Hi Everyone! Here's the first part of my first FF. Please show some love.

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Nandini's POV

Boom!

A sudden crack of thunder startled me up from my uncomfortable position. It took me sometime to realise whether I woke up scared or I was scared after I woke up. I sat up abruptly causing some object fall on the floor. Ah! It was a bad move. An instant cramp in my neck made sure to remind me of that. I sat up cautiously, rubbing my palms together to ward off the chill. Moving my eyes over the mess that seemed like a drawing room and the figures lying over there in taekwondo positions I realised I am on my couch. After yesterday's "thriller" late night movie session I excused myself from the gang and settled myself on my single couch, beside the window – my favourite place in the apartment, with my writing pad. I have an old habit to write diary. Writing down my thoughts at the end of the day had always been therapeutic to me and perhaps then I dozed off here itself.

Glancing at my mobile watch I saw the time. 5:30 in the morning. The monotonous pitter patters sound and a splash of raindrops on my face gave away the weather outside. It has again started raining. The seasonal drizzle in Verona from last two days is showing no mood to come to a stop any time sooner. Arguably, it was nothing surprising for a night in late July in Verona. Relaxing my neck and shoulder I picked up my notebook and closed it with a pen stuffed inside it, bookmarking the last page I had been writing on. I ran my fingers over the handmade cover written with 'Do not touch without permission, –Nandini Murthy' before I placed it on the couch and moved to the window to close it. No matter how much I love open windows during thunder storm but we don't own the flat neither the furniture, so we can't really afford any damage due to the rain. But as you know when you really love something you cannot shut it completely. You will always find a hole to see through it. So did I. Closing the panes almost I left it open at an apparatus gap but the next second my whole stature shifted uncomfortably. Because it happened again. I felt the same anxiety from the last few days creeping inside me once again as I spotted a black sub at the far end of the drive way. Almost the same one that I noticed back in the evening near our University gate; the same one I had been spotting everywhere from the past month. But it was too dark outside to bet on any fact. I was still not sure I was really seeing the car or I was just seeing things. Just when I was about to dismiss any such possibility a bolt of lightning stroke and this time rooting my gaze on a silhouette. A very well known one in fact. For a fraction I thought as if I saw IT standing with its hands clumped in the pockets, hooded in a transparent raincoat, staring directly at me. This is not the first time I am feeling these creepy feelings though. It has been one month since I am feeling like I was being stalked... As if a continuous presence of someone around me, an unwavering stare of a pair of molten brown eyes casted on my every move... A presence, a gaze that I used to know very well. But it's just a matter of a glimpse... the very next moment it would vanish like it never occurred the way it did just now. The more I tried to get over them, they seemed to be rising more and more these past few days.

Just yesterday, I had one same weird experience in our university class room which was three floors above from the ground. The view from the glass windows right over the university campus and the busy street across it was panoramic. I had been engrossed in a journal of Music Therapy when a moving shining reflection distracted me. I squeezed my eyes to block the light and looked over outside to find the source. It was then my eyes fell on an uncomfortably familiar tall, lean, masculine figure, claded in black jacket and jeans with hands crossed across the chest, leaning on a lamppost. The shining distraction was a reflection of sun rays through the glass of his wrist watch dial. The shimmers of the light didn't let me descry his identity though. It was matter of seconds. Before I could strain my eyes more I felt Nida tapping my shoulder calling me repeatedly. When I turned to look back the light was gone; so was the figure.

This sight of the raincoat-hooded silhouette I spotted just now was particularly daunted at this hour of day. I closed my eyes, trying to relax my tensed muscles. I was very sure that I was not going mad neither I was hallucinating. And I also knew I couldn't go back to sleep again. Letting the window half open I moved in to get my friends comforters and myself get ready for a jog until the drizzle stopped. It's just aftereffects of those stupid psycho thrillers my friends force me to watch at nights or maybe those dark fantasy novels I have come to get addicted to from quite sometimes now but any way it's just a ploy of suppressed subconscious and nothing else. Yeah I think so. Scratch it, I know so. I have read Freud enough to draw conclusions!

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I fixed my earplugs and scrolled through my favorite playlist "Fitoor" By Manik Malhotra as I geared up for a jog under the pale white skyline of Verona. The rain has stopped quite sometimes ago. I almost never run. My slow gate is almost silent on the soaked leaves. I loved this paradox of how the tranquility of outer noise silenced our every inner clamour. A long jog indeed relaxed me but the peace was short lived. I was about to take my way back home when a weirdly familiar figure, almost of a height of six feet, jogged past me at an unnatural fast pace. The guy was wearing a black hoodie with a guardian devil and a star embroidered in red on the back. I stopped and turned around immediately, but he had disappeared by then. 'Why someone would be claded head to toe in a cat-black hoodie so early in such a warm morning?' 'Was it my imagination?' 'No Nandu, it can't be him.' 'But the resemblance and the embroidered symbol was too identical to not pay attention to'. I stood there rooted, now all I could see was a crowd of joggers.

