Mistrust. 

Mistrust. 

"He is safe and at home, well fed, and probably stress-free knowing you both are with me." Speaking in riddles, he answered, which confused me altogether, and my head snapped up in his direction.

 

Safe. Huh? As if. 

 

"What?" I asked, bewildered. It took me a half second to realise it. 

 

Noticing his tone about knowing my uncle was something I never heard of. I had an inkling about him knowing my uncle, but my uncle knowing him? I could never have imagined.

 

Why would an ordinary, retired middle-class man know a criminal like him?

 

"Does he know you?" I blinked, turning my face to finally look at him. “How does he know you?”

 

I was confused. 

 

"You did too," he said and gazed. “Once.”

 

I stared.

 

The black pools of his eyes were enlarged. "A time that I can never seem to forget, even if I want to."

 

He was bluffing. Wasn't he? 

 

"Then, why don't I remember any of it if what you say is true?" My voice came out as a whisper, but with hesitation.

 

Tears started to pile up in my eyes. Withal, to keep them at bay, I blinked, instantly straying my eyes away from him to the outside of the enchanting lawn.

 

“I shouldn't trust his words.” I murmured to myself. 

 

He sighed deeply.

 

"You had an accident when you were little, causing the memories to be interlocked in a certain part of your brain, letting you form a wall over it," he emphasised, slowly staring. Observing. His facial expression gave nothing away, though as I sat there confounded at his unseen answers, I felt nothing but numbness spreading in my insides. 

 

“You can stop joking around. I don't trust you.”

 

“That's a given. But the truth cannot be changed, believe me or not. It's your choice to make.”

 

"Tell me more." I trembled then, looking at him.

 

His charcoal eyes darkened even more in the sunlight, making them twinkle. His eyes were so large with long lashes that, for a moment, I found myself being captured by them. His eyes weren't dangerous, but they were stark and soft. The pools and the flecks over the irises enlarged. It seemed more like molten, golden lava.

“We knew each other.”

 

That one single answer baffled me to the point where I wanted to laugh before denying it. 

 

Him and me? Huh! 

 

“It possibly couldn't be true.”

 

“Yet it is, little bird.”

 

I kept my mouth shut, wanting him to continue. 

 

"We used to be friends. Quite close friends, might I add?"

 

My heart pounded at the revelation.

 

Breathing, he continued, "We used to go to the same school, although I was your senior—by six years. We had a bond like..." he stopped, twirling his mane by his fingers briskly, and he breathed deep and slowly.

 

I could only sit and hear what he had to say. 

 

"How do I explain it?" he sighed again before starting. "We had a unique bond that I just couldn't portray in words," he blinked, gazing away from me to the floor-to-ceiling-length glass window—at the scene that held something close to enchantment. There was something about its view that could have anyone bewitched by it. 

 

I blinked twice at him. Thinking long and hard.

 

"Okay. Okay. Alright." I blinked and blinked and blinked. Thinking. I thought hard until the conversation between us sank in slowly.

 

The impact was something that was making me laugh and cry at the same time. 

 

I had an accident. If that was true, then why wasn't I told about it?

Seriously? My mind seemed to mock me. I tried to blink away the haze. 

 

"If whatever you are saying is truthful,” I softly breathed out. “Which I don't believe it is,” I said, meeting his void eyes. “That doesn't give you the right to restrain me from going back home," I added, thinking hard. “Or does it?” I was feeling resentment towards him.

 

His face was stoic, and his posture was regal. He even barely seemed bothered by the judgement in my eyes. 

 

"Kidnapping is still a criminal offence. You had gone against the law!" I said it in suspicion, blinking when I saw him sit quietly in a comfortable position while facing me. 

 

I proceeded with caution. "Did my parents know you?” I was dreading the answer. “Did my parents know about you or about us?”

 

He was quiet for a long time. “Yes I did.”

 

I was more shocked than I could imagine. 

 

"We were neighbours. Our parents were friends since childhood," he cut me off. “Your father and my brother,” he answered when I opened my mouth to ask more questions at the tip of my tongue.

 

“They bought the houses together just so they could remain closer to each other.” He was peering straight at me from his dark, large orbs that held nothing but pure blackness in them. Even the flecks over his irises appeared to be black. Pure black, just like charcoal.

 

“Even before your birth, even before your momma married your father,” he drawled out. 

 

“T-they were?”

 

“They go way before any of us present in this era.”

 

Wandering my eyes away, I murmured,

 

"I—I just want to go home. Both of us," I said, jabbing my thumb over the bed where a toddler was sleeping soundly. I ended. “I don't want to listen to it anymore.” I stuttered. 

 

It was all so confusing to me to take all of it in one go. Impossible. Why did my uncle never tell me any of this if what he said was true?

 

I didn't want to know about any of this. It's just too much to take in. 

 

"Radhika, why don't you understand—that you can't? You both can't," he said briskly. “Get rid of that thought. That's better for you.”

 

Brushing off my decision. His answer unnerved me. Standing abruptly from the floor with an inhuman speed, my neck snapped in his direction right away as I yelled,

 

"Why? Why can't we go home? Why do you want us here anyway when we are capable of taking care of ourselves?” I was trembling with anger. “Who said we were in need of protection? We don't. Not from you!”

 

My eyes held fury that I never knew existed in me. Perhaps it was the situation that was making me violent. I concurred.

 

He continued sitting there quietly. Staring. Observing. I glared at him with seething anger.

 

What was wrong with him?

 

Backing away, I shouted again, a tone higher than a notch, even more: "Say something! Do you mind telling me why? Why? Tell me. I say!"

 

He exhaled sharply.

~•~•~•~•~