By hook or crook

Half hour later, Foodhall

Abhirath was worried and kept looking at the girl who was busy stuffing her face with food as if there was no tomorrow. Probably the nervousness of the past two days had prevented her from eating her fill and she was trying to compensate for it now.

"Can you explain to me properly about your answer? What exactly did you write?" he asked her for the umpteenth time.

Upset with his nagging, she gave him a scowl and said, "Once the results come out, I will tell you. I am not an idiot. If you don't like my answer right now and I don't clear the round per chance, you and I both know what will happen. Why get a scolding from you over and over again?"

The guy was stumped by her weird logic. Was she trying to say that he reprimanded her unreasonably all the time?

Nirbhay grinned as always looking at the free show and intervened, "When do the results get announced?"

Mriga had no clue and shrugged her shoulders while Abhirath who had learnt the entire schedule by heart, replied with a heavy voice, "In two days' time."

"Oh then, someone is going to roam around worried for the next two days," he smirked.

Mriga paused in the middle of shoving the egg curry in her mouth and said, "No, I am not. What's done is done. I gave it my best"

"He was talking about me, you idiot," Abhirath put his face between his palms and hid it.

This was all a payback for his arrogant behavior in the past. He had believed himself to be above these basic human reactions up until two years ago when he first caught sight of this gluttonous girl. And now, he couldn't even look himself in the eye. Pathetic!

Late night, Outside Dean's office

"Are you sure that this is the list?" Vindhya asked in shock.

The girl standing in front of her shook her head in embarrassment and replied, "Yes. I am sorry but this is the final list of the girls who cleared the multiple-choice question round."

She was the same person who had helped Vindhya during the exam by telling her about the option of more than one right answer.

Vindhya looked at the girl suspiciously, "How do I know that you aren't showing me a fake list?"

The other girl shrugged her shoulders and said, "How would that help me? I managed to get my hand on this with great difficulty only because I believe that you are the right person to become the next queen of Chandragarh and also because you needed to see this. Unfortunately, this list doesn't contain your name. This means that you didn't secure even 50% in this exam which was the passing score. Keeping that into the main scheme of things, your total score is already badly affected. What are you going to do now?"

Vindhya scanned the list again and frowned, "Even your name isn't here. Never mind, I will figure something out. As for this, thank you again. If I do become the queen, your loyalty will not be forgotten."

With that, she took that list and walked away furtively. The girl who had been standing there till now with a subservient attitude, straightened her shoulders and stared at the receding figure with disdain.

The palace appointed committee had just finished the first scan of the answers of the open-ended questions. They had been asked to assign ranks to the answers ranging from best to worst. As was the rule, they handed over the graded sheets over to the Admin team. Since Prithvi was absent, the task of doing the second round of evaluation had fallen onto Saraswati who sent a pleading look towards her father. Between the two of them, he was better qualified to do this task.

Sighing, he looked at his daughter's haggard face and said, "My eyesight isn't good and especially under the lamps. Why don't you start reading out the answers to me and we will assign our marks and remarks to them? And don't you dare look at the grade given by the previous team. I don't want to saddle our scores with the weight of someone else's opinion."

Happy to share her burden, Saraswati nodded vigorously and started reading out the answers to him. After collating the grades from the first team and theirs, a final list of top fifteen answers will be chosen and sent to the queen who would select the top ten qualifiers from this round. There would be some back-ups kept in case any of the qualifier from this top ten has flunked the MCQs round.

The whole thing involved calculations and that wasn't Saraswati's forte. Only she knew how badly she wished for Ramanujam to be here in this moment. She was damn upset with him for pestering her with unwanted attention and not being here when she needed him. In the meanwhile, she had unashamedly delegated the task of computing the collated results to the official selection committee since Prithvi wasn't around. She wasn't brave enough to mess up the results with her excellent 'computation skills'.

Royal Palace, Chandragarh

The next morning, Indrani was trailed by an attendant who carried some fruits and a cup of warm milk and another one who held a platter of tightly bound scrolls which had been sent over by the Gurukul this morning.

After indicating that they place the items on the intricately carved mahogany wood side-table, she gestured the ladies-in waiting to leave the room. For the past few days, Rani Samyukta had been extremely pensive. Under normal circumstances, she would not be bogged down by whatever was worrying her but this time it felt different. Already a frugal eater and light sleeper, it had been worse for the past week or so.