PROLOGUE - t h e m

"MUM’S REALLY SORRY," the lady said, hugging the little boy whose heterochromic eyes, she couldn't meet.

He knew his parents were busy and couldn't take him to the park themselves. He was trying not to be a spoilt kid but it made him sad when he saw kids in the park playing there with their parents while he went there with his elderly babysitter.

"It's okay," the little boy said, patting his mother's head like how his mother always used to.

That made the woman laugh. "You little charmer," she cooed, lifting the boy up. "Wow, aren't you one gentleman?"

The little boy laughed when his mother showered him with kisses.

His parents may be those busy people who can't take their child to the park. But the little boy was blessed with the best parents anyone could ask for.

"Why don't you go play with the kids in the sand box?" his mother whispered.

He knew it was getting late for his mother but it made him happy that she still tried.

"Alrighty!"

With a wave and a flying kiss directed at his mother, the boy ran towards the sand box. And with a nod to their trusted babysitter, the woman left the park to attend an important meeting with their board members.

After reaching the sandbox, the boy hesitated. A woman was kneeling beside the girl, helping her scoop sand into the bucket. A man was standing near them, smiling and taking pictures of them.

Even if he was just a small kid, he was mature enough to hesitate disrupting a family moment. After all, he was the heir of his parents' legacy. They had always raised him to be a gentleman.

All of a sudden, the boy felt shy and out of place and hence turned to go back to his babysitter.

"Hello there," a voice called to him, interrupting him mid stride.

He turned back yet again, violet and blue-green eyes meeting chocolate-y caramel eyes.

It was the woman filling the buckets.

For a moment, the woman looked taken aback when she noticed the little boy's contrasting eye colours. But the next second, she was mesmerised by the violet eye streaked with little shades of gold and the blue green eye which was playing tricks. It was difficult to decide whether it was blue or green. It looked like a calm ocean.

In short, it was enchanting.

"H-hi," the little boy stuttered.

"Where's your mum?" she asked, coming near him and knelt down.

"Mummy and daddy are at work," the kid replied.

The bright smile on her face faltered for a second. "Are you alone?" she asked next, for which the child shook his head.

"My babysitter is there," he said pointing proudly to his grandma lookalike babysitter.

The babysitter looked like she was ready to snatch him away from the woman with the bright smile if she does anything that comes even the slightest bit closer to strange.

"Ooh, I see," the woman said and gripped his chubby hands, "why don't you come play with us?"

He looked at the girl standing behind the woman. Her black hair was in a pixie cut which was ruffled up and full of sand. She was staring back at him with wide eyes and the little boy smiled at the girl. She was a cute one.

Without answering the lady, he said the first words that occurred to him. "You're cute!" the boy said, smiling wide at the little girl who looked taken aback.

The man who was taking the photos behind them laughed while the woman looked amused.

"So, are you coming to play?"

This time, the boy nodded.

And that's what they did.

They played.

When it was time to separate ways, the woman knelt down beside the little boy yet again and gave him a kiss on each cheek.

"You're an adorable one, aren't you? See you tomorrow," she said hugging him and her body shook as the little frame trapped inside her arms laughed heartily.

"What?" she asked, a smile still glued to her face.

"My mummy always says I'm a charmer. Now you call me adorable."

He stuck his pink baby tongue out and that made the woman adore this new kid even more.

"Well, I agree that your mum knows exactly what she is saying."

+++

"How was your day?" the boy's father asked him as he returned from the park along with his babysitter.

It had been nearly two months since that day in the park, when he earned his first playmate. Ever since that day, it had been the two of them and the park for almost two months. But now, school is going to start soon.

"It was really awesome, daddy!" he squealed and started to narrate about what happened in the park that day.

Though it was nothing new nor special, the man listened to his son narrate it, smiling through its entirety as he typed away at his laptop.

But then, what the little boy asked next made the man lose his smile.

"Daddy, can I go to Riverside? Where Nanda goes to school? Then I'll go ask Nanda to teach me play the guitar! Yay!"

"Kiddo. . ." the man started hesitantly. But the bright and expectant smile on his one and only son caused him to pause.

Riverside was a boarding school in a hill away from their small town. It was not that the man didn't want his son to go study there. It was just that, his son was only six years old and ending up in a boarding school at such a young age wouldn't be good for his son's future.

But the expectant smile on his face made the man utter the one word his son —at that moment— wanted to hear the most.

"Yes."

+++

"I will really, really, really miss you uncle," the little boy said to his playmate's father as they walked from the park.

Today was the first time he was visiting the girl's house since it was only today that the girl and her family ended up learning about him leaving for Riverside.

