Chapter 10: Challenge!!

As the bell rang, Raman Sir collected his things and marched out without even glancing at the two punished students. He walked out so fast that neither even had the chance to apologise.

Aakash debated whether to go and say sorry but with childish righteousness, decided against it. In his eyes, Raman Sir had slapped him when he had been trying to help him figure out that Cabir was acting. So he, Aakash, was in the right and did not deserve to be hit.

Cabir, on other hand, was still pissed that his escape plan had been foiled by Aakash. Thus, he did not have time for anything else other than venting his anger.

“Hey you, shorty! Let’s fight! If I win, you won’t interfere in my business anymore.”

Aakash gave him a contemptuous glance. But he too had had enough of getting into troublesome situations because of arguments with the chubby lad.

“Fine, fatso! Let’s figh-”

“Wait, wait, wait!” A boy jumped in between them. He had spiky hair and an easy grin that made people find him easy to get along with. With his pleasant personality, most people would never imagine that this youth loved brawls and contests almost as much as Cabir loved food.

But, even he was too tired of the endless squabbles the two boys in front of him got into. So, he made a suggestion.

“You’ve had this conversation so many times before! But whenever you fight, somehow, it’s a tie or you idiots-”

“Idiots?!” Both glared at him so the spiky-haired lad amended his statement immediately.

“You guys always end up disagreeing over the results and so do the others. Why don’t we do it another way?”

“Oh?” Cabir asked.

Aakash lifted an eyebrow.

“We did it in my colony yesterday. It was fun! Let’s do a ‘Song&Dance’ battle!”

“Huh?”

“What?”

Everyone who was focusing on the conversation wore a confused expression.

The spiky-haired lad grinned. “One of you will sing, the other will dance to the beats of the song. Then the dancer will sing and the singer will dance. We can do three rounds! Everyone will vote who sang better and who danced better in which round! What do you think?”

“Huh! I’m in, Harshil! But can this fatso dance?” Aakash smirked.

Before Cabir could retort, a friend of all three boys, Jeet, informed Aakash, “You missed the Annual Day last year ’coz of your trip. You didn’t see him. He was the lead dancer of the Western Dance team.”

Aakash raised his eyebrow again. “Oh ho?”

“Yeah.” Cabir chimed in. Then he added, “Then, it’s a challenge!! Do you accept?”

Aakash replied, “I already said I’m in but if you’re asking again, I don’t mind repeating it.” He smirked, “Bring it on!”

A girl- the class monitor- interrupted, “Do you think everyone is interested in this stupidity between you boys? Why should we sit around for this idiotic thing? Don’t make noise and get everyone into trouble!”

She said the word ‘boys’ as if it was the worst thing in the world.

Harshil grinned and leaned in to whisper something to the two boys. He made some wild gestures and it took a few minutes to explain his plan but when h was done, all three of their eyes gleamed.

They cast sinister grins in the direction of the girl who had been acting all high and mighty. For some reason, she knew whatever the three had discussed would bring a lot of trouble and she would most likely be scolded by the teachers if she didn’t stop them.

“I-I order you to stop! I’ll tell the teacher about your plan!”

“What plan?” Harshil asked her. Then he repeated his question to the two boys who shrugged innocently.

“There you have it. We haven’t done anything and we don’t know what plan you are talking about.”

With that, all three sniggered and went back to their seats as most of the class watched curiously and the class monitor just stomped her feet in anger.

*****

“What was the plan?” Aarav asked excitedly. “Oh, wait! You guys knew Uncle Harshil back then?”

Aakash replied, “Yeah, he was our friend from Class 3. I’ll tell you later about how we became friends. Let’s complete this story first.”

Cabir added, “It kinda went according to plan and kinda not too.”

“What was the plan?” Aarav asked again.

Aanya just sighed, “They almost gave the music teacher a heart-attack and completely hijacked the whole period!”

“They what?!” Aarav asked, completely lost.