Chapter 15: Spark and Scar

The village market was louder than usual.

Vendors shouted over each other, hoping to sell the last of their sugarcane stalks or fresh spinach before the midday sun turned everything bitter. The heat shimmered on the road like spilled oil, and the rusted metal sheets of the market stalls creaked under the weight of the sun.

Ishan walked through the crowd with purpose, his eyes scanning every corner. He wasn't shopping. He wasn't wandering. He was searching.

And then he saw her.

Asha stood in the center of the market square, beside a raised wooden crate she had turned into a makeshift podium. Around her, a small crowd was gathering—farmers, school kids, elders who had paused mid-bargain. In her hand was a rolled-up banner, and on her face, the same expression that had haunted Ishan since the day they first argued: fierce, unapologetic defiance.

He pushed closer.

She unrolled the banner and held it up with both hands. Painted in bold strokes were the words:

"TEMPLE LAND IS SACRED. CORPORATE GREED IS NOT."

Someone scoffed from the crowd.

It was a man in his late forties, tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a tailored shirt that didn't belong to the dust and sweat of the market. He had a Bluetooth headset in one ear and the smug air of someone who thought the world bent at his words.

"A little girl giving sermons now?" the man sneered. "Who gave you the right to speak about land deals you don't understand?"

"I live on that land," Asha replied, her voice steady. "That's more than I can say for you."

A few people murmured agreement. Others exchanged nervous glances.

The man laughed. "You think you can stop progress with slogans and schoolgirl drama? Let the adults handle this."

"I'm sixteen. Old enough to see injustice when it stands in front of me."

The man stepped closer, his tone hardening. "Watch your mouth, girl. There are things in motion you can't even imagine."

Ishan's fist clenched at his side.

Enough.

He stepped forward, his voice slicing through the crowd.

"She's right."

All eyes turned.

The man looked him up and down. "And who are you? Another child with a hero complex?"

Ishan didn't blink. "No. Just someone who recognizes manipulation when he hears it. And a man who hides behind threats isn't half as powerful as he pretends."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Careful, boy. Words have consequences."

"So does greed."

There was a pause. Then a ripple through the crowd—whispers, nods. People who'd stayed silent until now started speaking up.

"He's right."

"Too many deals happen in the dark."

"Let the kids talk. They live here too."

The man scowled, clearly losing the room. With a final glare at Asha, he turned and walked away, muttering something into his headset.

Silence fell.

Asha slowly stepped down from the crate, rolling up her banner.

Ishan approached her, expecting something. Gratitude, maybe. Or acknowledgment.

He got neither.

She looked at him and said, "I didn't need saving."

He blinked. "I wasn't trying to save you."

"Then what were you doing?"

"Backing you up."

She tilted her head. "Because you think I'm right?"

"Yes."

"Or because you don't like being ignored?"

He exhaled. "Can't it be both?"

She considered that. "Maybe. But if you want to help, don't steal the moment. Amplify it."

That stunned him.

In his past life, people either thanked him or feared him.

No one ever told him how to be better.

"Noted," he said.

She nodded and walked away, joining a group of kids who were helping her carry paint and cloth.

Ishan stood there, not humiliated, but... shaken.

Something inside him shifted again. A subtle scar added to the old ones he carried in silence.

That evening, as the sun slipped into the horizon, Ishan found himself back in the same square, long after the crowd had gone. He stood where Asha had stood, the air still echoing faintly with her words.

He imagined the world she wanted to build—a place where voices mattered more than money, where the young were not dismissed, and where strength didn't mean silence.

He remembered the way she looked at him—not like a savior, but like someone who needed saving too.

Maybe he did.

He looked down at his hands.

The same hands that once signed off on projects that displaced villages.

The same hands that now trembled at the idea of change.

He sat on the edge of the crate, staring at the stars blinking into the evening sky.

Respect.

It wasn't something he was used to feeling.

He had commanded loyalty. Demanded admiration. Bought silence.

But respect?

That came from watching someone do what you couldn't.

And she had.

Unflinching. Uncompromising.

Brave.

Maybe he wasn't the hero of this story.

Maybe he was just the witness.

Or the student.

And for once, that didn't bother him.

It stirred something else.

A spark.

A scar.

And the beginning of something neither of them had a name for yet.

That night at home, Kabir noticed the shift in Ishan's expression.

"You okay?" he asked, stacking books near the broken bookshelf.

"Yeah," Ishan murmured. "Just thinking."

"You do that a lot these days."

"It's better than not thinking at all."

Kabir chuckled. "Spoken like a true philosopher."

Ishan looked over at his brother — strong, simple, yet unbending like the roots of a banyan tree.

Asha was like fire.

Kabir was like earth.

And I... I'm still searching for what I am now, he thought.

Later that night, he opened his notebook. This time, it wasn't full of numbers or strategies.

He wrote her name.

Then below it, the words:

"What is the value of a voice?"

What happens when the storm listens instead of strikes?**

He closed the book, not with certainty.

But with resolve.

In a quiet corner of the village, change had taken its first breath.

Not with violence.

But with a girl's roar.

And a billionaire's silence finally learning to listen.