She broke into loud gasps as she drifted out of her deep and equally excruciating slumber, beads of sweat materializing on her forehead like the early drizzles of the first rain, black hair forming a curtain around her gruesome and wretched face.

"Finally, you're awake!" Asmara exclaimed from where she was balled up in a couch situated by the window. "Now come on, get up. I have to take you to the hospital." Her face was enshrouded with lineaments of worry while Safa analyzed the apparel she was adorned in with bewilderment.

"These are not the clothes I was wearing last night." The shock and fright in her orbs were not hidden from Asmara and she knew the reason now.

"Yeah, I changed you into dry ones last night. You don't remember anything because you were in daze but at least you were conscious," she divulged nonchalantly before seating herself on the edge of Safa's crumpled up bed.

"You what?" Her eyes dilated to full extent as she yelped. And then, her gaze landed on her bare and pale wrist which came like another blow. "And where the fuck is my watch?" She screamed at her, her eyes bloodshed.

"Safa, I saw everything. I saw it all," she merely whispered as she downed the ball of tears stuck in her throat.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She squared her shoulders but Asmara was no fool.

"Now I know why you always wear full sleeves."

"That's because it's ruddy winters in here. What do you want me to wear in such weather, a swimming suit?" Her temperature was rising up. She was running high fever. But nothing seemed to matter now. Nothing!

"That still doesn't explain why you wear that watch all the time and that too on your right wrist because mostly, people wear it on the left one. And you freaking wear it to bed, too."

"Yeah, well, that's because... I... uh... can't seem to remember the time in my dreams," she blabbered, looking sideways while Asmara stared at her as if she doubted her sanity.

"Ugh! I know that doesn't make much sense," she let out on catching Asmara's expressions.

"Much sense?" She arched a perfect eyebrow and Safa sighed in annoyance and anguish, keeping the battle with her tears from falling down on her face going on with full vigor.

"What did you see?" Her voice was on the verge of breaking into fragments.

"Everything. Those scars on your forearms. The bruises on your back. Everything." Her own eyes pooled with tears mirroring Safa's.

"No. Please, no." She dropped her face in the palms of her wavering hands. "You're making me feel vulnerable. Stop please. Just stop!"

"Making you feel vulnerable?" She clasped Safa's wrists with both her hands but she didn't look up. She didn't have the strength to look up. She felt being sympathized and she abhorred that. She felt exposed. Tattered. And she hated it. She was loathing herself now for not being able to hide under the façade well. She couldn't even do that. She was good for nothing... she thought.

"You do know that turmoil inside you needs to be let out? Your feelings need to be acknowledged. Your emotions don't deserve to be suppressed like that. You need to treat yourself like a normal human. You need to lift that veneer." Asmara tried explaining but she kept murmuring "No" over and over again.

"I just hope that's why you keep a journal. To pour your heart out."

It was then when Safa lifted her head up in astonishment. "You read my journal?" She asked with horror lucid in here crestfallen face, her heart going haywire. She thought her secret was unleashed. Her agonizingly bitter secret.

"I said 'I hope'," she said and Asmara let out a sigh of relief.

"I think I should get ready, then," she chirped as she pushed the fleece off herself and Asmara drooped her shoulders. But she didn't compel her to divulge her anything. She respected her privacy bt she wanted her to know that she was there for her.

But even if she had told her that, there was no way Safa would have believed it. She had trusted people enough to not trust them anymore. People aren't loyal.

******

Perched in his revolving chair, he took a sip of tea from his mug, completely absorbed in his laptop as the morning hue of the capital's sunlight brushed against his chiseled cheekbones. The coal black suit coat he had donned made him look a lot more intimidating than in slacks and simple shirt.

His reverie was broken by a knock on the door.

"Come in," he said and Arham, his secretary, walked in the office.

By the despondent look on his face, Azlan knew he still couldn't do what he had asked him to.

Arham slumped himself on the chair from across him as he heaved a desperate sigh.

"Found no one?" Azlan questioned with disappointment as he clasped his hands together on the table.

"No, I just have this habit of acting aloof like you all the time," he jibed and it reminded him of Safa. She would attack him like Arham too.

Shrugging her off his mind, he raved his hand through his coifed hair.

"How can none of them agree? There's got to be someone."

"You're asking as if you don't know Khalil Pasha and his Tyrant Clan."

The Tyrant Clan (TTC) was a gang ran by a filthy rich Khalil Pasha presiding in the Neelam Valley. As the name suggests, their only motive was to suppress people with their tyrannical rule, that is; depriving them of their rights to basic education and stuff. According to him, educated people were the downfall of this country. The irony!

The last time, Azlan decided to build the school, both he and the entire group of constructors he had hired to do the task had to face a lot of repression by the gang. Consequently, he had to pay a huge sum of money to the gang as a bribe to let them carry on with the task.

There was no other way than that since the police was completely wrapped around his finger out of fright. He was violent and brutal. A nazi!

"Tell them I'd pay quadruple the amount."

"Don't you think I would have already said that?" He asked rhetorically. "But for them their lives are more important than money. Khalil Pasha has threatened them all."

"I guess, I'll have to take care of it myself, then, since you're not of any use. Evidently," he said, earning a snort from Arham. "I'll do it even if it means putting my life in danger. You know, I don't want these children to be deprived of education like I was. I don't want them to go through what I did in anyway."

A somber look descended upon Arham's eyes as he looked at Azlan. Arham was the only person closest to a friend to Azlan and so he knew everything about his battered and excruciating past.

"Alright, now, don't look at me with pity," he said in vexation. "Use a bit of it for those children so that you can actually gain something out of it." He quipped and Arham shook his head at him.

******

Come'n, now, show author some love. I. AM. EXHAUSTED. Also, it's free so stop acting like Azlan the miser.