The crowd eventually drifted apart, pulled back into games and gossip, but Dev stayed where he was, staring at the damp imprint the boy had left on the ground. His pulse still hadn't found a steady rhythm.
Meera lingered beside him. She didn't speak — she didn't need to. Her silence had weight, the kind that asked questions without opening its mouth.
Finally she said, "Try it."
Dev blinked. "Try what?"
"You know what."Her voice was low, careful. "Make it happen again."
"I don't even know how I—"
"You didn't think when you grabbed him."She stepped a little closer, lowering her voice. "But just now… you felt it before anyone else, Dev. Like the moment warned you."
He swallowed hard. "That doesn't mean I can control it."
"No," she said. "But maybe it means you can find it."
She glanced around. Nobody was paying attention. The P.E. sir had already gone back to yelling about shoes on the basketball court. A group of ninth-graders were arguing over whose turn it was to use the volleyball net.
Meera picked up a pebble from the ground. "Here."
"I'm not catching another falling object," Dev muttered.
"No. Just watch."
She held the pebble between her fingers. Dev stared at it — too intently, maybe — trying to feel the strange tightening in the air again. That pressure. That shift. That soft click inside the world.
"Ready?" Meera asked.
He nodded.
She dropped the pebble.
It fell normally.Hit the ground.Rolled into a small puddle.Nothing happened.
Dev exhaled shakily. "See? There's nothing to—"
"Once more," she said.
He gritted his teeth but nodded.
She picked it up again. Held it a little higher. Dev focused until his eyes burned.
Nothing shifted.
"Again," he said quietly.
Her eyebrows rose — she hadn't expected him to push this hard — but she lifted the pebble again.
He shut out the playground noise. The squeaks, the shouts, the whistles. He tried to find that pull in the air, the invisible thread he felt when the boy slipped.
He tried to ask the moment to bend.
He didn't know how to ask.He just wanted it — fiercely, desperately — the way you want breath when underwater.
Meera let the pebble fall.
This time, Dev felt something.
A tremor in the air. A tiny shiver, like a second trying to escape its place in the line of seconds. It wasn't enough to bend the world — but it was there.
Then it vanished.
The pebble hit the ground normally again.
Meera crouched to pick it up, but Dev grabbed her wrist — too abruptly — stopping her.
"That," he whispered. "Did you feel that? Just now?"
"I… felt something," she admitted. "Not like before. But something."
Dev's voice dropped lower."It's not listening to me."
Meera studied his face, the tension in his jaw, the tremor in his fingers.
"It's not supposed to listen," she said softly. "It just reacts."
He shook his head. "It feels like… like it only moves when I'm scared. Or angry. Or— I don't know— when something bad is about to happen."
Meera's eyes darkened with concern. "Dev… that's a horrible trigger."
"I know."
They stood in silence for a moment, the faint smell of wet earth rising between them.
Then Dev added, almost in a whisper, "It's like the world bends only when it thinks I need it to."
Meera didn't argue.Because for the first time…she didn't think he was wrong.