Vihaan had finally managed to fall asleep at the break of dawn and now someone was persistently knocking on his door.
"Ignore it, Vihaan. They'll give up thinking no one's home."
…
'Who was I kidding, they'd break down the door if I didn't open it.'
Vihaan reluctantly got up and opened the door, forgetting to put on a shirt.
The picture outside the door caught him by surprise. He opened the door to a lady who seemed to be in her early 20's, wearing an apron over her sundress. Her hair was put up in a bun and there were flour stains all over the apron. He soon guessed that she must have been the owner of the café downstairs but feigned ignorance.
'Oh, didn't think that this tiny gremlin was the one who was trying to break down my door.'
"Who are you? And how can I help you?" He asked.
The tiny lady who wasn't actually tiny to the world but tiny in Vihaan's standards glared at him.
"First of all, please have the decency to get dressed before opening the door and second of all, who do you think you are to give my café a '1' star review?"
Vihaan stared at her and replied leisurely, "Miss ma'am, first of all YOU should learn the decency to not disturb a sleeping person and I was worried that I'd have to pay the breakage fine if you broke down the door."
She was staring at him with her eyebrows furrowed.
"Second of all, have you ever heard of 'free will'? I could do whatever I wanted and I was allowed to share my opinion with people. Right to speech and freedom of thoughts, you know." The tiny lady rolled her eyes at him and had been coming up with a counter argument in her head.
She failed to come up with a counter attack and just asked,
"Did you even try our coffee or pastries? If so, please tell me where our products fell short so that we could improvise and do better next time."
Vihaan, without waiting for a moment, said,
"No. I didn't try your coffee. I gave a 1 star review because the noises from downstairs were disturbing my peace. If you got your answers, then please go back."
With that he shut the door behind him.He could literally feel the café lady being dumbfounded behind the door but couldn't care less since he had to catch up on that precious sleep and went back to bed. Vihaan tossed and turned on his bed but still failed to fall asleep.
'I know I had been a little rude, but man, this sleeplessness had made me a little angsty.'
'I was aware that she didn't deserve it… but whatever. I'd never meet her again anyway.'
With that, Vihaan consoled himself, not realizing that his first interaction with another human being in weeks had ended in total disaster.Still refusing to get out of bed, he stared at the ceiling, eyes focused upwards while his mind wandered somewhere else.
Ruhi was shocked. She had never met anyone this rude. She was so flabbergasted that she left.
She entered her café dumbfounded. She just sat down on a table with a thud, not caring that customers were still there and service was going on.
One of the part-timers got worried and had come to her to ask if she needed anything.
"A lemonade please," she said. Never in her 23 years of life had anyone been so rude to her face.
'That son of a—'
She held back. After all, she couldn't lose her character because of one bad review.
Her order arrived. She said thanks and sipped on her drink while re-rolling the event in her mind.Anger took over.
'The audacity of that man to give a 1 star even without trying our drinks!'
"I'll make him pay for it," she mumbled to herself.