this say 'flower guy' with no number?"
"Because I know who the flower guy is."
"I don't."
"That's your problem."
She called the flower guy anyway, in Bengali that wobbled on every third word, and somehow secured a discount nobody had asked for. Ishaan stared at her like she'd performed a magic trick. She didn't look up from the notebook. "Don't get used to it."
He got used to it.
Aaron caught himself laughing at something Estella said while helping measure fabric for the pandal interior and didn't immediately feel guilty about not being productive enough. Ishaan fell asleep mid-sentence against the wall one evening, notebook still open on his lap, and Isabella covered him with a shawl without comment, the way you do for family rather than guests.
Nobody said the word partnership out loud. It didn't need saying.
By the evening before Panchami, the work was nearly done — though here in Kolkata, the festivities had already begun back at Mahalya, dhaks and old Bengali film songs drifting from speakers up and down the lane for over a week now.
"Izzy, pass me the last piece. I'll fix it from here, and then we can call it a day," Aaron called down from the ladder.
"Here you go. Be careful," Isabella said, handing it up.
"So, six to seven pm, you'll be here, as we discussed?" Estella was finishing instructions to the lighting crew, ticking something off in Ishaan's notebook, which she had quietly claimed as her own days ago.
Ishaan jogged back from the gate, out of breath. "All done. Just left those idiots to come."
"You mean Shantu, Shyaan, and the others?" Aaron climbed down. "I have a lot to say to those idiots."
Kaka found them there a few minutes later, walking the length of the pandal slowly, hands in his pockets, saying nothing until he reached the end of it.
"Your father's generation took two weeks to do this," he said finally. "You did it in five days. With half the help he had."
"We had better help," Ishaan said, glancing sideways.
Nobody corrected him.
All four of them stood near the entrance for a while after Kaka left, just looking at what they'd built — finished, lit, waiting for tomorrow. For one evening, it felt complete. It felt like something they'd earned the right to simply stand inside of, quietly, before anything else arrived to change the shape of it.
Then a phone rang downstairs. Then another. Then the sound of an engine pulling up too fast for the narrow lane, a horn blaring twice in greeting, and someone — possibly several someones — already shouting names from the gate.
Ishaan's head snapped up. "Wait. Wait, is that—"
"Well, well. It seems you two have outdone yourselves."
"Ya. Looks like we can finally leave the rest to you."
Aaron and Ishaan turned. Of course, it was them.
"Ram. Shantnu." Aaron's smile was already half a warning. "We need to talk."