14-11-2025, 12:47 AM
Episode 5 – Chain Rule
Arjun's auto-rickshaw rattled down Hosur Road like a malfunctioning integral, bumping over potholes that jolted his body but did nothing to dislodge the image etched into his mind. The parking lot scene replayed in an endless loop: the gust of wind, Priya's playful slap, the mustard-yellow cotton rippling as Meera's breast jiggled—once, twice—like a damped oscillation settling back into equilibrium, the amplitude fading but the frequency of his arousal spiking to infinity. He shifted in the seat, the erection from earlier now a persistent throb, pressing against the seam of his trousers like a vector refusing to zero out. The driver glanced back in the rearview mirror, eyebrow raised at the boy's flushed face and clenched fists.
"Anna, AC problem? Face red like tomato biryani."
Arjun mumbled a no, staring out at the blurring neon signs of Forum Mall. How could he explain? That single slap had been a perturbation, a delta x in the function of her form, sending ripples through the curve he had only begun to map. The jiggle—god, the jiggle—had transformed his crude sketches into something alive, dynamic, a second-order differential equation where the restoring force was her body's own gravity, pulling everything back to that perfect, symmetric rest. He wanted to compute it all: the natural frequency ω = √(k/m), where k was the elasticity of cotton and m the mass of her breast, heavy yet buoyant, full yet firm. His mouth watered even now, an involuntary response, as if his tongue could taste the talc-dusted skin beneath.
The auto pulled up to his gate, the engine coughing to a stop. Lakshmi was in the pooja room, the air thick with agarbatti smoke and the faint chime of a bell. She emerged as he paid the driver, wiping her hands on her cotton saree.
"Arjun beta, late again? college bus missed? Come, dinner's hot—masala dosa with coconut chutney, your favourite."
He nodded absently, kicking off his shoes in the verandah. The house smelled of home: ghee-tempered dal, the distant hum of the pressure cooker from last night's rice. But tonight, it all tasted like asymptote—close to comfort, but forever barred by the hyperbola of his thoughts. He dropped his bag by the sofa, where his father snored over the Kannada news channel, and headed to the washbasin. Lakshmi followed, peering at his reflection in the steel plate hung crookedly on the wall.
"Beta, what's wrong? Face like you lost the entire cricket match. Exam tension? Or that girl from tuition—"
"Nothing, Amma," he cut her off, splashing water harder than needed, the cold shock doing little to douse the fire. Girl? If only. Meera wasn't a girl; she was the chain rule incarnate, a composite function where every layer multiplied his derivative by another order of magnitude.
Lakshmi sighed, the sound of a mother who knew better but wouldn't push. "Eat first, talk later. Dosa getting cold."
Dinner was a ritual he performed on autopilot: tearing the crisp dosa, dipping into chutney that burned his tongue without registering, swallowing rice that stuck in his throat like unsolved limits. Lakshmi chattered about cousin Shruthi's wedding shopping, the rising price of gold, how his father needed new spectacles. Arjun nodded at intervals, eyes fixed on his steel plate, tracing the rim's ellipse as if it were the border of her blouse. The slap echoed in his ears—Priya's laugh, Meera's gasp, the soft thwack that set the curve in motion. He imagined his own hand there, not teasing but claiming, fingers curling to integrate the volume, to find the antiderivative of her sigh.
"Arjun? Beta, you heard me? Tomorrow early breakfast—oats for your brain, IIT calling."
"Yes, Amma." He pushed the plate away half-finished, appetite asymptoting to zero. "Tired. Good night."
In his room, the fan whirred lazily, stirring posters of Sachin Tendulkar and faded IIT blueprints. He stripped to his boxers, flopped onto the bed, the cotton sheet cool against his fevered skin. Sleep? Impossible. The image assaulted him: the jiggle, the bounce, the way the fabric had clung post-impact, outlining the peak like a maximum in a quadratic. His hand moved of its own accord, slow at first, tracing the chain rule of his own body—outer function arousal, inner function memory—differentiating layer by layer until the product rule broke him open. He came with a muffled gasp, spilling onto the sheet like an overflow error, the release sharp but incomplete, leaving him hollow, hungry for the real variable. Priya's slap had been a catalyst; now he craved the reaction, the full equation solved in her arms.
