With the sound of the bell, the last class of the first day of school let out. The students rushed out of the classrooms as if rushing to reincarnate.
Within ten minutes, all the classrooms were left empty without a single soul in sight.
The classroom Arahiya and the others were in, was also vacant.
At this moment, three people were seen to stagger back to the empty classroom after spending half a day in the teacher's lounge. Listening to the various versions of the same lecture from various teachers.
Upon facing the empty classroom, Purav sighed." I knew she wouldn't be here."
Devayan put his bag down and sat on a random desk. "Look at how late it is. Of course she wouldn't be here."
Purav felt a bit regretful. "I should have told her earlier. Now thanks to that, we lost the only person who showed any interest in the advertisement."
Pratik didn't sit. He leaned against the desk where Devayan was sitting and looked down at his phone. "We will meet her again tomorrow."
"Oh! Yes, that's right! We will meet again!"
Devayan looked at Purav as a parent would look at their child who is failing math. Eyes full with worry for his future.
"Do NOT look at me like I am a stupid monkey!"
"But aren't you?"
Purav was about to protest with all his might when the voice registered to him. It didn't belong to either of his two friends.
He looked back and saw a boy making his way towards the three of them from the doorway.
"Shaan, they let you go already?"
If Arshiya was present, she would immediately identify the newcomer as the suspicious individual from this morning.
He walked over with a slow but steady pace. "Since they didn't find anyone actively trying to sign up after seeing the advertisement, they thought it was not necessary to keep me in the principal's office any longer."
He finally reached where Purav was. He put his bag down next to Devayan's and sat on the next empty desk. "Anyway forget about that, did anyone come to you guys?"
This was a scheme that a few over intelligent individuals came up with.
Shaan needed someone to sign up to his training programme. This was his first time doing this. So it was preferable if he only had two or three people at max.
Shaan already had two people, so he wanted to try one last time to see if he could find one more person before the programme officially began. After which there would be no further addition, unless someone from the group left and there was a vacancy.
Shaan had decided to hand out flyers as a form of advertisement. However, he knew that he would get in trouble for doing this on the school grounds. Which is why, in the paper, he had instructed interested students to come to this classroom. He couldn't directly tell them to come to these three specifically as that will get them in trouble as well and neither could he give direct address of the center in the paper as that will implicate the center as well. With his experience with the teachers of this school, Shaan knew for a fact that they would reach out to that institution just to complain about his actions and he would rather avoid that mess.
But little did he know that he had underestimated the teachers of this school.
Purav shook his head, "We were taken by Miss Juhi as well."
Shaan: "..."
After a while he gathered his thoughts. "Why do you think no one came though?" looked at the three younger boys as he asked them.
Purav and Devayan had the same expression of contemplation.
Unable to stand it any longer, Pratik opened his mouth, "you guys really don't know what was wrong? Maybe something like the way Shaan worded it?" He looked at Shaan with a questioning look.
Before Shaan could answer, Purav and Devayan voiced out loudly, "No no, that's not the problem. You don't get it, it's supposed to be enigmatic!"
Eventually Shaan also nodded his head showing his full approval.
Pratik was quiet.
'Despite not receiving a single application, you all still have the never to say it was for enigma!?'
Looking at his expression Shaan instantly understood his meaning which was something irrefutable.
He smiled at them bitterly.
Seeing how painful the smile was, Devayan couldn't take it anymore. "Well you see, it wasn't a complete no go. There was someone. And that someone was from our class but before we could tell her anything at all, Juhi showed up with her rabbit ears. How exactly did she even hear our conversation from so far away?"
Shaan suddenly shot up in a haste. Almost scaring Devayan into standing up along with him.
"W-what's up?"
"She may go to the address on the flyer. I will go and check." Shaan was almost half way out. By the time he finished his sentence, his back disappeared at the door.
Purav and Devayan hadn't reacted yet. When they came to, they realized something.
"Wait, Arshiya seemed to not have a flyer with her right?"
Pratik: "She has it."
Devayan looked at him. "You think she got it from somewhere?"
"No. I gave it to her."
Purav and Devayan, "..."
Much like how he was able to see the teacher with his eyes closed, the two had no idea when he managed to hand out the flyer. Heck! They didn't even know he had one on himself?
. . .
Arahiya was standing at a busy intersection. It was the place that following the address had led her to.
After the three were taken away, Arshiya reread the paper again. She found out that there was a place where it said that those interested had to come to... their classroom?
But she sat in the said classroom for the whole afternoon and didn't see a single person who looked like they were in charge of decoding this weird flyer.
With no hope left, Arahiya came to the given address to try her luck.
But she reached a dead end which happened to be a four way intersection.
Before coming to the city itself, Arshiya had checked a lot of badminton centers. All the websites that she looked at representing their respective badminton centers, seemed pretty nice. At least a lot better than the ones in her city. She remembered one of them was supposed to be around here.
Since she was here, Arshiya decided to just go and have a look.
She followed the direction shown on her phone and arrived at a place that appeared to be... something way out of her imagination.
She was shocked to find this place was ten times bigger than what she had imagined. Just the size alone was making her nervous.
From her position she could see a watchman on the door. It was a young man who had a serious look on his face, and seemed to be around the age of a college student.
She approached the watchman.
Seeing her make her way towards him the watchman turned to look at her,
"U-um, excuse me, can you tell me where the sports center is?"
This was written in the pitifully short description of the flyer. That there was a sports center at the location of the address, or close to it.
The watchman however didn't say anything. It didn't look like he was unwilling to help her but rather he didn't know how to answer her.
'Did I come to the wrong place?' Arshiya started to doubt her sense of direction first which was indeed not very reliable as she has come to know over the years.
After a while she saw the watchman give her a helpless smile, "This IS the sports center miss."
Arshiya didn't quite understand but this should be the right place.
The watchman knew from her face that she didn't get his words. He further asked to clarify, "Which one are you here for?"
This time Arshiya finally understood. If she was not wrong this whole place was reserved, more than just for badminton which made sense since this place was on such a large scale that it didn't look any different than a high end shopping complex.
"The badminton section."
"Okay." The watchman then handed her a, what looked like a map.
Arshiya looked at it for no more than a few seconds, after all, it's not like flowers will come out of it if she looked long enough.
But even then, it would be more believable for that to happen than expecting Arshiya to understand a physical map.
The watchman witnessed her troubled expression and smiled kindly, "You know what, let me just give you the actual directions and when you get close enough, just ask around and they will lead the way.
Arshiya was much more confident at this method and readily agreed.
. . .
Thirty minutes had gone by since she entered the so-called 'sports center'.
Honestly Arshiya was more inclined to call this a 'maze' that also worked as a sports center as a side gig.
At this moment, she was no longer even sure if she could be considered lost or not. She just knew that every path she followed led to a different sports club. And every time she would ask them for directions which would lead her to feel a little bit more lost that last time. Eventually she ended up in a situation where it was impossible for her to tell which direction was North without seeing the Polaris.
She stood next to an empty space outside of the last sports club that gave her an entirely different direction, looking down at the flyer. Trying to extract any information that may be of help to her current predicament. When suddenly, a long slender hand grabbed her shoulder.
Arshiya was startled and about to twist the said hand but before she could do that a semi-familiar voice entered her ears.
"Found you, finally!!"
Arshiya dropped her hand that had gathered an intense amount of strength with the intention of causing some violence, silently to the side. While her heart felt an immense relief of having been saved from spending the rest of her life trying to get out of this maze!