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The Saturday morning following that Friday movie night brought a chunk of fresh after-rain sunshine with it. Verona is an uncomplicated city. With fewer crowds, less hustle-bustle of a holiday morning it is total opposite of Mumbai, one of the most crowded metropolitans of India, from where I came escaping here. This city rather reminds me more of Mangalore, my home town.

After today's morning experience I found it better at home with the safe company of my friends. With a cup of my morning green tea I perched down on my usual place beside the window after a cold shower. Well it's not morning – morning really. It's 11:30 in the noon. A trail of morning rays playing on the tussocks on the damp sidewalks opposite to our apartment... the only crowds are seen are the batches of youngsters playing in groups in the park or in their yards or scattered people out for their weekly do-s.

"Get out of the loo this instant or I'm marring the doormat!" I and Sia had to turn our faces from that deafening noise at the same time Nida threw a cushion in annoyance at particularly no one for disturbing her sleep. The scene is same from the past fifteen minutes. Today when Arya woke up in the morning, that is not more than forty-five minutes ago, we – Arya and I got message from our CR killing our holiday mood to visit the principal at 12:00 sharp. There are some wanna be music label owners coming who happen to be interested to make music with our group. In all honesty I was not interested at all. With our last sem on toe I don't want my focus to divert in any other thing. But studying in a renowned college comes with baggage – first one is 'to be left no choices' when it comes to college's media interest and more so when he is Princi's son's one of the confreres. Now since we have to go Arya had occupied the bathroom and from past quarter of an hour Jo is shouting his lungs out spitting obscenities. And as none of us doubts Jo's capability we're secretly praying for Arya to come out... We're really in no desire to witness a grown up Jo shitting on my doormat.

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Aryaman's POV

From the time we entered the university premises Nandini seemed off. I know her enough to see that she is not upset, she is at unease.

"Hey kya hua? Tum thik ho?" (What happened? Are you fine?) I asked again to which she again bobbed her head in negation. It's another sign that something was truly off. Her eyes seemed to be skimming for something all the way but seeing the blankness on her face I doubt she herself knew what she's searching for. Pagal! (Crazy girl) But it still somewhere disturbed me. From the past month her behaviour seemed different. She stayed zoned out... sometimes she kept looking at nothingness with the same dubious look on her face and sometimes got startled for no reason. My concern was not her physical health actually neither her mental health. She had always been a very sorted person I knew. But I doubt I could say the same for her now. If it was the Nandu I knew from Mangalore I would have been rest assured. But the Nandu returned from Mumbai is someone else, someone a shadow of the old Nandu she once used to be. She is one of the strongest people I've met in my life but however much this girl showed her chilled out I know that she freaks out a lot in her head... of what? I can guess only. Nonetheless without nagging further I dragged her with me to the Principal's cabin. I shall wait for her to trust me with her secrets. Why? ... Because I trust her with my patience.

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Nandini's POV

"You seemed absent minded. Are you looking for something?"

"Umm no... it's nothing. Let's go" I nodded my head fending off the possibilities.

"You have been behaving weird from few days. Bizarre actually, you know?"

I was aware of it. I knew that my behaviour was cranky. Queered, at best. But I didn't need him or anyone else to point it out for me.

From the questioning look Arya sending me from the time we entered the college I knew he wanted to ask me about something more yet he didn't probe. Thank Ayyappa he didn't! I respect this thing about him – he respects my silence. As good intended as they maybe but I can't stand people prying into my privacy. And I don't wish one of my major pillars to turn out to be one of them. After a few "you okay-s" he dragged me with him for the meeting and I let him.

Reaching at the cabin door we knocked once. Manners you know. Twice. Formality you see. Thrice. Just in case. But not getting any reply asking us to go in even after three knocks I slightly pushed open the door and looked on only to see there was nobody to be seen around in the room except the empty swivel chair revolving on its own..............

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"Manik!"

Writer's POV

Sometimes we choose to hide from the possible truth... not because we want to un-see the possibility, but because we want truth to find us. 

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Here's the start. Hope you like it. I'm new in writing fanfictions so pardon my mistakes and typos.

Any advice or criticism is most welcome.

Please don't forget to VOTE,  COMMENT & SHARE  the story if you like it.

Love,

Neer :-)