"Waseef Bhaiya!" cooed an ecstatic voice. "Waseef Bhaiya!"

Waseef turned around at once, revealing his mildly stunned face. He gingerly placed his arms around the kid. "What's going on, chipmunk?"

"Do you know what Papa said?" The words spilled out abruptly from the eight-year-old. "I... I have a brother! Elder brother!"

"Yes," Waseef replied without the slightest trace of excitement in his voice, "you've got Sajid."

"Not him! Not him! A good one!" The child cried desperately. "He has the same mother as me. So... he'll not hate me."

"Oh! Is it so? Hmm... Where is he then?"

"I don't know. He lives far away. He has gone to bring toys and chocolates for me. He'll come when Papa goes to find Mum. You'll bring him here, Papa said."

"So, it's not a secret anymore." Waseef smiled feebly. "Yes, he is in Amsterdam. That's far away from here."

"Have you ever met my brother?"

Waseef shook his head. "But Uncle will tell me where to go and look for him."

The vivacious kid embraced his cousin. "It will be so much fun. When Papa returns with Mum, we four will live together. Sajid doesn't want to be with me or Mum anyway."

"Will you forget me after that?" Waseef shot the inquiry toward the kid as they broke apart.

Utter perplexity took over Fayzan. "You can come and live with us too! He won't complain, would he?"

Waseef smiled again. "Whom would you love more, chipmunk?"

It took a while for the child to work out a decent response. "I'll love both of you!"

"Then," said Waseef, "we'll find him together."

The surroundings dissolved, and Fayzan's eyelids displayed delicate movements before sliding up to reveal a couple of innocent raven eyes. His sleep-assailed gaze was pointlessly fixed upon Waseef's neck; it was dragged to his face as the kid felt a couple of gentle taps on his cheek.

"Good morning, chipmunk."

"Morning."

Waseef continued to observe the somber boy for the next few seconds. The short period of silence was dismissed by the kid. "When will we find him, Bhaiya?" he asked.

"Had the dream again?"

"I have it nearly every day now."

"I don't know if he ever returned from Amsterdam. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he didn't. Uncle didn't leave me with a clue. He can be anywhere. But no matter what, we'll find him very soon."

The kid grinned, his eyes twinkling with hope. Waseef returned the smile and pressed his lips against his cousin's forehead.

All of a sudden, peculiar agility tickled Fayzan's limbs. He jumped up at once, got down from the bed, and burst into the washroom. He reappeared after five minutes, heading straight to the door.

"Hey, where are you going?" A puzzled Waseef cried from behind.

"I'm going to find my brother," the child replied. "I might just end up bumping into him."

"Wait!" The captain bellowed again. "How can he be here?"

There was no one to offer a rational reply. Fayzan was gone.

Waseef stared at the closed door for a moment before getting down from the bed. He knew his little cousin was going to be a handful. He stepped out of the room to go after the child, unknowingly taking the wrong turn.

The sprightly kid sprinted up the stairs and carried on his quest through the wide, well-lit hallway of a random floor, occasionally stopping to steal a glimpse of the people around him. Although he knew that the journey lacked a precise destination, he looked far away from letting anything hold him back from it.

"I can find him by myself!" he muttered to himself as he gathered a little more speed. "I'm a big boy now!"

An impediment, however, appeared out of the blue, utilizing his momentary loss of concentration. His frabjous motion ceased the second he collided against the strange wall. The barrier turned out to be the back of a person. "Hey!" The boy let out a soft cry as he gently rubbed his nose. "How come I didn't—" The sentence dropped dead in the middle as the person faced him. He stood still as a scarecrow, his face bereaved of its color.

"Aaaaaaaa!" Fayzan screeched the following moment as he turned around and rushed off in the opposite direction. "Gorilla!"

The wall displayed no symptom of hostility, but the boy vanished in a blink. Mayank slowly raised an eyebrow. Although he did believe himself to be pretty intimidating, he could not remember finding a dark, hairy beast staring at him the last time he checked a mirror.

The scene was unfortunately captured by a third pair of eyes. The owner, who had spotted the kid earlier and followed him all the way, walked closer to Mayank, making an equivocal expression take over the all-rounder's face.

"Picking on kids, now?" hissed Nayif. "What's wrong with you, coward?"

Mayank felt a fierce flame ignite inside him; as he spoke, the dark smoke fleeing it clouded his voice. "I haven't done anything to him. He ran off for no reason."

