It was the last day of the festival. All the delicacies cooked in these few days were so appetising, Geetha ate all she could while Ramit gave up on her after asking her to slow down a few times. He did not know how others saw her, at least it made his great granddad laugh heartily.

In the afternoon, she struggled to walk after eating too much.

"I told you!" Ramit was holding her hand.

"I know. I still want to eat." She closed her eyes and smacked her lips, still savouring the after taste. There were few instances in which she did not care about what people thought. Then there were others where she cared about their opinion a lot. Eating well fell in the first category. The leak of tears was an elephant in the second room.

They were walking in the backyard, in the shades of huge, years old peepal trees. Some of them had their trunks merged with a neem tree. Under one such tree sat a group of teens on some chairs.

"Let's sit for a while." Ramit said.

Geetha sighed. "Fine."

They walked over and sat down in the empty chairs beside them. They were all looking into their own devices but were debating something. It was about their great granddad's experience and if God was real.

"Look at these." A girl, on the farther side passed her phone to show pictures of animals worshipping the Shiv Ling. "What explains this?"

"Dogs are walking on two legs and cats are growing a thumb out there! What's so unexplainable about these? They are imitating humans," said a guy who seemed to be playing a video game, "It's all a hallucination."

Sitting in the company of this idiot, Geetha wanted to make a point. "The whole 21 of them saw the same thing at the same time. That's not a hallucination. They didn't even know each other to concoct everything."

"It's a mass hallucination. That's what explained UFO sightings too."

Geetha pursed her lips. "What is life if you don't believe in aliens?" She added, "And God." She turned to Ramit and asked, "Right? We have many goldilocks zones."

"Hm."

The guy did not speak any further. His game seemed to have turned serious.

She looked into their screens. One was browsing the web and writing down in a notebook. He seemed to be on an assignment. A girl was scrolling through her Instagram. The boy who just spoke to her was playing none other than PUBG and he was landing. Only intellectuals called it by its new name, she thought.

"BGMI? You're not as good as your cousin at it," she said after watching the guy camp for more than 3 minutes. She isn't the type to brag or start a conversation with someone she did not know well, but she had someone to impress right beside her. Moreover, she was spitting facts. During highschool the number of times Ramit had revived her was far more than the number of times she made it to top 20. Then again, she had her own forte. She was the emperor that took over countless kingdoms in March of Empires in her 2 year long gaming phase.

The boy wrinkled his nose as he clicked his tongue at her. "You also know there is no god so you're talking about other things!"

It took 10 seconds for her raised eyebrows to fall back down. In that case, she was not going to worry about disturbing the guy mid-match. "Right, does your Sara know that you are the one making her look this way and that?" She asked the teen who was anxiously running around to find a house to hide, not wanting to attract any players as the safe zone shrank. He did not reply to her and kept playing for ten more minutes. The camper boy somehow managed to reach the final circle with a single kill.

"It's just some pixels and code."

"Ha! You can't even think a little out of the box and you know God isn't there?"

In the end, the boy lost the match and groaned when he came to the realisation that the remaining 4 enemies were of the same squad.

"You know why you lost the game? Because of the way you controlled your character. Why did that happen? Because of the way God controlled you. I don't know what level of simulation we are in but at the top, there is God. When we become a little more advanced, the characters we create will in turn create their own characters."

"What are you speaking about?"

She thought he would be interested in this train of thought as he was interested in a simulation game.

"Alright, fine. How about higher dimensions? Do you know about the glome? The tesseract?"

"Marvel?"

"That's just a cube. I'm talking about real 4D things. You can't see them but they could be here and change things here. God could be in a higher dimension just like that." She continued on as the guy listened.

Ramit, who sat looking into his phone, joined the conversation occasionally. He did not let the guy oppose her at all and supported her lecture. It was amusing and he wanted to listen. After all, these were all probably the last moments he was going to enjoy in Geetha's company. He shook off those depressing thoughts from time to time and told himself to let loose and just enjoy, for however long it may be.

∼•∽

When the festival was over, everyone left. On their way back Ramit said, "Everything went well... I thought something would happen."

"Yes," Geetha said, "How are things at the office?" She was also in the loop but the fact that nothing went wrong called for a confirmation.

"Everything is fine. Work is still slow."

