The results were coming out at ten in the morning.
Kabir knew this. He had known it for weeks. He had written it on a piece of paper and stuck it to his desk and then taken it down because looking at it made his stomach feel wrong. The date was still there in his head whether he looked at it or not.
It was now eleven at night. He had been lying in bed since nine.
His phone had seventeen unread messages from his class group. He knew what they would say - the same mix of performed panic and competitive anxiety that everyone did before results. He did not open them.
His father had said goodnight at ten and not mentioned the results at all, which was either very considerate or somehow worse, he could not decide which.
His mother had come in at ten-thirty with a glass of warm milk and sat on the edge of his bed for a few minutes. She talked about a neighbour's wedding they were going to next month. She asked if he wanted his blue kurta washed before then. She left without saying anything about the results either.
He drank the milk.
At some point he fell asleep without deciding to.
He dreamed about something unrelated - a cricket match, a bus journey, something ordinary. His brain, apparently, had decided to take the night off.
He woke up at seven-thirty. The house smelled of chai and something frying in the kitchen.
He lay there for a moment. The results were in two and a half hours. He felt, to his surprise, mostly fine.
Not fine like it did not matter. Fine like it was going to happen regardless and the night had passed and here was the morning.
He got up and went to the kitchen.
His mother was making parathas.
"Sit," she said, without turning around.
He sat.
The results came at ten-fifteen.
He did not get everything he had hoped for. He got some of it. One subject was better than expected. One was not.
He called his mother from his room.
"How was it?" she said.
He told her the numbers.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said - "Come eat something. You haven't had lunch."
He went and ate lunch.
The results stayed the same. He stayed mostly fine.
It is strange how much of the terror lives in the waiting. The thing itself, when it arrives, is just a thing.
