It was not a general crush on someone but a cherished friendship.
Olivia had interacted with many others while disguised on different missions but none of those people developed any kind of strong emotions towards the character. Even when she spent a much longer time with them. There were occasions where someone made an enemy out of her or asked her out for dates but nothing complicated arose from those situations. They just believed she ghosted them or got scared and left, etcetera. Personally, it was more unbelievable that one can establish friendship in that short of a time. But all that aside, Olivia could not imagine herself without her friends and her chosen siblings. From the moment she considered the option of telling everything to Koushik, she could not stop picturing the same happening to her. Albeit she had known her friends for much longer, she could not stop the dreaded feeling of waking up someday and finding out that they were not real, all those memories were with fictitious people. None of that happened and she was back in the lab strapped to the bed.
Her eyes jolted open, her hands fumbled around trying to feel the sofa beneath her.
'I'm home. I'm in my room at Ketu. No need to panic. I'm not.. there. I'm right in the dorm, Ritu is next door, that's Parijat's footsteps, I can hear Nilambori and Abhirup talking. It's okay, calm down.'
But calmness was far from her reach. A burning sensation spread all over her body and black spots started appearing before her eyes. She clawed at her back, her hands, her face, it felt like someone poured acid down her circulatory system. The feeling only intensified with time. Olivia slid down the sofa and curled up on the ground taking deep breaths, trying to calm down the frantically beating heart.
Just then the door flew open and Parijat rushed inside followed by Ritutandra, Nilambori and Abhirup. All of them knew about her condition so Surjo created their watch with an additional setting of monitoring particular aspects of Olivia's physiology. What felt like several hours to her was only a few seconds in real time. The moment the watch issued an alert they ran to her location. Nilambori carried her to the bed, Parijat and Abhirup opened up all the doors and windows for maximum ventilation while Ritu brought the injection from the bedside table. After receiving the medicine Olivia's blood vessels felt cool and her body temperature, which had previously dropped to a dangerous degree went up to normal. She lay on the bed looking at the ceiling counting up to hundred.
Seeing her breathing stabilized they sighed in relief. After some time Olivia straightened up feeling a lot better and leaned against the headboard. By this time Surjo and Trayee were back from their walk with Tweet. They had also received the alert but Abhirup had notified that Nilambori, Ritu, Pari and he had taken care of her so they did not rush back immediately. Still they cut the walk short as much as possible, Tweet was very cooperative too, and came back. Tweet was the first to jump on the bed and snuggle up to her. Olivia smiled at the warm ball of fur and pet her head. Trayee and Surjo joined the others completing the arc around her bed.
Trayee said, "What happened? Your episodes never happened this close to the previous one so far. As far as I remember the first one this year was the day you were out collecting evidence for the drug dealers case."
Olivia nodded, she remembered meeting Koushik as her true self that day too. She scoffed a little thinking about how after today he would not even want to see her face.
Her friends exchanged worried glances. The gap between her episodes getting shorter was not a good sign at all. If this kept on happening soon she would develop a resistance to the current medicine. This one was already hard to make and took a long time to adjust to her requirement. There was another one with stronger power but they were only supposed to use it in times of desperation and had serious side effects. Thankfully it was not needed so far but today's incident worried them a lot.
"I'm okay now, you guys can relax. Those tense shoulders and spine will snap if you keep it up any longer. Sit." Olivia said patting the bed.
"You know exactly why we're tense." Nilambori said anxiously.
"It won't fix anything." Olivia sighed.
"That fact only worries us more!" Surjo and Ritu said in unison.
The others nodded.
Olivia waved her hand saying, "Enough about that. I have an important announcement."
They reluctantly dropped the topic and became attentive.
"I'll disclose everything to Koushik today."
They did not say anything. Abhirup would have liked to oppose but he trusted her intuition. If Olivia had come to this decision then she must have felt Koushik's feelings were genuine and deep for him to have this closure.
"Were you thinking about that when your episode hit?" Parijat asked.