"Quite believable, isn't it?"

"Who's begging you to believe me, dumbhead?"

Nayif's face went sterner. "Stay out of our space, moron."

The expletive was not the only thing that the all-rounder was offered. As he realized the fact, he shipped his cold eyes to his right foot, which was now jammed between Nayif's and the ornate red floor. Mayank did not need to act. Before he could figure out a response, Nayif's shoulders were grabbed by a muscular pair of hands. He was dragged backward and pushed against the wall. For a split second, the young lad could barely comprehend what was going on.

"Who do you think you are messing with, skinny toad?" 

It took a moment for Nayif to regain his previous posture. With his burning eyes placed on Shranav, the all-rounder's closest friend after Aanvik, he brushed his fingers against the frame that was unsurprisingly broken.

"Jumped out of thin air to save your baby?" he asked with a trace of sarcasm in his tone. "How thrilling!"

"Sorry for your glasses, though." Shranav smirked as he pulled out a note from his pocket. "Take it. Keep the change, beggar."

"Buy diapers for your dad with it." Nayif shot back in response. "Unless you were born in a sewerage pipe, which is rather likely."

The batsman turned red. "Ah, look who's talking about birth! What sort of South Asian guy has a complexion and hair as ridiculous as yours?"

"A half-Australian one."

Shranav broke into a chortle. "Hybrid cock, I see."

Some queer movements were put on display by Mayank's lips. He looked away from the scene of which he was a silent witness.

Nayif's eyes shrunk. "Fancy a duel, pea-brain?"

Shranav appeared to be rather delighted at the proposal. "Is that a question? I'm always up for dislocating a bone or two, especially if they belong to douchebags like you."

"It's a lovely morning, isn't it?" A voice invaded from two doors away. "My room should be the perfect place for a high-voltage match like that."

All three stunned pairs of eyes moved toward the source, only to discover a very undesirable person to come across in the precise situation. Coach Sanchit was leaning against the door frame, letting his lips hold a grin that was wicked enough to send shivers down the culprits' backs. Mayank swallowed a gasp as he suddenly recalled why he was there in the first place. He was not quite sure why he was summoned by the coach, but he surely did not desire to be chastised for a crime his hands were clean from. The all-rounder cursed the villainous kid under his breath for everything; the obnoxious little creature and his cousin seemed to be only too glad to set his life on fire at every chance.

"I'd love you both to come in," the coach carried on. "Unless you've got a coherent explanation, of course. Keep it laconic. Don't want to spend the whole day here."

"He started it!" claimed Shranav, with his finger pointed at the Bangladesh opener.

Sanchit blocked a yawn. "Would you like to try again, son?"

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"And you, gentleman," Sanchit continued with his eyes focused on Nayif. "Austin's an old friend of mine. I believe he'd be rather delighted if I relieved him of a part of his duty."

The coach did not bother to spit out any more words. He gently walked closer to the lot and stood between Nayif and Shranav with an expression that was impossible to read. His intentions, however, became clear in the very next moment. He caught hold of the boys' ears, making them let out a couple of pathetic, identical yelps. The delinquents were heartlessly dragged into the room, while Mayank was left alone in the hallway with the job of predicting the fate of the poor creatures.

The door reopened for a quick second, allowing Sanchit to stick his head out through the small gap. "Shranav was called for the same purpose, but since he has decided to follow in your footsteps and make me sweat for every penny of my salary as usual, I'll talk to you both about it later. Sorry about that, my boy. You can leave for now."

With the brief speech delivered, the entrance was blocked again. Despite the fact that he was relieved to be spared, Mayank's lifeless vision continued to bang against the closed door for another few seconds. Following that, he walked off along the way the kid took, disregarding the strange uproar in his mind.

"Worm," he muttered. "Annoying little worm. I'll give you an actual reason to run away next time."

Next time, however, was not to come in a while since the kid, by then orange-eyed, was sitting securely on Waseef's bed with his arms folded in a serious fashion.

"Chipmunk, c'mon!" groaned Waseef, who himself looked on the verge of tears. "Stop being an idiot."

Fayzan eyed his cousin furiously, his lips trembling with rage. "Why don't you just admit that you don't want me to find him?"

"How on this earth can he be here? We can't just go around the city, asking everyone."

"But you said he could be anywhere!" yelled the boy.