He lay there panting, staring at the ceiling cracks like fault lines in his resolve. Tomorrow, he vowed. Tomorrow, he'd find a way closer. Impress her. Connect. The itch was unbearable—not just physical, but existential, a singularity pulling him toward her event horizon.
Morning came with the azan from the distant mosque blending into the temple bells down the lane, a harmonic series of faith and routine. Arjun was up before the alarm, gulping oats that tasted like cardboard, his mind a differential machine churning strategies. How to get closer? Extra questions in class, maybe volunteer for homework duty. Impress her with a clever proof, something beyond the syllabus—a chain rule application to real life, like velocity of falling in love. He itched for connection, not just glimpses but conversation, her voice wrapping around him like a substitution u = desire, du/dx = endless. The auto ride blurred past; he arrived at college gates with twenty minutes to spare, claiming the first bench like a pilgrim's spot.
The classroom filled with the usual symphony: Rahul's cricket updates, Sneha's sighs over organic reactions, Vikram's gum-chewing orchestra. Arjun opened his notebook, doodling chain links—not metal, but curves interlocking, each loop a breast swell feeding into the next.
The bell tolled. The door sighed open.
Meera entered, and the air thickened like honey in a gradient. Back to the saree today—an orange georgette that burned like Diwali flames, the colour of ripening mangoes kissed by equatorial sun. The blouse matched, a deeper saffron, three-quarter sleeves modest as a theorem's proof, neckline high but hinting at the treasures below. Her hair was in a loose bun, careless genius allowing a few strands to escape, curling like question marks against her neck. Nothing exposed—no slips, no shifts—just pure, dbangd elegance, the pallu pinned securely, pleats falling in precise folds like the steps of a recursive function. She moved to the desk with the grace of a limit approaching continuity, placing her bag with a soft thud that echoed in Arjun's chest.
"Good morning, class," she said, voice steady as the x-axis. "Today, chain rule. The derivative of composites—because life, like functions, is layered. f(g(x)), remember? Multiply the outer by the inner's slope."
She turned to the board, chalk whispering: d/dx [f(g(x))] = f'(g(x)) · g'(x). The class leaned in, unusually serious—her presence a gravitational pull, bending attention toward her orbit. Sneha's pen flew; even Rahul abandoned his doodles. Arjun focused too, genuinely now, solving sums with a fervor born of strategy. The problems unspooled: differentiate sin(x²), ln(cos(3x))—each one a puzzle he cracked, his mind substituting u = inner torment, du = glimpses denied.
Halfway through, a sum stumped him—not truly, but enough for pretext. He raised his hand, voice steady despite the tremor in his veins.
"Ma'am, this one—e^{sin x}. I tried integration by parts backward, but chain rule feels off. Can we do it with substitution first?"
Meera paused, chalk mid-air, her wet-earth eyes scanning his notebook as he passed it forward. She traced the steps, brow furrowing like a gentle integral sign. The class watched, a rare silence.
"Interesting approach, Arjun. Substitution could work, but... let me think." Seconds stretched—five, ten—like a limit at discontinuity. She bit her lip, a fleeting curve that sent his pulse into overdrive.
"I have an old note on this, from my grad days. A quicker way. Visit me in the staff room after this period? We'll check together."
Arjun's world inverted. Out of the blue, a portal—staff room, alone(ish), her notes, her explanation. A chance not just to impress but to linger, to breathe the same air, to forge that special connection he craved. His heart differentiated exponentially: dH/dt = k * proximity, k infinite.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you."
She smiled—small, approving, the curve of her lips a minor arc that majorly undid him. The rest of the period blurred: more sums, her voice weaving through composites like thread through warp. The bell rang, a liberation and a tease. Meera gathered her things, orange georgette whispering farewells, and left without a backward glance that might have killed him.
Physics followed—D’Souza droning on electromagnetism, fields and forces that paled against her magnetic pull. Arjun scribbled equations but saw only orange folds, the loose bun's promise of unraveling. Chemistry next: titration curves that mocked him, pH asymptoting to neutrality while his desire spiked alkaline. Two periods stretched like improper integrals, infinite in agony.
