CHAPTER 1
The Name Nobody Had Seen
Mumbai never slept properly.
It only changed lighting.
At 2:13 a.m., the city looked dipped in champagne and cigarette ash. Sea-facing penthouses glowed gold. Paparazzi bikes still prowled outside celebrity homes like scavenger dogs waiting for movement. Somewhere in Bandra, a party was still screaming through expensive speakers. Somewhere else, an actor was crying in a marble bathroom under perfect skin-care lighting.
And on the sixth floor of a decaying dental hostel three states away from all of it, Gargi Deshmukh was elbow-deep in plaster casts and alginate impressions.
The hostel smelled like wet notebooks, Dettol, burnt Maggi, and clove oil.
A fitting graveyard for dreams.
Gargi adjusted the tiny table lamp near her bed and stared at the half-carved wax tooth in her hand with pure hatred.
“Why,” she whispered to the universe, “does anatomy hate human beings?”
Her roommate, asleep on the opposite bed, groaned and threw a pillow over her face.
Outside, dogs barked near the campus gate. Somewhere downstairs, girls laughed too loudly at a phone screen. A pressure cooker whistled in the warden's quarters.
Life moved.
Gargi remained frozen.
The mandibular molar in her hand looked less like a tooth and more like a crime scene.
She rubbed tired eyes behind thick-framed glasses and checked the time again.
2:14 a.m.
Exactly then, her phone vibrated.
Not rang.
Vibrated.
Only one person in the world called her at impossible hours without warning.
Aarav Kapoor.
Gargi stared at the screen for three whole seconds before answering.
“No congratulations?” his voice came first. Low. Calm. Tired in a way only famous people sounded tired.
In the background she heard noise. Loud music. Glasses clinking. People cheering.
An afterparty.
She leaned back against the cold hostel wall.
“For what?”
A pause.
Then, almost offended:
“My film crossed three hundred crores.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “That.”
“That?” he repeated flatly.
“You called at two in the morning to emotionally blackmail me over box office numbers.”
“You didn’t text.”
“You have eight million people texting you.”
“Nine now.”
Gargi snorted.
There it was. That tiny sound.
Aarav always waited for it.
No interviewer had ever managed to make him smile naturally on camera. But somehow Gargi, half-asleep in oversized pajamas with dental wax on her fingers, could pull tiny invisible reactions out of him from cities away.
Neither of them understood when that had started.
Or why.
“You watched it?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“You promised.”
“I had pre-clinicals.”
“You’ve had pre-clinicals since the Mughal Empire.”
“That’s because dentistry is suffering with attendance requirements.”
He laughed softly.
Very softly.
Like a secret accidentally escaping.
And Gargi suddenly became aware of how intimate silence could feel after 2 a.m.
Outside her window, rain had started. Thin silver lines under yellow hostel lights.
“You should sleep,” she muttered.
“You sound exhausted.”
“I’m carving teeth for a future I didn’t even choose.”
“You chose to stay.”
That hit somewhere uncomfortable.
Gargi’s eyes drifted toward the photo taped near her desk.
Her grandfather smiling proudly beside her admission letter.
Dr. Gargi Deshmukh.
He had repeated those words like prayer beads before he died.
Not actress.
Not heiress.
Not socialite.
Doctor.
Even now she didn’t know whether she stayed because she wanted this life... or because leaving it would feel like betraying a ghost.
“You still there?” Aarav asked.
“Hm.”
“What happened today?”
He always asked that.
Never How are you?
Never Did you eat?
What happened today.
Like he collected fragments of her existence privately.
“Nothing,” she said automatically.
“Liar.”
She smiled despite herself.
“My prosthodontics professor insulted my impression work in front of sixty people.”
“What did he say?”
“That my crown prep looked drunk.”
“Did it?”
“A little.”
“Then he was honest.”
“You’re a terrible emotional support person.”
“I’m realistic.”
“You’re evil.”
