Her brows shoot up and she waves her hand in front of his face, "Are you snow shocked or what?" she laughs again and a part of his heart that had stopped existing, beats up alive so loud and sudden that the sound of it roars in his ears. "Hello, hello?" she snaps her fingers.
He clears his throat and tries again, very carefully he holds his hand out towards her, wishes it doesn't shake but it slightly does, though she does not notice.
She beams and clasps his hand in hers, he feels it wrapping around his heart like a bow. Her hand is so warm and small in his that he can't help but remember the time when the same small hands were wrapped around his almost all the time. He breathes and smells her, a combination of peaches, vanilla and chocolate somehow[ro1] . And he thanks heavens, even when he had stopped believing in them, thanks that he woke up early this day. He can exactly not pinpoint why he came so early, but he is glad that he did, he is more than glad, he could dance right now, if he could move.
Her honey brown doe eyes points to their hands amusingly, he realises he is still clutching her hands tightly. He blushes a deep root red, a colour he never blushed before, he leaves her hands briskly, instantly feeling bereft.
"I am Aakash." He manages, and waits. He waits for the pool of recognition to pass in her eyes; he waits for that honey brown doe-like eyes to look at him as they did before. He waits for her to say, I know, I remember.
But what she says is, with deep wide brown doe eyes, "Oh that's a very nice name, your name means Sky."
He feels his blood turn cold, he waits for her reaction to change, waits for her to add up to the line she is going to say after it, waits and waits and nothing happens.
He waits again for her to laugh and say it was acting and she was just joking, and then they would laugh together.
He waits, but she never does.
"I am Aakash." He repeats.
"Yes," she laughs, her voice silk soft "you just told me."
"Aakash, Aakash Acharya." He couldn't help the pleading tone in his voice, he remembers her words from that day, it wasn't blurry in his head like a long forgotten chapter, it was as clear as the sound of spring water, you once hear and can't ever forget, I will never stop loving you, we will meet, I promise you.
"Okay," she smiles, "I am Misha Negi."
The universe was playing a fucking cosmic joke on him. He looks into her eyes, searches for any recognition, chance of even distinctly knowing him. But he knows the answer already, he could see it in the lost look she was giving him, she had forgotten him, she had forgotten about him while he remembered her like an anchor holding onto a boat in the middle of sea for years, while he dreamed about her even after she never completed her promise to come back and find him, she celebrated Christmas while he started to abhor it. It was the day they got separated, he should have known that exact moment when she turned and she was covered in Christmas greetings from head to toe.
"So you don't remember." He says, trying to keep his tone normal, his mouth tastes like ash, he tells his heart not to ache like someone opened it with a sharp pointed edge of knife, it was really hard, when you were the one who was left behind, when you still loved someone who didn't even remember you. How could she not remember him?
The metal gates suddenly cranks in the snow, they turn their head to find a security guard in a green winter uniform and black trench boots looking towards them with big beady eyes and a moustache so long that it went to his chin and formed a beard that hanged from his jaw. He was wearing a batch that said his name was Raj Jagdeep Bisht. "Why are you both standing in the snow, come inside or else you'll make yourself sick." He says in a deep manly voice.
"We were banging on the gate for so long, nobody answered." Misha says to the guard.
The guard shakes snow away from his boots, and quips with his brows up, "The exam starts at 10:00am"
"We know, let's go inside." She suddenly turns to Aakash, before he can process, she takes his arms in hers and starts to drag him towards the gate, he lets her.
Aakash's heart starts thumping like crazy, he tells himself, there's a glitch, she must remember him, how can she not? Every electron in his body points to that particular intersection of their arms. He stops his brain from going to different directions. It's been too long since she touched him, too long since he remembers her soft hands drawing a map on his body; he almost shudders and tells his heart to keep it down.
The guard narrows his eyes at them and blocks their path. He is so tall that he even surpasses Aakash's six feet two inches. "You are not allowed to do anything out of the decorum of the school."
Aakash's face turns red, instead of him repeating inside his head, again and again, she doesn't remember you don't even let your mind go there.
Misha stands straight and courageously narrows her eyes back at Raj Jagdeep Bisht, the way she used to, and Aakash almost smiles, but he can't, she doesn't remember. "We know that. Now can we go inside or do you want us to freeze and make a snowman out of us." She says.
The security guard keeps standing and guarding the door like a fortress.
Aakash completely evades his eyes because he doesn't think he trusts himself, his hands are sweating under the gloves and he hasn't felt like this ever, if his friends at school saw him right now, they wouldn't recognize the nervous, stuttering, eye-evading Aakash. Aakash was everything but that, he was confident, smart, and always the first one to accept any challenge, almost sometimes over ambitious, and snotty as his friends called him. He wasn't himself right now.