Mr. J looked at her expectantly holding his breath, taking in all the surprise and nervousness that reflected on Miss. D's face. After a moment, she turned away her head. He could hear her breathe heavily and tensely.
"I knew this was coming," she said at last.
"What?" Mr. J was confused.
"I knew you would say this to me. And I have always have been afraid of that," she said, still not looking at him, focusing her gaze on the sea instead.
"Why? Why were you afraid?" Mr. J was more confused.
"Because... because I don't want this. I didn't want this to happen," she said, sniffling, not meeting his eye.
Mr. J felt felt his worst fears realizing in the worst possible way, and yet, somewhere in his pounding heart, he hoped he had heard her wrong.
"What?" he asked.
She finally looked at him, eyes brimming with tears, drops of the drizzling rain glistening on her face and shook her head. Slowly she said, "Do you remember I once told you that some girls don't have the patience to undergo the same thing a second time. I admit, I may not exactly be like them. But still, it's just that... I don't have the courage to undergo the same thing again and again."
He looked at her in surprise and confusion.
She sniffled and said, "I care for you. I like you. I think about you so much that I can't help but make you realize that this is not a good choice at all for you. I don't want to change your fate because of my loser life."
She scrambled up from the wall and stood up to leave.
"Wait, wait. I don't get you," Mr. J caught her forearm and stopped her. "You... you just said you like me, that you care for me. Isn't that a positive answer?"
"No Mr. J. But, I will make it easy for you; I am not correct for you. You deserve someone better and interesting. Not a weird geek like me," she said, trying to go past him.
"No, I don't want anyone else. No one is better than you. You are the most interesting, beautiful person I have ever met. You have the most beautiful soul than anyone I have ever known. No one has ever understood me like you did. I can bet my life that I will never find a better person that you. Above all, I am in love with you. Then why the hell will I want someone else? I want you and I deserve you."
He stopped and then something struck his mind. Slowly he added, "Unless you feel I don't deserve a wonderful person like you. You feel I am not up to your standards? Or, you just have a platonic affection for me and nothing more than that."
She shook her head in disagreement and said, "You are far better than what I could have ever wanted or wished for. That's why I said you don't deserve someone like me." The stress on 'me' sounded more like she was indicating herself as the less deserving one of the two. Arjun became serious.
"No. I am not. If it wasn't for you, I would have been the same loser I was five months ago, an idiot, aimless guy who didn't even know what he wanted or where the hell he was. I sprang back to life only after you came in. If I am still sane, successful and above all really happy, then it is because I had you with me. I can't let everything go like this."
Miss. D was by then shedding more tears than before but the rain was masking them with it's droplets. She gave a miserable half smile and said, "But you have to. It was your tenacity to get your life onto the right path that made you spring back. No," she stopped him as he started to protest again and continued, "How much ever you say, my decisions have always been correct and even you know that. Now this is what I have decided for us. Not now, I had known this day would come a long time back, since the day I had shown you what life is. The way you looked at me... it told me everything. That was when I knew I should choose this path. You will be better off without me. It is only a matter of time. This is for the best. Trust me."
Trust? Of course he trusted her, more than himself or anyone else. But he couldn't trust her with such an unexpected, stupid and foolish decision.
Miss. D pried his hand from it's hold on her arm and tried to go away. But Mr. J caught her arm, stopped her again and said desperately, "Don't go. Forget this. I will never ask you out again. We will remain friends like we always have. Just stay back. I will never pester you again with my lame proposals."
"We can't stay friends after this. Even if we try, we can't. Its not possible after everything that happened today," she said decisively. Slowly, she added, "If I come into your life like how you want me to, then you will regret it one day. I don't want that your life should be full of regrets."
"Regret? There will be only one thing that I will ever regret," he said intensely. "And that will be this moment where I spoiled our relationship by asking you something which is unattainable for me. That will be the only regret I will ever have."
He had meant it so seriously that Miss. D just stared at him. The look in his eyes were burning, intense and miserable. They were red and moist with tears that could burst out anytime. It broke her heart. After a moment, she bent her head down and then tried to release her arm from Mr. J's grasp.
Mr. J released her arm, conscious that he should not force her when she was so adamant about her decision. He could never force her to do something she didn't want to.
As she went past him, walking away down the road, she turned back and said miserably, "Its only a matter of time, Mr. J. Before you realize it, you will forget me and move on. You will forget this, and everything. You will have a good life ahead. Without me, its the best that can happen to you. You do have a really good heart. You are a really amazing person. You will be alright."
