The giant hall lights went dim, the air conditioning suddenly feeling too cold, hitting the sweat on the back of Aryan's neck. He sat stiffly on the hard plastic chair. The low murmur of hundreds of nervous children felt thick, like humid air before a huge storm.
"Just breathe, Aryan," Tanushri whispered beside him, her tone firm but kind, like a much older sister giving advice. "It's just listening."
Sagar leaned forward, his eyes glued to the massive screen. "Look at that chart. They're using Q3-Q4 projections. They're treating us like business majors already." He fiddled nervously with the strap of his backpack, a solid habit from their early morning study sessions.
The speaker, a lady in a very stiff saree and a jacket that looked like it cost more than Aryan's whole bicycle, walked up. She didn't smile like a friendly teacher. She looked like she was waiting for everyone to fail.
"The Business & Management (B&M) Domain is about survival. It is about recognizing that every resource—time, capital, and people—has a cost. If you cannot extract value from those resources, you are a liability."
The words were cold, precise hits. They started talking about things called Profit margins and Competitive edge.
Aryan's mind, usually a neat, quiet place, felt like it was being shoved full of noisy junk. He tried to focus, tried to write down the complex words, but his hand felt shaky.
"Does anyone here know the difference between a debt instrument and a futures contract?" the woman asked, her voice dry and challenging.
A hand shot up immediately, three rows ahead. Riya. She stood up straight, her uniform perfectly pressed.
"A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell something at a fixed price later, like a promise," Riya said clearly. "A debt instrument is how companies borrow money, like bonds, which they promise to pay back with interest."
The speaker gave a tiny, approving nod. "Excellent. Class 5. You see? Some of you are already thinking like business owners."
The success of Riya didn't inspire Aryan; it made the air thicker. He pictured his small house. He pictured the rain hitting the thin, rusted sheet of their roof, louder and louder, forcing them to move the few plastic buckets around the small room. He pictured his mother's hands, always red and tired from the factory machine, which never stopped moving.
The core fear rose in his throat: If I can't learn this, I can't help Mummy. We won't get a new roof.
The noise from the speaker got loud, high, and fuzzy in his ears. The pain behind his eyes started to press, like someone was pushing on his skull. He couldn't think. He had to stop the noise.
"This is ridiculous," Tanushri muttered, mostly to herself. "They should not be doing this to ten-year-olds."
Sagar checked his watch, a cheap digital one. "My orientation is starting now. The Science room is in five minutes."
He looked at Aryan. He saw the tight jaw and the slight tremor in Aryan's hands—the sign that a bad headache was coming.
Sagar grabbed Aryan's elbow firmly.
"I'm leaving. You go get some air. Now. Don't try to sit through this. I'll meet you by the canteen after."
Aryan just gave Sagar a quick, hard squeeze on the arm—a silent contract—and slipped out of the row, moving carefully so as not to disturb the others.
He walked fast. Past the Science & Tech room, where he could already hear the loud, excited sounds of kids arguing about circuits and robots. That was Sagar's kind of noise—loud, but predictable and fun.
Aryan kept going until the voices faded entirely. He found the farthest, quietest wing: Arts & Humanities.
The air here was completely different. It didn't smell like fear or ambition; it smelled like sandalwood and pencil shavings. The light was soft, like the hour before sunset.
The pressing pain in his head immediately softened. He could feel the blood cooling around his temples.
He stopped at an easel. A portrait of an old man with deep lines around his eyes. He didn't know the man, but the drawing made him feel calm. It felt honest and real, unlike the corporate jargon.
Then, he saw her.
Aditi was sitting alone near a window, the light making her hair look like dark silk. She was fighting with her own drawing. She was frowning, her mouth set in a stubborn, unhappy line.
She crumpled the whole page quickly, the sound sharp in the quiet room, and tossed it on the floor.
"Why won't you look right?" she whispered to the crumpled paper, annoyed and sad.
Aryan walked slowly up to the empty easel next to her.
She looked up, startled. When she saw him, her annoyed face disappeared, and she gave him a soft, warm smile that was instantly calming.
"Hi, Aryan," she said. She picked up the crumpled ball.
"I keep trying to draw the bright yellow Cassia flowers outside the main gate. But when I draw them, they just look flat and sad. Like paper."
Aryan nodded slowly, understanding perfectly. The picture in your head is always better than the thing your hand creates. He pointed to the sketch of the old man.
"He looks like he needs to sleep," Aryan whispered, his voice always quiet.
Aditi looked at the drawing, her eyes immediately serious.
"The artist captured his tiredness really well. They must have watched him for a long time."
"They cared about his shoes," Aryan said, not looking at her, but at the drawing.
Aditi looked down at the feet in the drawing, where the leather was cracked and worn. She looked back at him, her eyes wide with sudden understanding.
"You're right. They look walked in. You notice the best things, Aryan."
"They are the true things," he murmured.
Aditi reached down and picked up the crumpled paper ball she had thrown. She flattened it slightly on her knee.
"It's okay to start over. Sometimes the noise makes you forget what you're seeing."
She wasn't just talking about the drawing. She was talking about the B&M hall.
She gets it, a feeling of immense warmth went through Aryan. She understands why I left. He felt his shoulders finally drop their tension. It was a clear, quiet thought: I could sit next to her forever.
He felt the stability return. He had his five minutes of clear air. He gave Aditi a quiet nod of thanks and turned back toward the main hall, feeling ready to face the noise again.
As he walked, his focused awareness—the same one that noticed the worn shoes—immediately detected a change in the hallway's rhythm.
Three important-looking adults were walking toward him. They were moving smoothly, not hurrying, but the students around them instinctively backed away to give them space. They were the commanders of DHARA.
He recognized the lady in the saree—Shaila. She was talking and laughing softly with a very tall man.
As Shaila walked past him, her head stayed straight. But her eyes moved.
They didn't glance at him like a person looking at a boy. Her eyes stopped on him, then, quick as a hawk, they snapped back to him for less than a second. It was the look of someone reading a fast message.
Aryan felt a sudden, cold jolt travel down his back, raising the tiny hairs on his neck. It was a chilling feeling of being mapped—like he had been caught by a fast camera that saw everything inside him. He felt exposed, categorized, and then instantly forgotten.
Shaila continued walking, her soft smile for the tall man unbroken.
Aryan stood still for an extra second. The cold feeling lingered, metallic and sharp.
The B&M fear—the fear of poverty—was hard and real. But this new feeling, this cold knowledge from Shaila's eyes, was different.
The real game, he realized, wasn't about surviving school tests. It was about facing people who could look at a child and instantly see only numbers, profit, or liability.
He quickly marched back towards the B&M room, his quiet determination now cold and hard, a shell protecting the small, warm memory of Aditi and the smell of jasmine.