The Raizada Game

On her first day at the most elite academy in the country, Meera Sharma made the mistake of telling Reyansh Raizada he was wrong. She just didn’t know yet how expensive that mistake would be.

At 8:07 on Monday morning, Meera stood outside the gates of Raizada Global Academy with her admission letter tucked safely inside her bag and tried not to stare. It was difficult. The school was ridiculous; not ugly-ridiculous, beautiful-ridiculous. Black stone, glass walls, dark wood, and lawns so perfectly landscaped that even the trees looked as though someone had approved their positions before they were allowed to grow.

Above the main entrance was a gold crest: a stylised R beneath a crown. “Subtle,” Meera muttered.

A Bentley glided past her, then a Mercedes, then an SUV with windows tinted dark enough to hide whoever sat inside. Meera glanced down at her own shoes; new, bought three days ago after her mother had visited four stores and compared prices on her phone. They were comfortable. That was what mattered. She adjusted the strap of her bag and walked through the gates.

She’d spent the entire summer hearing about Raizada Global Academy; India’s most exclusive school, filled with the children of industrialists, politicians, actors, diplomats, and business families whose surnames turned up in the news often enough that Meera had stopped reading them. And a handful of scholarship students. She was one of them. The thought should have made her nervous. Instead, it made her straighten her shoulders. She hadn’t come here to apologise for getting in. She had earned her place. At least, that was what she believed.

The first ten minutes were spent getting lost. The campus map on her phone insisted Block C was straight ahead. It wasn’t. She ended up in the senior wing, walked past a swimming pool she definitely wasn’t supposed to be near, passed an auditorium large enough to host a concert, and finally found a staircase that looked like it led somewhere useful. She was checking the room number on her phone when a voice behind her said,

“You’re going the wrong way.”

Meera turned. A boy stood a few feet away, holding a basketball under one arm.

“You’re the third person to tell me that.”

“Because you’re still going the wrong way.”

She looked at the sign, then at him.

“Do you know where Room 204 is?”

He pointed behind her.

“Other building.”

“Of course.” She sighed.

“First day?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You’ve been studying that map like it’s an entrance exam.”

“The map is terrible.”

“It’s not.”

“It sent me to a swimming pool.”

He considered this.

“Maybe it thinks you need exercise.”

Meera laughed, the first time all morning she’d felt like she could breathe.

“Kabir,” he said.

“Meera.”

He nodded toward the courtyard.

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

By the time Meera reached her classroom, the bell had already rung. She slipped inside. Nearly every seat was taken. A girl near the middle raised her hand.

“Here,” she said, and Meera recognised her from the class list photo.

“Tara?”

“Yes.”

Meera sat beside her.

“You’re late,” Tara said.

“I got lost.”

“Everyone does. You’ll survive.”

The teacher walked in before Meera could answer.

“Good morning. Today we’re starting with something simple.”

She wrote a question on the board. If a company can legally do something but doing it would damage public trust, should it still do it?

Meera leaned forward. Interesting. Most answers were careful, a few textbook. Then a boy near the back raised his hand, and the teacher nodded.

“Reyansh?”

Meera looked up and recognised him, the boy from the courtyard. Dark hair, tall, athletic, his tie loose and his sleeves rolled as though he had better things to do than follow the dress code. He leaned back in his chair like the question had been written for him.

“If it’s legal, the company has every right to do it,” he said. “Businesses aren’t charities. They’re responsible for their shareholders, for making money. Public opinion changes every week.”

A few students nodded. The teacher looked pleased.

“Why?”

Meera raised her hand before she’d decided to.

“Yes?” the teacher said.

“His answer assumes legality and responsibility are the same thing.”

The room went quiet. Reyansh turned, and for the first time he actually looked at her.

“They aren’t,” she said.

“Explain,” the teacher said, arms folded.

“If a company can legally do something that destroys public trust, the question isn’t whether it can do it, it’s whether the long-term cost is worth the short-term benefit.”

“That’s idealistic,” Reyansh said.

“No. It’s strategic.”

A few students exchanged glances. The teacher smiled.

“Exactly.”

Reyansh didn’t say anything else, but he kept looking at her a beat too long, like he was recalculating something. Meera gave him a small, polite smile. Not smug. Not apologetic. Just certain. Somehow, that seemed to needle him more than the argument itself had.

The bell rang.

As students packed up, Meera turned to Tara.

“What’s next?”

Tara was still staring at her.

“You just disagreed with Reyansh.”

“I disagreed with his answer.”

“Same thing, here.”

Meera glanced toward the back of the room, where Reyansh was already surrounded by his friends, laughing at something one of them had said. Whatever had just happened between them, it was clearly over for him. Meera shrugged.

“Then somebody should.”

Tara studied her for another second.

“I think I’m going to like you.”

By lunch, Meera had learned two things: Tara knew almost everyone, and RGA had rules—not the official kind.

“Don’t sit there,” Tara said as they walked into the cafeteria, nodding toward a table by the windows where a cluster of girls sat around one in particular, a girl Meera recognised from the corridor that morning.

“Her?”