He shook his head and said truthfully, "My life will be good, you say? It will remain empty forever. Even if you walk away like that, I will never forget you or anything that happened with you, nor will I move on. That's a promise." There was too much intensity in his words for her to handle.
She stared at him in pain for a moment before turning away. She walked away, wiping her tears, never looking back again.
Mr. J looked at her receding figure till she disappeared. He kicked at a stone that was lying on the ground in frustration, so hard that it went flying away a long distance down the road and then tumbled away.
He sniffled and fought back the tears that were threatening to stream down his face, thinking he would somehow see her again, hoping for it. He sat down on the wall, staring emptily at the sea. As he turned away his head, he noticed something. Miss. D had left her diary on the wall during their devastating conversation and had forgotten about it in her haste to go away.
He picked up the diary which had water droplets all over on the cover because of the rain, wiped away the water on the hard bound cover and looked at it for a whole minute before tucking it away beneath the white jacket he had worn. He waited to see if Miss. D would come back for fetching her journal, but she didn't. At seven, he stood up and left for his house, the diary safe with him.
As he entered his house, his cousins came out to him eagerly, to know how it went with his Miss. D. And his expression and tear-brimmed eyes were enough to tell them that the worst had happened.
Arjun didn't go out anywhere that day, not for his meals nor to his office. He kept himself locked up in his room the whole day. No matter how much his cousins tried to make him come around, they were unsuccessful. They kept blaming themselves, guilty that they had done the damage, that they had spoiled everything by encouraging Arjun to take a chance in the obviously bound for failure way. They felt a lot guilty and awful about themselves.
As Arjun sat in his room, he took out Miss. D's diary. It was a light blue coloured one with the picture of a single golden key engraved on the cover, with lines printed below it as, "The Key to happiness is always within you. You have to find it for it is the one with the tendency to play hide and seek with you."
Arjun knew that reading someone else's diary was not courteous and an indication of ill-manners. But he had to find out the answers to his questions and doubts. He pondered for a moment before opening the diary.
Apprehensively, he opened the journal. The first page, in a light crimson colour, had the best handwriting he had ever seen, the lines scribbled as:
"An ensemble of thoughts, feelings and moments...
Letters to a friend beyond friend....
(Now that's exaggeration, isn't it? I am writing to myself after all... Hahaha.....)"
A smile eased its way onto Arjun's face as he noticed how she enjoyed everything and found happiness in small, silly things.
He turned the personal information page. Only a single letter 'A' was inscribed elegantly in the field for name.
As he turned the pages and started reading the entries, he learnt the untold stories of Miss. D's life which he had never seen or heard for himself.
She was an MBA student, but didn't mention the name of her college anywhere in her diary. She loved working hard, she loved keeping everything in order and then messing up everything. She always did things in a hurry, jump to decisions first and choices in a jiffy and then think about them if they was correct or not. She never thought about anything before doing it. Highly impulsive, she acted first without second thoughts, whatever she felt like doing, whatever came to her mind. She never regretted her choices or what she did. Somewhere she had an unbelievable confidence that everything would eventually turn out to be for her own good.
Her diary entries were structured very different from the normal way anyone writes a diary. Miss D had written in two voices of her own conscience. One voice was a questioning voice, referring to herself as 'A', and the other one was an answering one, as if she was internally voicing her questions and answering them herself. She would arrive at conclusion based on such internal discussions with her own mind. Arjun smiled reading how even her diary entries were written as if she was talking to her best friend.
"A, tell me, was that correct?
Of course yes, you idiot. You are a good genius. You do everything correctly."
Arjun chuckled reading it.
But the thing that caught his attention was that a name kept popping up in between in every entry. It was the name of a guy: Rohit.
"You know, Rohit said something about my carefree attitude today. I mean, if he likes me, then he should like my attitude too, shouldn't he? Wait, maybe I should really try to be like how he wants me to to.
But that's bad. I can't go on changing myself into a personality that is not my own. That will essentially take away the lifelike qualities I have within me. And, I will look awful with the way I carry myself.
Still, it is for someone who likes me. Maybe I should try for his sake?
Okay, I will try to be different for once. I will change my attitude a little and see.
Tell me, A, am I doing the right thing?
Of course you are, stupid. You are supposed to like him too. And we always change for people whom we like."
The next few entries of her diary didn't have the colour nor the energy Miss. D usually had. She didn't like her new appearance. But she was changing herself for Rohit. And she wanted to do it as much as she hated it, for the sole reason that he liked her.