Enemies to lovers - PART 5 — “THE HABIT OF RUIN”

The bickering became routine.

Not loud arguments.

Not dramatic clashes.

Just… friction.

Sohum questioned her answers a little too often.

Suniti replied with a little too much calm.

He corrected her phrasing.

She corrected his assumptions.

He tried to corner her with logic.

She slipped through with precision.

It happened every day.

So consistently that the class began to expect it.

If Suniti didn’t speak, something felt off.

If Sohum didn’t challenge her, the lecture felt incomplete.

Neither of them noticed when it stopped being irritation.

Neither of them noticed when it turned into attachment.

Their days began to revolve around those moments—

the raised eyebrow,

the clipped reply,

the silence that followed.

No one’s day felt right without it.

Not hers.

Not his.

THE FIRST DAY SHE WAS ABSENT

The first bench was empty.

Sohum noticed immediately.

His eyes went there before he could stop them—out of habit, he told himself.

Late, perhaps.

He waited.

Five minutes passed.

She didn’t come.

He cleared his throat and began the lecture anyway, but his eyes kept drifting back to the empty seat.

Ten minutes in, he stopped mid-sentence.

“Where is Suniti?” he asked abruptly.

Her friends looked up, startled.

One of them spoke hesitantly.

“She’s not well, sir… I think.”

Not well.

The words sat uncomfortably with him.

He nodded once and turned back to the board, but the chalk hesitated in his hand.

The lecture never found its rhythm.

He skipped explanations.

Missed steps.

Repeated points he had already covered.

After twenty minutes, he shut his notebook.

“Today we’ll revise,” he said abruptly. “No new topics.”

The class exchanged confused looks.

He ended the lecture early.

No explanation.

THE SECOND DAY

She still didn’t come.

This time, he didn’t ask.

But his mind was nowhere near the classroom.

He paced slowly while teaching, eyes unfocused, voice absent-minded.

He asked questions he already knew the answers to.

Conducted rapid-fire rounds that led nowhere.

Assigned a short test from previously taught topics.

Anything—

Anything that didn’t move the syllabus forward.

Because somewhere in the back of his mind sat a single thought he refused to acknowledge:

She’ll struggle if I move ahead.

He dismissed the class early again.

THE THIRD DAY

The first bench remained empty.

By now, the absence had a weight.

A presence of its own.

He found himself listening for her voice—

the calm tone,

the measured replies,

the quiet defiance.

Nothing came.

Halfway through the lecture, he stopped.

Stared at the board.

Then turned back.

“That’s all for today,” he said.

The class was dismissed without explanation.

He left the room faster than usual.

THE TRUTH HE WOULDN’T NAME

By the third evening, it became impossible to deny.

He missed her.

Not dramatically.

Not painfully.

But persistently.

He missed the way she challenged him.

The way she listened without blinking.

The way she refused to be intimidated.

He missed their arguments.

The silence felt wrong without them.

And that terrified him.

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