Vikram nudged him twice—"Bro, you vibrating? Like a tuning fork?"—but Arjun waved him off, clock-watching with the desperation of a man counting seconds to salvation.
Finally, the interval bell—a shrill mercy. He bolted, bag forgotten, weaving through corridors alive with canteen queues and gossip clusters. The staff room door loomed, half-open, spilling the scent of Nescafe and newsprint. He knocked lightly, heart hammering like a Fourier series resolving to chaos.
"Come in, Arjun." Meera's voice, warm as the orange hue she wore.
She sat at a cluttered desk, papers fanned like a delta function, but stood as he entered, gesturing to the chair beside her. The room was empty save for a distant murmur from Mrs. Nair's radio. Up close, her jasmine lingered, mingling with the faint chalk dust on her fingers.
"Your method—clever, but let's see the note."
She rummaged drawers first, rifling through files labelled "JEE '22," "Integrals Backup." "I think I have one solution here... ah, no. Wait—top shelf. Old grad notes, dusty but gold." She moved to the bookshelf—a towering relic of warped plywood, crammed with NCERTs and dog-eared tomes. The top shelf taunted, just above her reach, a vertical asymptote of inaccessibility.
She stretched, arms rising like vectors to infinity, toes perhaps lifting in her chappals. The orange saree obeyed physics reluctantly: the pallu, pinned though it was, shifted leftward in the pull, sliding a fraction across her shoulder. And there—god, there—it revealed her left breast, cupped in the saffron blouse, the fabric taut against the swell.
Arjun couldn't believe his luck. He felt so fortunate, a chosen variable in her equation, witnessing Meera in this erotic pose: arms extended, body elongated like a catenary curve under tension, the breast thrust forward, a perfect sphere perched on the flat midriff surface below. No sag, no imperfection—just pure geometry, the hemisphere defined by r = constant, surface area 2πr h where h was the blouse's merciful constraint, volume (4/3)πr³ begging to be computed, integrated over his gaze. It rose proud, nipple's shadow a subtle dimple at the pole, the blouse's weave etching faint lines like latitude on an orange globe. His mouth watered, saliva pooling unbidden, as if tasting the salt of her skin; his hands itched to measure, to cup and confirm the radius, fingers as calipers tracing the great circle.
She rummaged blindly, fingers questing amid spines: "Calculus Vol II... no... ah, almost." Her body arched further, midriff pulling taut, and now the real tease began. The saree pleats, tucked low at her waist that first-day handspan, began loosening—inch by torturous inch. Gravity conspired, the georgette sliding downward in a slow unravel, the tuck at her hip giving way like a limit dissolving. Arjun's mouth hung open, breath suspended, watching the fabric creep: one inch, revealing more midriff glow; two, the shadow deepening; three, the pleats fanning loose, approaching the sacred dip.
He leaned forward unconsciously, eyes locked on the waistband's descent, eagerly waiting for the saree pleats to come down fully and reveal her navel—that oval zero he had glimpsed once in chiffon tease, now so close to unveiling. It was just coming down and down, the orange edge brushing the tip of her navel, the fabric's hem kissing the upper rim like a tangent grazing its curve. One more inch—one more eternal second—and it would part, exposing the deep, round concavity, the elliptical basin he dreamed of filling with his gaze, computing its eccentricity, integrating its depth like ∫ from 0 to ∞ of 1/(1+x²) dx = π/2, infinite in finite beauty.
But then—she found it. "Yes! Here." Her fingers closed on a slim notebook, blue cover faded. She lowered her arms, the pallu snapping back like a rubber band function, and in one fluid twist, she adjusted the pleats—tucking them secure, the navel forever barred, the reveal aborted at the precipice.
Arjun exhaled, a deflating balloon. Disappointment crashed like a wave function collapsing—deep, visceral, a curse on his luck. One moment late, one cosmic delay in her search, and he would have seen it: the navel in full, unhurried glory, not a wind-whisper but a deliberate descent. He cursed silently—god, fate, the shelf's height—kicking himself internally for not distracting her, for not breathing louder to prolong the stretch. Why now? Why tease the limit and yank it away?