She nodded and then asked, "How come you got at least 10 calls but I didn't get any this week?" She also had employees under her. Although they were interns, she assigned quite a good amount of work to them. There was no way they did not have any doubts.

"If they can avoid asking you, they will. Veeru is helping them." Funny, was she actually getting competitive with him over the number of calls they received now? Ramit had a smile on his lips.

She turned her head away with pursed lips. She did not know what those girls were trying to do, but they succeeded in painting her as evil in front of her husband.

"Why do you worry? You won't be able to handle such beginners, anyway."

"Fine, boss."

In the next few minutes, she fell asleep, despite trying to keep herself awake.

∼•∽

A phone call jerked her awake after an hour. They were on the highway and the trees were moving fast. Ramit silenced his phone. Since he was driving, Geetha took it, letting him get back to the steering wheel and answered the call.

"Baby! Let's go on a ride!" The male voice was excited as she rubbed her eyes.

Geetha pulled the phone away from her ear as the last remnants of sleep flew away. She checked the name and pursed her lips. She wasn't surprised.

"Baby?" he asked again.

"What ride are you going to take my husband on?" Geetha spoke slowly with a levelled tone, some danger laced into it. Her face was calm, with little emotion. But beneath that was simmering envy towards their closeness.

"It's you. Give the phone to him."

Geetha switched on the loudspeaker. "Speak now."

"Get him on the phone."

Geetha rolled her eyes.

On the side Ramit's smile did not seem to stop. "Abhay."

"Why is your phone with that witch?"

"The loudspeaker is on. Mind your words. Stop calling me a witch and stop calling him baby and act a little grown up."

Abhay groaned. "Let's talk another time, baby. Call me back when you're free." He cut the call.

Geetha's grip on the phone tightened when he sang out the word baby to her displeasure. She put the phone down and asked Ramit, "If he still calls you baby, what does he call his girlfriend? Or is he finally single?" If he was single, should she be worried? She frowned, feeling that she should.

"He has a nickname for her."

"What is that? Do you know?"

"Deepa. Her name is Deepali."

She nodded. It seemed he was not going to be a problem. Years ago he infuriated her with his idiocy regarding homosexuality. She did not know if he understood the concept yet, but she hoped he never would for his life.

"What did he mean by ride?"

Ramit gave her the side eye and scoffed. "He's got a new car. He asked to go on a long drive a month ago. But you know how busy it is at the company."

She nodded. It was a journey by road. How her mind wandered off to octopuses. She took a deep breath and released it. It was okay, she was just being foresightened, careful and protective of her husband. Nothing wrong there. But Ramit had seen through her.

"Do you think I have a dirty mind?"

He angled his neck, a little embarrassed. "Don't you?"

"I am... Sorry..."

"What are you sorry for?"

"I guessed I made you feel bad."

He chuckled lightly. "It's nothing. But you are dirty minded..." Towards the end, the volume of his voice decreased.

Geetha felt a little embarrassed and turned to find anything interesting outside the window. After a while, she turned her head back to him. "Did you realise that only now?"

"No." He quickly turned on the radio. Why were they still on that topic and where was their conversation going? He was fine only being friends with her!

She wanted to tell him her reason that as his spouse, she had to make sure there was no one preying on him. But he did not want to listen to her. She calmly nodded. The patience she was putting in was going to give her a ticket to heaven.

∼•∽

It was evening by the time they reached. The remaining time they got, they did not bother each other. After so much socialisation, distant relatives and their gossip, both needed time to themselves to recharge. None of the two were outgoing except in private. They both minded their own business in social settings, at least, that's what they preferred.

Ramit spent his time idle, laying in the bed after turning the notifications on his phone off. All he needed to do was just stay calm on the outside and fly through the marvels of his mind, or just keep away from any kinds of thoughts for a while. Geetha decided to finish off the current book she was reading. Only a few pages remained. She also got the time to scratch on her papers. After 15 minutes of effort, on her paper was a kite. She was not good at it but she loved the activity.

∼•∽

The next day, work was hectic. They had to make up for their absence and also had to pace up their revamping work. In their current situation, the faster they did that, the better. Or else, one of the days in the near future, they'd be strapped for cash and in the burden of loans. At the moment, they were still relying on publishing trivial scandals and leaks and it could not go on for long.