"You were probably comparing how it would feel if you were in his place and the matter was related to us. Am I right?"
Olivia smirked proudly at her brother's deduction skills. He was right. Her episodes could get triggered due to intense emotions. That is why Olivia was so particular about maintaining a stoic appearance and manner inside out or as Koushik referred, iceberg. Maintaining unnatural composure and rigidity in daily life helped her deal with any potential fluctuations in high stress situations.
"Anyways, do you want us to be there?" Ritu asked glancing at the time.
There was still two hours left to the dreaded meeting.
Olivia shook her head, "I'll handle it alright."
"Well, let's eat then. There's no point in just sitting around. Olivia will have some time to meditate if we finish our dinner early. Trayee and I have left over vegetable dishes from breakfast let's finish that. Just bring your portion of rice." Nilambori said tapping her cane on the floor.
After a quick simple dinner of rice and vegetables they left Olivia alone. With half an hour in hand, she decided to spend fifteen minutes on meditation.
Once it was time to leave, she remembered that Koushik did not know where they were supposed to meet. She opened their chat and saw his message.
[Hey you forgot to tell me where to wait for you.]
Olivia responded.
[Wait outside your dorm I'll come get you.]
With that said she took one final deep breath and went out.
Koushik was walking up and down the gate of their dormitory. He could not hold on to his anxiety any longer. Ever since getting the news from Olivia he was waiting for this time and now that the hour has come, he was having a premonition. The clock felt exceptionally slow at the moment. Olivia seemed to be taking hours to reach their building when it was only a five minutes walk or had she decided to walk extra slowly that day? He had numerous questions in his head and each stride seemed to make them louder. So he stopped parading and stood in one place impatiently tapping his foot. And at last he spotted a familiar silhouette in the distance. No longer able to contain his anxiousness and excitement he opened the gate using his ID and started running towards her.
Olivia did not approach further once she saw him speeding towards her.
"Okay, now tell me what you meant." Koushik said with anticipation.
"Not here, follow me." Olivia turned around.
Koushik did not waste time arguing and did as told. Olivia took him to her room. If this was some other time he would have looked around the building admiring the architecture or something but today his focus was on one thing. She understood his frustration and moved through everything quickly.
Once inside her room, Olivia seated him on the chair near the Board and herself on the bed.
"So, this is a serious matter. Nothing illegal but the information I'm about to give you should not be leaked to others." Olivia said bracing herself to start the conversation.
That made Koushik even more nervous, 'What could possibly require this level of precaution? What happened to Ankita? Wait no maybe I'm overthinking. It's probably just information of a student and I'm not allowed to know as a third party. Yeah, that must be what it is.'
"Listen I'll follow whatever you say just tell me now."
Olivia nodded and started, "So the thing is..."
Averting her eyes, she swallowed an invisible lump in her throat. Her interlocked fingers started to feel cold and it suddenly became painful to sit straight. Even without looking she could tell his patience was at it's limit and he barely held himself back from snapping.
'Okay, enough is enough. He'll be the one dealing with the actual damage what are you twisting and being so dramatic about.' Olivia mentally scolded herself for prolonging Koushik's unintended torture.
"Ahem, so the thing is... Ankita is not real." Olivia blurted out at last.
"What?" Koushik looked seriously confused and irritated now.
"Are you making fun of me right now? What's the meaning of this. Spit it out."
"No, no. No, I'm not kidding, I am being very serious right now. Please let me continue." Olivia held his gaze with much difficulty.
Although Koushik wanted to get out of there, he knew she was not someone who would crack a weird, inappropriate joke at this time of the day. So he waited for her to explain.
Olivia gnashed her jaw and forced herself to keep talking, "What I mean is that Ankita is not a real person. Rather she was a persona, a disguise. She was there from the Investigation Body of West Bengal, working to uncover the network of drug dealers operating within the school. And... I was that person."
As she confessed to the last bit she failed to keep the eye contact.