Meera turned, oblivious, notebook in hand, and sat beside him—close enough for her sleeve to brush his arm, sending sparks like static discharge. "See here, Arjun. Your substitution works if we chain it properly: let u = sin x, du = cos x dx, then d/dx e^u = e^u * du/dx. Elegant, no?" She sketched it out, her handwriting looping like her bun's strands, explaining with that coastal lilt—soft, patient, turning the sum into poetry. He nodded, half-listening, mind replaying the stretch: breast sphere, pleats' crawl, the almost-navel like a partial fraction decomposed but unresolved.
"Got it?" she asked, eyes meeting his—concern flickering, as if sensing his distraction.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you." He stood too quickly, chair scbanging like regret. "Brilliant."
She smiled again, that curve. "You're quick, Arjun. Keep questioning like this." He left the staff room in a haze, the notebook's solution secondary to the unsolved tease. Back in class, he slumped at his bench, mixed ecstasy and agony churning: lucky beyond measure for the pose—the stretch, the reveal of breast in isolation, erotic as a standalone integral; unlucky to the bone for the navel's evasion, that one moment's delay a divine prank. He cursed god under his breath—one second, bas one second—kicking the desk leg until Vikram shot him a look. Why me? Why show the sphere but hide the center?
![[Image: 1763039030742.png]](https://i.ibb.co/dsfc0jFg/1763039030742.png)
Arjun's auto-rickshaw rattled down Hosur Road like a malfunctioning integral, bumping over potholes that jolted his body but did nothing to dislodge the image etched into his mind. The parking lot scene replayed in an endless loop: the gust of wind, Priya's playful slap, the mustard-yellow cotton rippling as Meera's breast jiggled—once, twice—like a damped oscillation settling back into equilibrium, the amplitude fading but the frequency of his arousal spiking to infinity. He shifted in the seat, the erection from earlier now a persistent throb, pressing against the seam of his trousers like a vector refusing to zero out. The driver glanced back in the rearview mirror, eyebrow raised at the boy's flushed face and clenched fists.
"Anna, AC problem? Face red like tomato biryani."
Arjun mumbled a no, staring out at the blurring neon signs of Forum Mall. How could he explain? That single slap had been a perturbation, a delta x in the function of her form, sending ripples through the curve he had only begun to map. The jiggle—god, the jiggle—had transformed his crude sketches into something alive, dynamic, a second-order differential equation where the restoring force was her body's own gravity, pulling everything back to that perfect, symmetric rest. He wanted to compute it all: the natural frequency ω = √(k/m), where k was the elasticity of cotton and m the mass of her breast, heavy yet buoyant, full yet firm. His mouth watered even now, an involuntary response, as if his tongue could taste the talc-dusted skin beneath.
The auto pulled up to his gate, the engine coughing to a stop. Lakshmi was in the pooja room, the air thick with agarbatti smoke and the faint chime of a bell. She emerged as he paid the driver, wiping her hands on her cotton saree.
"Arjun beta, late again? college bus missed? Come, dinner's hot—masala dosa with coconut chutney, your favourite."
He nodded absently, kicking off his shoes in the verandah. The house smelled of home: ghee-tempered dal, the distant hum of the pressure cooker from last night's rice. But tonight, it all tasted like asymptote—close to comfort, but forever barred by the hyperbola of his thoughts. He dropped his bag by the sofa, where his father snored over the Kannada news channel, and headed to the washbasin. Lakshmi followed, peering at his reflection in the steel plate hung crookedly on the wall.
"Beta, what's wrong? Face like you lost the entire cricket match. Exam tension? Or that girl from tuition—"
"Nothing, Amma," he cut her off, splashing water harder than needed, the cold shock doing little to douse the fire. Girl? If only. Meera wasn't a girl; she was the chain rule incarnate, a composite function where every layer multiplied his derivative by another order of magnitude.
Lakshmi sighed, the sound of a mother who knew better but wouldn't push. "Eat first, talk later. Dosa getting cold."