"My daddy gifted me a pola— pola... uncle, what do you call this?"

The man laughed at the cute kid.

"Polaroid, kiddo."

"Yes, polaroid! And I want to take many, many photos with this!"

The man smiled but the smile faltered when he saw his daughter's glum face.

He gave a sad smile. She was, after all, losing one of her friends. But he knew that the sadness wouldn't last that long since they were just little kids and they'd soon forget about their daily adventures in the park.

The man halted before a charming house and let go of the hands of the two children. "We're home!" he announced and chuckled when he saw the little boy looking at his home with so much awe that his violet and blue green eyes shone with glee.

It wasn't a mansion but it was still a huge, beautiful house.

The little boy at once took his polaroid to take a snap of the house but the man stopped him.

"The first photo from this polaroid should be a special one," the man said, taking the polaroid from the kid's hands, "may I?"

The boy smiled widely, nodding before taking the girl's hand in his and pulled her near him.

And right then, the man clicked the button.

It was adorable to see the two kids holding the photo together in their small, pudgy hands, flapping it together in the air till the photo was visible. For the kids, it seemed to happen in slow motion.

The only thing that crossed the boy's mind when he saw the picture was that the next time he took a picture after a day in the park, he should wash his face.

His cheeks were dusty and his hair was sticking out in all possible directions. He was grinning widely at the girl as he pulled the girl. On the other hand, the girl looked surprised as one of her hands got trapped in his and the other was levelled on his shoulder to balance herself. Her pixie hair was messier than usual, ruffled wildly and full of sand.

Seeing the boy's babysitter coming to his house as per instruction to pick the boy up, the man tapped the boy on the shoulder. He knew it was time for the little boy to leave.

"Alright buddy, say your goodbyes. I'll go inside first," he said before walking inside.

The glum look returned to the girl's face causing the boy to laugh.

"You look like a donkey when you hunch your face like that!"

The girl punched his tiny arm in return.

"When will you come back?" she asked.

"Don’t know," he said, rocking on his heels. "When Nanda comes home, I'll come with him."

"Oh."

The girl didn't say anything and slowly, he started feeling the emotion he felt whenever his parents were unable to accompany him to places.

Was this what the storybooks called sadness?

"Hey, Sandy?" he called.

That's what he had called her since her hair was always full of sand from the sandbox. "My name's Varun. What's yours?"

And yes, even after two months of friendship, they didn't know each other's name. Though the girl was cute and warm, she wasn't talkative by nature and since Varun had a nickname for her, it never occurred to him to ask for her name.

"Don't laugh . . ." the girl warned him.

He nodded but she extended her pinky.

"Pinky promise?"

He looped his pinky with hers and nodded. "Pinky promise."

"My name is . . . Ki— Kiranya."

And he did the one thing she warned him not to do.

He laughed.

+++

The boy smiled as he stroked his cheek where she had slapped him nearly eleven years back when he had laughed hearing her name for the first time.

Kiranya.

It was such a strange name. He had never heard of it before.

The polaroid photo looked so worn out now and the photo was seriously damaged. The girl's face was hidden behind numerous scratches and was unclear to the eye.

He tried remembering her face but all he could remember was her black, pixie hair.

He did not feel sad or helpless for forgetting how his first friend looked. For all he cared, he knew her house so he could just drop by when he wanted. No big deal.

Smiling at the thought of his childhood friend, he kept the photo in his wallet and made his way out of the boarding house that had been his second home for almost eleven years. With goodbye hugs and promises, he exited the gates of the school in his father's car.

As soon as they were out, he retrieved his cell phone from his backpack and switched on his phone's data settings.

He clicked a white-blue B shaped app and tapped his finger as he waited for the notifications to load. Once they did, he scrolled through his notifications. A big smile made its way on his face when he saw it.

BookManiac12 has updated Epilogue.

Ah yes, finally.

But even without checking the update, the teenage boy clicked on the author's profile where the author's face adorned the profile picture. A goofy grin made its way on his face yet again when he checked out— ahem, looked at her face.

Even he knew people might call this creepy but it was okay. Because she was BookManiac12, his most favourite author in the whole world.

Thus while looking at the girl's face and smiling like an idiot, and with giddy happiness filling his entire core just remembering that he was returning to his hometown after so long, the guy leaned back on the expensive leather seat of his dad’s hatchback.

He couldn't wait to reach there. He was going back to his totally unchanged little town after all (not exactly, since according to Wikipedia, their town had a population of 61,533 by 2011 census).

But little did he know that everything had changed.