The morning began before the sun had quite decided to show its face.
Isabella was the first to wake. Years of royal discipline had her eyes snapping open at six sharp, her body unwilling to accept that this was supposed to be a holiday. For a few seconds, she lay still, listening — the fan whirring, the faint rustle of trees outside, and somewhere far away, a temple bell ringing through the dawn.
She turned her head. Estella was already up, sitting cross-legged on the bed, scrolling through her phone with a sleepy smile.
"Couldn't sleep?" Isabella asked.
"Couldn't stop thinking," Estella said. "First day of school in a whole new country. Feels… weirdly exciting."
"Hmm." Isabella stretched. "Let's hope we survive it without embarrassing ourselves."
By six-thirty, both girls were ready — uniforms neatly ironed, hair tied, shoes gleaming. Their beds were made, bags packed, ribbons aligned as an architect had measured them.
The rest of the house was dead silent.
Estella peeked into the boys' room. "Oh, dear."
Aaron was face down, buried under his pillow. Ishaan had somehow managed to sleep sideways across the entire bed, blanket half on the floor, one sock dangling from his foot like a flag of surrender.
"I thought the bus came at seven-thirty?" Isabella whispered.
"It does," Estella said. "And they said it takes forty minutes to get to school."
As if on cue, a faint grumble came from under Aaron's pillow.
"Five more minutes…"
Isabella rolled her eyes. "I think that's his life motto."
They tiptoed back into the hall, where Mrs Banerjee was already up, in a cotton saree, hair tied, the smell of toasted bread and boiling milk filling the kitchen.
She looked at the girls and beamed.
"Oh, look at you two! Ready before sunrise! If only my sons had half your discipline."
Estella laughed. "We just didn't want to miss the bus."
"Well, don't worry," Mrs Banerjee said, pouring milk into glasses. "The bus will come honking like a war trumpet. You'll hear it before you see it."
From the boys' room came a loud thud, followed by Ishaan's voice: "Aargh! Who moved my uniform?!"
Mrs Banerjee didn't even look up. "Probably the ghost of punctuality trying to haunt you."
Aaron stumbled out next, hair a disaster, tie still in his hand. "Ma! Why didn't anyone wake us?"
"I did. Twice. You said, and I quote, 'Tell the sun to come back later.'"
Estella burst out laughing so hard she almost spilt her milk.
"Come on, bhaiya, hurry up," Isabella said, unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. "You'll make us late for our first day."
Aaron groaned, trying to button his shirt and eat toast at the same time. "You sound like Ma already."
"Then listen to her," Mrs Banerjee called from the kitchen, "because I've given up!"
By seven-twenty, chaos had fully bloomed. Ishaan was still searching for one sock. Aaron was trying to tie his tie while moving. Mrs Banerjee was holding both their bags hostage until they finished at least one glass of milk.
Outside, the faint rumble of an approaching engine echoed down the lane.
"Bus!" Estella gasped, peering through the balcony railing.
A yellow-and-green school bus emerged from the morning mist, honking twice like it had done this dance a hundred times before.
"Go, go, go!" Mrs Banerjee said, shoving notebooks and tiffin boxes into open bags like a general dispatching soldiers to battle.
Aaron half-jumped into his shoes. "Why does it always come early on Mondays?"
"Because it hates you," Ishaan said, finally locating his sock and sprinting after him.
The girls exchanged a look — half amusement, half disbelief — and followed them out the door.
The lane smelled of rain and dust. Neighbours waved from balconies. The bus engine purred impatiently as the driver leaned on the horn again.
Estella clutched her bag tighter. "Well," she said softly. "No turning back now."
Isabella smiled, her heart beating a little faster. "Let's make it count."
The bus doors hissed open.
They walked down the aisle together, and the entire bus went quiet.
Not dramatically. Just the way a room goes quiet when something catches everyone off guard at once. Junior students craned their necks. Middle schoolers nudged each other. A boy two rows back whispered something to his friend and got elbowed immediately. Even the female security guard at the front looked up from her register.
"Looks like you became celebrities already," Ishaan said, dropping into his usual seat with the ease of someone reclaiming a throne. Aaron slid in beside him without looking up, the movement so practised it was practically muscle memory.
"Would've preferred not to attract attention on the first day," Estella murmured, settling in next to Ishaan.
"It'll die down," Aaron said. "Give it a week."
"Aur bhai, what's up?" A voice came from behind — Aryan, leaning over the headrest with a grin.
"Aryan." Aaron gave him a dap. "What's happening?"
"I should be asking you that." Aryan's eyes flicked toward Isabella with barely concealed curiosity. "Europe was apparently eventful."
Before Aaron could answer, Bhavesh materialised from somewhere near the front, Ansh half a step behind him. Both of them looked at Aaron and Ishaan. Then at the girls. Then back at the boys with the expression of people who had been waiting for exactly this moment.
"Well, well," Bhavesh said. "If it isn't the Sens and their fiancées."
The word hit the bus like a starting pistol.
"WHATTTTTTTTTT—"
"ISHAAN, YOU HAVE A FIANCÉE?! SINCE WHEN?!"
The bus erupted. Questions from every direction, overlapping, someone actually standing up in their seat before their friend yanked them back down.
