Sixteen.
That's how old Akshara was when everything began to shift — again.
She was supposed to be in eleventh grade by now, laughing with old friends,
worrying about exams, maybe even enjoying the tiny freedoms that came with
growing up. Instead, she found herself sitting in a tenth-grade classroom,
surrounded by unfamiliar faces and suffocating rules that made her wonder if she
had stepped into another century.
It wasn't her grades that dragged her back a year. It was her family — their choices,
their silence, their chaos. She had escaped one situation only to fall into another. It
felt less like freedom and more like a different kind of cage.
After leaving the city she'd known her whole life, Akshara now lived in a town that
didn't quite feel like home. Everything here was different — the way people talked,
the way they judged, the way their eyes followed her when she stepped outside.
Every time she walked down the street, she could feel the stares, sharp and
lingering, dissecting every detail — her clothes, her attitude, her way of existing. Her
sense of fashion didn't blend in here. It stood out—too loud, too bold, too her.
Back in the city, she had one best friends — the kind of friendship that felt more like
family. They had been inseparable for five years, surviving teenage storms and a
the small heartbreaks together. But now, that friend was miles away, left behind
simply because Akshara's parents said so. They promised distance wouldn't change
anything, but it already had. Messages grew shorter, calls less frequent. She had left
her behind once. Now she had to leave her again. And all of it — every mess that
followed — started with one reckless question.
A simple, silly question she had asked her mother months ago:
"Will you take me with you if you go abroad?"
She hadn't meant it seriously. She just wanted to know. But that question changed
everything. Her mother left for higher studies overseas, and her father, perhaps to
hold onto what was slipping, decided to go too. Suddenly, Akshara was leaving
everything she knew behind — her brother, her best friend, her home — while her
brother stayed with their grandmother.
Life abroad was nothing like she imagined. The school there felt cold, the people
distant, the atmosphere strange. After growing up in a lively Indian city, it felt like
being dropped into silence. Her confidence began to fade, piece by piece. So wh her parents finally decided to return to India, she was relieved — until she realis
she'd have to repeat a year.
That's how she ended up here: in a smaller town, in a stricter school, one grade
below where she wasn't supposed to be.
At first, she thought this new school would be normal. She was wrong. Here, bo
and girls didn't talk. Friendships between them were forbidden. Even sharing the
same room without a teacher was considered a violation. The rulebook was endless
— and so were the whispers behind it.
For someone like Akshara, who had always felt more at ease around boys, it was
torture. Not because she wanted attention, but because she understood them better
— the way they joked, the way they didn't pretend. Girls, on the other hand, had
always been complicated. Every time she let herself grow close to one, something
went wrong. Words twisted, trust cracked, and suddenly she was alone again.
Love had never truly called to her. She craved friendship, the kind that lingered, that
survived storms and silence. Half her energy was spent patching cracks, holding
bonds together before they slipped away. There was no time for anything else — no
room to wonder, no space to dream. And yet, she couldn't help but ask, quietly, to
herself… Will anything bloom?
Now, stuck between family troubles that refuse to leave her alone and a school that
doesn't seem to understand her, Akshara is forced to start over again.
But maybe, just maybe, starting over doesn't always mean beginning from nothing.
Maybe it's just half a step closer to finding where she truly belongs.