"Alright! I give up," Waseef said in response with his arms raised as he walked off to the glass table kept a few feet away.

"Are we going out then?" The fury in Fayzan's voice abated at once.

"Not today. There's a trip tomorrow, remember?"

"Is he going to be there then?"

"Who knows?" Waseef replied in a regular voice, unbothered by the foolishness of the question. "Maybe he is hiding in the jungle for you."

"In that case, I love you."

"You're a pain," said the captain as he picked up the diary lying on the table and headed toward the door. "An intense one, indeed." He opened the door and stepped out. "But," he said before closing it, "I love you too. Now, be a good boy and watch cartoons on your tab. If you do any mischief, I won't take you along tomorrow."

Fayzan nodded vigorously. He could stay in the room for an entire week if that meant he would get to look for his brother.

Waseef let out a long sigh of relief as he walked out of the hotel. The words of consolation that he left behind at the room had fortunately been sufficient to shake off the trouble from his shoulders for the time being. It was a dry and pleasant day, and a little portion of his woes seemed to crawl out of his mind at the brilliance of the environment around him. He confirmed a firm grip on his treasure and headed toward a nearby exquisite park, wishing not to run into any familiar figures. He needed some time alone with his diary.

About an hour later, Sanchit's door opened again. An exhausted Shranav emerged out of the room, followed by Nayif. Although they were not quite enjoying each other's company, the two walked along the hallway together while ceaselessly rubbing their ears. Nobody dared to speak a word until they were a safe distance away from the coach's den.

"Idiot!" cried Nayif. "We could have gotten away easily when he left the room if not for you!"

"You could have gotten away, not me."

"You are not my problem."

"No way I am suffering alone. You deserved the lecture more than me."

Nayif's face squeezed at the bitter remembrance, tilting his broken glasses. "Oh, shut up. Don't dare to mention it for the next hundred years."

"I'm going to rub my hand with sandpaper," Shranav said as they headed down the stairs. "Shaking hands with an old toad, yuck!"

"I'm younger than you! If cricket didn't require me to use the right hand, I'd have cut mine off for shaking it with a crab like you."

Shranav was on his way to offer a harsher response when he bumped into a figure that seemed to drop out of nowhere.

"Ah, sorry, Waseef," said Shranav as he bent down to pick up the diary that fell off the captain's lap. "Didn't see you coming. I wonder what's up with all of us colliding so often these days."

The diary that was lying open was seized by Waseef before Shranav could get his hand on it. The skipper fled from the scene without bothering to offer a reply to the apology. Shranav looked shocked; he moved his eyes to Nayif, who also appeared to be in search of a rational explanation for his captain's unusual behavior.

"What's in that diary?" asked the Indian batsman, looking slightly irritated. "Nuclear bomb formula?"

"Personal stuff, I guess. It requires special protection from his cousin."

"Hey, what's that?" muttered Shranav as he bent again, this time to pick up a folded piece of paper lying on the ground. Amusement enlightened his face as soon as he laid his eyes on the content. "Look what we've got here. He writes poems?"

"Does he?"

Shranav folded it back. "I am sure it's no good, so I will digest it with a cup of coffee."

"If it turns out to be cheesy, I'll show it to everyone," he added before running off in an ecstatic fashion, leaving a perplexed Nayif behind.

The opener crossed his arms. "What a drunkard!" 

**********

Nayif's forehead glistened with sweat while his exhausted vision penetrated through the all-rounder, whose eyes were flooding with hunger and desperation.

"Give it back," Mayank muttered. "Give it back..."

"Forget it, jerk," Nayif replied in a similar tone. "You're not getting it. It's ours now."

Mayank let out a deep breath. He raised his ultramarine barrow knife into visibility. "You're bowling at the wrong end, moron."

Nayif smirked. "I'm a batsman."

Mayank's eyes were ablaze. "I'll ask for it one more time. Give it back."

"Not in this life."

Mayank was cognizant that it would barely work. The barrow knife was still raised while the hand around it shook mildly from vengeance and bloodthirst.

The very next moment, a lot happened at once.

A swift strike from Mayank. A final suppressed groan. A slit in Nayif's throat. And a collapse.

That was the end of the game. There was a winner. There was a loser. And there was a smile of wicked satisfaction on the lips of the beaten guy, fetched by the realization that the victorious one did not witness his defeat.