Ishaan looked at Bhavesh with the calm expression of a man accepting his fate. "Thanks, bro. Really. Wonderful start to the morning."
Bhavesh grinned. "Always happy to help."
"Well, Izzy," Aaron said, raising his voice slightly over the chaos, "looks like we're in for a long day."
Isabella's mouth curved. "Oh my. A nickname." She glanced at him sideways. "I like it, Ar."
Aaron opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked away with the particular expression of someone who had not expected that to land the way it did.
The bus did not quiet down for the rest of the journey.
St. Augustine's International gleamed in the morning sun — wide lawns, flags, students streaming through the gates in a wave of noise and colour. The bus screeched to a halt, and everyone poured out, and for about thirty seconds, the girls experienced what it felt like to be the most interesting thing to happen to a school on a Monday morning.
Whispers in the corridor. Heads turning. Someone saying "transfer students" and someone else saying "European or something" and a third voice cutting across both with "arrey, who cares, they're stunning."
Isabella kept her chin up and her pace steady — she had walked into rooms far more formally intimidating than this. Estella kept close beside her, eyes taking everything in.
What neither of them had expected was Aaron.
He was different here. Not louder — if anything, quieter. But the careful guardedness he sometimes wore, that subtle bracing against being in a crowd, was just… gone. He walked through the corridor with his hands in his pockets and an ease that hadn't been there before, laughing at something Aryan said, and it looked effortless, like a version of him that had always been there and had simply decided today was a fine day to show up.
Even Aryan noticed.
"Dude," he said quietly, falling into step beside Aaron. "You're glowing or something. What happened?"
Aaron laughed. "Nothing happened."
"Last term, you looked like a tax auditor in therapy."
"That's extremely specific."
"It was extremely concerning." Aryan glanced toward Isabella. "I'm just saying. Good to have you back."
Aaron didn't answer. But he was still smiling.
Lunch was chaotic and loud and somehow exactly right — the six of them crammed around a table that was technically for four, Ishaan making increasingly terrible puns, Aaron arguing about football with Bhavesh, Estella stealing biscuits off Ansh's plate without apology, Isabella laughing at something she hadn't expected to find funny.
She caught Aaron looking at her once, midway through a sentence he was already in the middle of.
He looked back at his food. Kept talking. Like it hadn't happened.
She filed that away and said nothing.
The real surprise came after school.
The boys were home and changed and eating lunch before the girls had even set their bags down. Aaron was halfway through a second serving of rice, and Ishaan was practically wearing his plate.
"Why the rush?" Isabella asked.
"Tuition in thirty minutes," Aaron said, not looking up. "Back by seven-thirty at the earliest."
"You just got home."
"Welcome to India," Ishaan said, licking his spoon clean. "School, lunch, tuition. That's the full package."
They were out the door before the girls had finished sitting down.
Mrs Banerjee suggested they go pick the boys up at seven, with the particular expression of someone who knows the punchline and is waiting for you to get there.
They went.
The street outside the tuition centre was alive in a way that had nothing to do with studying. Students everywhere — laughing, stretching, arguing, someone's phone playing a song too loudly. Ishaan emerged from the building with his shirt untucked and his bag hanging off one shoulder, and within thirty seconds flat, a group of boys had materialised from nowhere and pressed a football into his hands. He was gone before the girls could even wave.
Aaron came out a minute later, paused to accept a guitar case from a friend, and headed toward a low shed beside the field with the quiet ease of someone following a ritual.
"His tuition was supposed to end at seven," Estella said.
"It did," said the friend, who had not been asked, and wandered off.
They followed Aaron to the shed.
He sat down on the old wooden bench, set the case on his knees, and opened it without hurry. His hands moved through the familiar routine — strap adjusted, fingers settling onto the strings, a few quiet test notes that floated out into the evening air and dissolved.
Then he started to play.
It wasn't a performance. There was no announcement, no flourish. He just played — something slow and thoughtful and entirely his own — and the strange thing was that the noise of the street didn't disappear exactly, but it shifted. It moved to the edges. The honking and the shouting and the football thuds all continued, but they became backdrop, and the music was foreground, and for a moment, that was the whole world.
Isabella watched his hands.
She had seen him sketch the same way — unhurried, completely inside it, the rest of him going still while something in his hands moved. It was the same now. His shoulders had dropped. The careful awareness he carried everywhere, that subtle readiness she had noticed even in Alzaras, had simply switched off.
She had not seen many people who knew how to do that. Be somewhere completely.
"They look like they belong to this chaos," Estella murmured beside her.
Isabella didn't answer immediately. She was still watching him play.
"Maybe," she said finally, "that's what belonging actually looks like."
From the field, Ishaan's laughter cut through the dusk — sharp and unrestrained and very much himself. The sky had gone indigo. The first stars were coming out.
Eventually, he came jogging back, covered in dust, grinning. Aaron was already packing the guitar away, and they fell into step toward home with the easy tiredness of people who had exactly the right amount of energy left for the walk back.
"Told you," Estella said.
"Not our fault," Ishaan said, still catching his breath. "Delhi time runs differently."
Aaron slung the guitar over his shoulder. "And honestly," he said, "it's not a bad thing."
The girls exchanged a look.
Half exasperation. Half something they didn't have a name for yet.
They walked home.