“Natasha.”

“She has a name.”

“Yes,” Tara said. “And a social kingdom.”

Kabir dropped into the seat beside them, already eating.

“Please tell me you’ve met.”

“We have.”

“What happened?”

“She asked if I knew who she was.”

Kabir laughed.

“Of course she did.”

Before Tara could say more, Natasha was already at their table, arriving the way people do when they’ve decided a conversation is happening whether you want it to or not.

“You’re Meera, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Natasha.”

“I know.”

“Really?”

Something flickered behind the smile; surprise, maybe, that Meera hadn’t performed the usual nervousness.

“Everyone here seems to know everyone.”

“That’s true.”

Natasha’s eyes moved once over Meera’s uniform, her bag, and back to her face, a quick, practiced audit.

“The scholarship student.”

She said it lightly, like a fact and not an insult, which was somehow worse. Tara went quiet. Kabir stopped chewing.

“And you’re Natasha,” Meera said. “I just said that.”

“I know.”

Natasha’s smile thinned by exactly one degree; the kind of change only someone who’d spent years reading rooms would notice.

“Was there something else?”

“No,” Meera said.

Natasha turned and walked back to her table, where Jiya leaned in immediately and Kiya laughed at whatever she said. Meera watched her go, then looked at Tara.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Tara said, in the tone of someone who meant the opposite.

“That doesn’t look like nothing.”

“You’ve been here four hours,” Kabir said, “and you’ve already annoyed Natasha.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly.”

After lunch, Meera and Tara cut across a courtyard where a group of boys had taken over the basketball court. Tara nodded toward them.

“That’s Reyansh’s group.”

Meera recognised a few faces from class; Adi, loud even from a distance; Neil, quieter; Yuvi, who seemed to know absolutely everyone; Ishaan, sitting at the edge of the court with a book balanced on his knee between plays.

“They’re all athletes?”

“Mostly. They also study, before you ask. Very well, actually.”

Meera glanced at Reyansh just as he glanced up and caught her looking. Whatever had been on his face shifted, something more deliberate replacing it. He said something to Adi, then started walking toward them.

“Oh no,” Tara muttered.

“What?”

“He’s coming here.”

“That was six hours ago.”

“Exactly.”

Reyansh stopped in front of them.

“You’re Meera.”

“And you’re Reyansh.”

“You’ve been paying attention.”

“Hard not to. Everyone keeps saying your name.”

His friends laughed behind him. He smiled, not the practiced kind Natasha had used, but something looser, more genuinely thrown off.

“You always talk like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re not impressed.”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to be.”

He laughed at that, short and real.

“You’re interesting.”

“I’ll try to recover.”

Adi laughed loudly enough that Reyansh glanced back and told him to shut up. Meera started walking. A ball rolled unexpectedly across her path. She stopped it with the side of her shoe.

“Sorry,” Neil called.

She kicked it back neatly into his hands.

“Nice shot,” Adi called.

“I didn’t shoot.”

“Still counts,” Reyansh said.

“Does it?”

“At RGA, everything counts.”

There was something almost unguarded in his expression then, not arrogance, not challenge, just amusement, like he’d forgotten to perform for a second. Meera shook her head and kept walking.

“Meera.”

She turned.

“I’m going to beat you. Next time.”

“At what?”

“Anything.”

“Then you’ll have to pick something,” she said, and walked away.

Tara waited until they were out of earshot.

“You realise you just challenged him again.”

“He challenged me.”

“That’s not better.”

The final bell rang at 3:15, and students poured through the corridors toward the gates. Meera walked out with Tara and Kabir, tired in a way that had nothing to do with the classes themselves. It was everything around them, the people, the expectations, the sense that everyone here already knew exactly where they belonged, except her. But she wasn’t going to spend the evening on that. She’d survived. She’d made two friends, learned her classrooms, figured out the cafeteria menu, and managed to irritate one of the most powerful boys in school before lunch. Not bad, for a first day.

At the gates, Tara stopped.

“Tomorrow.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Reyansh. He doesn’t like losing.”

“Neither do I.”

Kabir laughed.

“That’s what worries me.”

Meera glanced back at the academy, the gold R catching the late afternoon light, and thought about the boy in the classroom, the confidence, the easy certainty that people would agree with him, the quiet that had fallen over the room when she hadn’t. And the way he’d looked at her afterward. Not angry. Interested. That was worse. She shook the thought off. He was just a boy, rich, irritating, ridiculously sure of himself. Tomorrow she would ignore him. Probably.

Her phone buzzed. The school WhatsApp group had been blowing up all afternoon, but this wasn’t that. It was an unknown number.

You really should learn who you’re arguing with.

Meera stopped walking and stared at the screen. Then typed back:

And you should really learn how to introduce yourself.

Three dots appeared. Then vanished. No reply.

“Everything okay?” Tara asked.

“Yeah,” Meera said, locking her phone and slipping it into her bag.

But as she walked away from Raizada Global Academy, one thought stayed with her: She’d spent the whole first day learning the rules. Tomorrow, she was going to find out what happened when you broke them.