The room seemed to shrink, the air growing thick and heavy, charged with a terrifying, static electricity. Ruhi's calm, simple admission—"Yes, I am a monster"—was more horrifying than any scream or denial. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the chilling placidity of someone stating their own name.
Ashutosh, acting on pure, primal instinct, moved to stand in front of Kritika, a human shield against the monster who wore the face of their friend. His body was tense, coiled like a spring, ready for a violence he couldn't possibly comprehend. Kritika, for her part, fumbled for her phone, her fingers shaking so badly she could barely grip the device, her thumb swiping uselessly at the screen.
Only Rihan remained seated. He was frozen, his gaze locked on Ruhi. The file lay open before him on the table, a grotesque testament to her darkness, but his eyes saw only the girl he had fallen in love with on a mountainside at sunset. The monster and the angel were one and the same, fused together in a way his mind couldn't separate.
"Why?" he asked again. His voice was barely a whisper, a thread of sound in the suffocating silence, but the word cut through her chilling composure like a shard of glass. It wasn't Kritika's shriek of terror or Ashutosh's posture of defiance. It was his quiet, heartbroken question that found the crack in her armor.
Her predatory smile faltered. The cold amusement in her eyes flickered, and for a split second, he saw the vulnerable girl from the bus window, the one with loneliness in her eyes. The fortress began to crumble. Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes, those calm, unreadable pools of brown ice, filled with tears. The monster, Ananya, dissolved, and a broken, tormented girl took her place.
"I don't know," she whispered, the words choked with a sudden, violent sob that seemed to be ripped from the very depths of her soul. The sound was so full of raw, unfiltered pain it was shocking. Tears, hot and real, began to stream down her face, washing away the cold mask of Ananya and revealing the profound anguish of Ruhi. "I did it for you! I did everything for you!"
She took a ragged, shuddering breath, her body shaking with the force of her sobs. "I can't see you in pain, Rihan. I can't bear it. When they hurt you... when anyone looks at you with contempt... something inside me breaks. It's a physical pain, right here." She pressed a hand to her chest, over her heart, her knuckles white. "It's a rage that I can't control. It's... it's the only way I know how to make the noise stop. To make them stop."
She looked at him, her beautiful face a mess of tears and desperation, her defenses utterly, irrevocably shattered. "I really love you," she cried, the confession raw and agonizing. "I want to spend my whole life with you. The time we spent together... in Manali... that was the best time of my entire life. It was the only time I ever felt... normal. Human." She took another shuddering breath. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for all of it. For what I am. But I can't see you in pain. It makes my heart ache. It makes the... other part of me wake up."
The file, with its clinical, horrifying descriptions of blood and fire, faded into insignificance. All Rihan could see was her, stripped bare of all her secrets and lies, her monstrous actions born from a love as profound and twisted as her own damaged soul. He didn't see a killer. He saw the girl who had guided him on his first day, the one who had helped him pick up his books, the one who had made him feel safe for the first time in his life. He saw the brilliant mind that had untangled a complex algorithm for him, the warm heart that had laughed at his stupid jokes.
Without a second thought, without consulting his rational mind, he stood up, walked around the table, and pulled her into his arms.
She stiffened for a moment, shocked, then completely collapsed against him, sobbing uncontrollably into his chest, her fists clutching his shirt. He held her tightly, stroking her hair, just as she had done for him in the rain-soaked gazebo what felt like a lifetime ago.
"I love you too," he whispered into her hair, his own voice thick with emotion, his own tears starting to fall. He felt Kritika's and Ashutosh's horrified, disbelieving stares on his back, but he didn't care. In that moment, there was only him and Ruhi, two broken people clinging to each other in the wreckage. "Whatever you are. Whoever you are. However you are. I will always love you."
He meant it. Every single word. His love wasn't conditional. It wasn't just for the perfect, kind President. It was for the broken girl, the avenging angel, the monster in the shadows. It was for all of her.
A fragile, beautiful, and terrifying moment of perfect, unadulterated honesty hung between them. She looked up at him, her tear-filled eyes full of a desperate, disbelieving hope.
And then the moment was shattered.
The sound of sirens, faint at first, began wailing in the distance, growing rapidly, menacingly closer.
Kritika lowered her phone, her own face pale and streaked with tears. Her hand was trembling. "I had to," she whispered, her voice trembling, directed at Rihan but looking at Ruhi. "I had to, Rihan. She's... she hurt people. She's dangerous."
Ruhi's body went rigid in Rihan's arms. The fear was back in her eyes, but it was a different kind of fear now. It wasn't the fear of being discovered. It was the primal, cornered-animal fear of being caged again.
"It's okay," Rihan whispered fiercely to her, his grip tightening, as if he could physically shield her from the coming storm. "It's going to be okay. I'm not leaving you."
The police stormed into the small hostel room moments later, their faces grim, their movements practiced and efficient. They took in the scene in a single, sweeping glance—the two boys, the terrified girl with the phone, the damning file open on the table, and the college president, a known juvenile offender, being comforted by her distraught boyfriend.
The lead inspector's eyes fell on the case file, his expression hardening into stone. He looked at Ruhi, his gaze devoid of any pity.
"Ananya Sharma," he said, his voice hard as granite. "You're under arrest."