After everything that happened, I made a decision I would train with Shilpa specifically, and with Neelam.
Not because anyone told me to. Not because the situation demanded it.
But because I had seen something that day that quietly refused to leave me alone.
Everyone assumed I was satisfied with the results. They saw what I showed them a composed face, a steady nod, the kind of silence that people mistake for contentment. And honestly? I let them believe it.
It was easier than explaining something I hadn't yet found the right words for.
But that was not the reality.
The results were fine.
Fine enough to nod at, fine enough to accept without argument.
But fine has never been the thing I trained for and somewhere beneath all that composed silence, I knew it.
I felt the gap between where I was and where I needed to be, and I felt it the way you feel a stone in your shoe: small enough to ignore, impossible to forget.
So I chose to ignore it for a time.
In reality, I wanted them dead.
Not in the way people say it carelessly not as frustration, not as a passing thought. I mean it the way only someone who has truly been wronged can mean it. But my power, my influence, and the situation I was standing in did not allow for that. So I did what people like me are sometimes forced to do I buried it. I did what needed to be done, quietly, without making it anyone else's story.
Three months passed. Slowly, the way grief always moves not in a straight line, but in circles, until one morning you wake up and realize the weight has shifted slightly. We came over Mrs. Sharma's death. Or at least, we learned to carry it differently.
But grief, it turns out, was only the beginning of our problems.
Because Mrs. Sharma had been a regular visitor to our home a familiar face, a constant presence certain people in the society found it convenient to connect her death to us. Rumors began the way they always do: quietly at first, then louder, then everywhere. That we carried bad luck. That anyone associated with us would eventually find themselves on the wrong side of fate.
I could do nothing about it. Not directly. Not without an external force strong enough to shift the narrative and I had none at that moment.
And influencing Shilpa and Neelam's situation from the outside, without that leverage, was nearly impossible.
So I thought differently.
If I could not control what people believed about us, I would change the conditions that made those beliefs possible. I decided to do everything within my reach not for myself, but to change the reality that lesbians like us were forced to live inside. And just like that, quietly and with absolute intention, I decided to enter international competitions. To build something larger than rumor. To grow my influence until silence was no longer my only weapon.
Two years.
That is how long I waited. Two years of silence, of building, of doing everything right while the world around me moved at its own indifferent pace. And then finally life placed something real in front of me. Not a small opportunity. Not a stepping stone.
A grand one.
An international academy competition. The kind of platform I had been quietly preparing for since the day I made that decision the day I chose influence over impulsiveness, patience over reaction.
The D&D points I had accumulated, the skills I had carefully purchased, the hours of work that nobody witnessed and nobody applauded all of it was about to mean something. Every repetition, every sacrifice, every moment I had chosen discipline over comfort was lining itself up, preparing to show its results.
And perhaps the most significant part I had finally found a place where I could influence things. Not beg for change. Not wait for someone else's mercy. Actually move something.
The Chief Minister's recommendation and the judges' backing had already carried me through. I did not need to fight my way into the finale I was already there. All I had to do now was walk into that final stage and win.
And what waited on the other side of that win?
Four crore rupees. Two legal rights.
Just thinking about it just letting those numbers sit in my mind for a moment something warm and electric moved through my chest. Not greed. Not desperation.
Pure, earned excitement.
I sat with that feeling for a while. Let it exist without immediately turning it into a plan or a strategy. That almost never happens with me I am not someone who allows themselves to simply feel good about something without immediately looking for what could go wrong.
But this time, just for a moment, I let it be.
Four crore. Two legal rights. And a stage large enough that what I said on it what I did on it would echo somewhere beyond that room.
That was the real prize. Not just the money, not just the legal recognition though both meant everything in ways I could write entire chapters about. It was the echo. The influence I had been quietly building toward for two years, finally finding a surface large enough to reflect it.
Shilpa and Neelam crossed my mind.
Not as a distraction. As a reminder of why I had started moving in this direction at all. Everything I had decided to do, every competition I had entered, every point I had earned and skill I had purchased none of it had been purely for myself. It had always been larger than that. Changing the situation. Shifting the ground beneath the kind of people who spread rumors about bad luck while two women grieved in silence.
This finale was not just my moment.
It was the beginning of something I had been building in the dark for two years and now, finally, there was light enough to see its shape.
I was ready.
More than ready.
I had been ready for two years. The world was simply just now catching up.