Perspective

The shrill sound of the alarm echoed through the room.

Without opening his eyes, Sam reached for his phone and switched it off.

“Just two more minutes...” he murmured.

The alarm went off at 7:00 AM sharp, screaming into a room that was still pitch dark behind the curtains.

Sam’s hand found the phone before his eyes even opened. One tap. Silence.

“Just two minutes...”

It was a lie he told himself every single morning, and every single morning he believed it a little more than he should have.

Two minutes became ten. Ten became twenty.

When he finally cracked one eye open, the clock read 7:52.

“Oh — shit.”

He was out of bed before the sentence finished leaving his mouth.

The next fifteen minutes were a blur — cold water on his face, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth while he searched for a clean shirt, one sock on and the other clutched in his hand as he hopped down the stairs.

His mother was already in the kitchen, sliding a plate onto the table like she’d timed it to the second he’d come thundering down.

“Sam. Sit. Eat.”

“No time, Ma. I’m already late.”

“You’re always late. And breakfast is always ready. Explain the math to me.”

He grabbed a slice of toast off the plate on his way past her, kissing the air near her cheek because his hands were full.

“I’ll eat something at college, promise.”

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

“And I ate something yesterday.”

“A samosa is not a breakfast, beta.”

She said it to his back. He was already at the door, helmet under one arm, bike keys spinning around a finger.

“Ride carefully!”

“Always do, Ma!”

He didn’t, not really. But she didn’t need to know that.

Outside, the street was already wide awake. A school bus groaned past, packed too full, kids hanging half out of the windows. Shutters rattled up one by one along the row of shops. Somewhere close by, a tea stall was doing brisk business, steel glasses clinking, someone laughing too loudly at something that probably wasn’t that funny.

Sam weaved through it all on muscle memory alone — the pothole near the signal, the auto that always cut left without indicating, the speed bump outside the school nobody ever saw coming. Eight months of the same route did that to a person.

The college gate came into view a few minutes later, students streaming in through it in twos and threes, bags slung low, phones held higher.

He parked, killed the engine, and had barely gotten the helmet off when a voice cut through the noise behind him.

“Yo! Bro!”

He didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was.

“Sid.”

Sid jogged the last few steps and landed an arm across his shoulders like he did every morning, like it was a greeting ritual older than either of them.

“Dude. Please tell me you remember what today is.”

“Tuesday?”

“Sam.”

“...Tuesday the eleventh?”

Sid stopped walking entirely, staring at him with the kind of betrayal usually reserved for much bigger crimes.

“The match, man! Are you kidding me right now?”

It landed a second later — the way things always did with Sam, a beat behind everyone else, and then all at once.

“Oh. Oh, right. The match.”

“‘Oh, right,’ he says. Bro, this is the match. Us versus the opposing team.”

“I know what match it is, Sid.”

“Do you, though? Because the entire department is betting on you not embarrassing us.”

Sam huffed a laugh, shoving Sid’s arm off his shoulder as they fell into step toward the football ground.

“Remind me again who agreed to a full month of free labor if we lose.”

“We did. And we’re not going to.”

“That’s what confidence sounds like right before a disaster.”

“That’s what confidence sounds like right before we make the entire opposing team carry our bags for a month.”

Ahead of them, the ground was already filling up — voices overlapping, someone kicking a ball against the boundary wall just to hear the sound of it. Ordinary noise, on an ordinary Tuesday.

Neither of them had any reason to think it would be anything else.

They had no idea how wrong that would turn out to be. Ee