Another pause.
Then quietly:
“You cried?”
Gargi looked at the ceiling fan spinning shadows across cracked paint.
“A little.”
Something shifted in his breathing.
Far away in Mumbai, inside some glittering party full of famous people, Aarav Kapoor went completely silent.
When he finally spoke, his voice had changed texture.
“Send me his name.”
She burst out laughing.
“No.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re insane.”
“He embarrassed you publicly.”
“He’s my professor, Aarav.”
“So?”
“You cannot threaten a dental professor because I made ugly teeth.”
“I can do many things.”
And the frightening part was...
He probably could.
At exactly the same moment in Mumbai, cameras exploded outside the afterparty venue.
“AARAV! ONE PHOTO!”
“AARAV LOOK HERE!”
“AARAV IS IT TRUE YOU’RE DATING YOUR CO-STAR?”
“WHO IS THE MYSTERY GIRL?”
Flashes swallowed the entrance.
Inside the black tinted car, Aarav leaned back with one arm over his eyes.
His manager sat opposite him scrolling furiously through Twitter.
“This shipping thing is getting out of control,” she muttered. “Your PR team says lean into it.”
“No.”
“They already edited fan videos.”
“No.”
“They’re calling you the nation’s obsession.”
“I said no.”
The manager sighed.
“You know how this industry works.”
Aarav looked out the rain-streaked window.
Outside, fans screamed his name like prayer.
Inside his phone screen, Gargi had just sent him a blurry photo of her disastrous wax molar.
He stared at it for several seconds.
Then zoomed in.
Then typed:
Looks better than most actors’ veneers.
Her reply came instantly.
Die.
For the first time that entire night, Aarav smiled properly.
Three days later, the internet exploded.
It happened during an interview.
One careless sentence.
That was all.
Agastya Khanna sat under studio lights looking bored enough to evaporate. Black shirt. Rings on long fingers. That old-Bollywood royalty face everyone inherited in fragments but nobody wore like the Khannas did.
The interviewer grinned dramatically.
“So tell us,” she teased, “who’s the new IT couple of Bollywood?”
Agastya barely looked up from his coffee.
“Aarav and G-”
He froze.
The studio froze.
The interviewer blinked.
“Aarav and who?”
Agastya recovered instantly.
“No one.”
But it was too late.
Clips spread within minutes.
#AaravAndG trended nationally before sunrise.
News channels ran theories like crime investigations.
WHO IS G?
SECRET GIRLFRIEND?
CHILDHOOD LOVE?
BUSINESS TYCOON’S DAUGHTER?
FOREIGN MODEL?
Old photographs resurfaced.
A blurry image from a Diwali party years ago where half a girl stood beside Aarav.
A birthday guest list mentioning someone called “G.”
An ancient paparazzi clip where Aarav was heard saying:
"Call Gargi first."
Nobody had noticed then.
Now everyone did.
And in a tiny rural dental college almost nobody outside Maharashtra could pronounce correctly...
Gargi Deshmukh walked into her phantom head simulation lab wearing faded scrubs completely unaware that the country had begun hunting her existence.
She tied her hair with a pencil.
Opened her instrument kit.
Looked at the typodont.
And sighed like a soldier entering war.
“Today,” she muttered to herself, “I will successfully do cavity preparation.”
Behind her, someone’s phone suddenly screamed:
“BRO WHO THE HELL IS G?”
Another student gasped dramatically.
“Internet detectives found a billionaire’s daughter!”
“Apparently Aarav Kapoor’s in love!”
“Imagine hiding a girlfriend for YEARS.”
Laughter erupted around the lab.
Gargi calmly picked up her handpiece.
Turned it on.
And the machine whirred alive like a tiny dentist-drill chainsaw.
Nobody noticed her hands trembling.
Not even Gargi herself.
Until her phone vibrated once inside her pocket.
One message.
From Aarav.
Don’t panic.