The conversation they had regarding the company in the park was the last. Geetha no longer bothered about what exactly Ramit and his team of coders were doing. She took the whole responsibility of building the managerial foundation, networking with others in the field, keeping an eye on the current trends and working accordingly, creating the job profiles needed and finally, chalking up plans to poach in a way that looked reasonable to Ramit.

In their current situation how many fresh journalists they could train was limited, but Ramit was unnerved by the idea of poaching. He thought that it was immoral. She tried to convince him it was what the right business acumen appropriated for the situation. She parted her lips, stopped blinking her eyes, and stoned her body to show him how dead she felt with the decision, but that guy... despite giggling and having fun looking at her countenance, was stuck to 'being good people', whatever that meant. Now her team was perplexed over the issue. But she had to find a solution and that was to make the whole process more ethical.

Work ended late for them. Except for his office, the company was empty. Ramit simply forgot that the universe worked on something called time. He got up for a coffee every now and then and had some calls throughout. He was either typing away softly, or writing down on papers to see what works out.

It was nearing 8 o'clock and Geetha said, "That's enough coffee."

"That's enough chocolate!" Ramit hit back.

Geetha quickly threw a fresh bar of Dairy Milk onto his desk, just in case that retort was because he wanted some chocolate too. In the next half an hour, scratches of his pencil served as a ticking clock in the silence. Geetha sped her work up. She had to do a lot more now than on her last job.

Being a responsible boss was no joke. Now she understood why her boss worked so much more than the team. That time she thought all her supervisor did was assigning them different cases. But now she believed, before he assigned them work, he probably went through a ton more cases himself and solved or discarded them, only giving her and others things they could handle. If she did not keep enough things ready for the team to work on, the next day they would be burning money, literally.

Suddenly, she snickered. Thanks to Ramit, her team has more interns than veterans. The veterans were brought in by Veeru after she asked. She took out another chocolate and hit him precisely. Before he reprimanded her, she said, "Sorry!" Ramit looked back onto his paper.

At 8:30, she wrapped up her work and started bugging Ramit to go home. He raised his brows. He did not expect it to be past dinner time so early. It was definitely late. But he did not feel like he did enough yet. Usually when he had loads of work, he would either be in the stage of procrastination or he'd be burning the midnight oil until he felt a thorough burnout. Perhaps because he was just back from a vacation, he now wanted to work on and on. He asked her to wait a little more, because he was about to get a module done.

She murmured, "Are you trying to look cool like the hooded hackers in the movies who work in the dark? Don't be an owl!"

Finally, after 5 minutes of drama about how famished she was, he shut off his computer with a soft smile. With her around, he rarely had an awkward sleep cycle. If this was what it was going to be like, he was happy, although all it was was just having fun. Life looked bright, yet incomplete. He had long been convinced that the yearning he longed for was not going to be fulfilled in this life. Yet, his longing only grew now that she was finally looking at him. But so did his insecurities. Whenever his heart became hopeful, he was reminded of all the possibilities of her concern being feigned for her own satisfaction. She was so full of herself ever since he knew her, after all.

On their way out, she did not forget to take back the 2 chocolates that lay on the table. Things should be in their proper places and his desk was messy enough.

She gave both to Ramit. She waved them in front of him as she said, "Everything okay?" He seemed to look down. She felt a need to cheer him up.

"What's with you all of a sudden?"

Unable to explain herself, she said, "Felt like asking."

He looked to the front and chuckled as they walked out. Somewhere in his heart, he did not want her to know too much. It's like they said, forgive, but don't forget. He was scared to give her another chance to use his emotions and his feelings to her own advantage.

∼•∽

A/N:
It's been a week since the last update and also a week since my grandfather passed away. It was a relatively sudden death and I was in no mood to hit the publish button. The best part of this journey is reading comments and I did not want to compromise on that. Sorry about not letting some of you know. I had no energy to put up an A/N in the book. I posted an small announcement to my followers and hoped you'd check the MB in case you were waiting for an update... Sorry!  (-_-;)

The next update will be on or before next Sunday. After that, I will be back on schedule.

One good news this week was the book being features on "Roses are Red | Romance" reading list of newlywrittenbooks.  (‾▿‾)

Thank you all. See you soon.