Dinner was a ritual he performed on autopilot: tearing the crisp dosa, dipping into chutney that burned his tongue without registering, swallowing rice that stuck in his throat like unsolved limits. Lakshmi chattered about cousin Shruthi's wedding shopping, the rising price of gold, how his father needed new spectacles. Arjun nodded at intervals, eyes fixed on his steel plate, tracing the rim's ellipse as if it were the border of her blouse. The slap echoed in his ears—Priya's laugh, Meera's gasp, the soft thwack that set the curve in motion. He imagined his own hand there, not teasing but claiming, fingers curling to integrate the volume, to find the antiderivative of her sigh.
"Arjun? Beta, you heard me? Tomorrow early breakfast—oats for your brain, IIT calling."
"Yes, Amma." He pushed the plate away half-finished, appetite asymptoting to zero. "Tired. Good night."
In his room, the fan whirred lazily, stirring posters of Sachin Tendulkar and faded IIT blueprints. He stripped to his boxers, flopped onto the bed, the cotton sheet cool against his fevered skin. Sleep? Impossible. The image assaulted him: the jiggle, the bounce, the way the fabric had clung post-impact, outlining the peak like a maximum in a quadratic. His hand moved of its own accord, slow at first, tracing the chain rule of his own body—outer function arousal, inner function memory—differentiating layer by layer until the product rule broke him open. He came with a muffled gasp, spilling onto the sheet like an overflow error, the release sharp but incomplete, leaving him hollow, hungry for the real variable. Priya's slap had been a catalyst; now he craved the reaction, the full equation solved in her arms.
He lay there panting, staring at the ceiling cracks like fault lines in his resolve. Tomorrow, he vowed. Tomorrow, he'd find a way closer. Impress her. Connect. The itch was unbearable—not just physical, but existential, a singularity pulling him toward her event horizon.
Morning came with the azan from the distant mosque blending into the temple bells down the lane, a harmonic series of faith and routine. Arjun was up before the alarm, gulping oats that tasted like cardboard, his mind a differential machine churning strategies. How to get closer? Extra questions in class, maybe volunteer for homework duty. Impress her with a clever proof, something beyond the syllabus—a chain rule application to real life, like velocity of falling in love. He itched for connection, not just glimpses but conversation, her voice wrapping around him like a substitution u = desire, du/dx = endless. The auto ride blurred past; he arrived at college gates with twenty minutes to spare, claiming the first bench like a pilgrim's spot.
The classroom filled with the usual symphony: Rahul's cricket updates, Sneha's sighs over organic reactions, Vikram's gum-chewing orchestra. Arjun opened his notebook, doodling chain links—not metal, but curves interlocking, each loop a breast swell feeding into the next.
The bell tolled. The door sighed open.
Meera entered, and the air thickened like honey in a gradient. Back to the saree today—an orange georgette that burned like Diwali flames, the colour of ripening mangoes kissed by equatorial sun. The blouse matched, a deeper saffron, three-quarter sleeves modest as a theorem's proof, neckline high but hinting at the treasures below. Her hair was in a loose bun, careless genius allowing a few strands to escape, curling like question marks against her neck. Nothing exposed—no slips, no shifts—just pure, dbangd elegance, the pallu pinned securely, pleats falling in precise folds like the steps of a recursive function. She moved to the desk with the grace of a limit approaching continuity, placing her bag with a soft thud that echoed in Arjun's chest.
"Good morning, class," she said, voice steady as the x-axis. "Today, chain rule. The derivative of composites—because life, like functions, is layered. f(g(x)), remember? Multiply the outer by the inner's slope."
She turned to the board, chalk whispering: d/dx [f(g(x))] = f'(g(x)) · g'(x). The class leaned in, unusually serious—her presence a gravitational pull, bending attention toward her orbit. Sneha's pen flew; even Rahul abandoned his doodles. Arjun focused too, genuinely now, solving sums with a fervor born of strategy. The problems unspooled: differentiate sin(x²), ln(cos(3x))—each one a puzzle he cracked, his mind substituting u = inner torment, du = glimpses denied.
Halfway through, a sum stumped him—not truly, but enough for pretext. He raised his hand, voice steady despite the tremor in his veins.
"Ma'am, this one—e^{sin x}. I tried integration by parts backward, but chain rule feels off. Can we do it with substitution first?"
Meera paused, chalk mid-air, her wet-earth eyes scanning his notebook as he passed it forward. She traced the steps, brow furrowing like a gentle integral sign. The class watched, a rare silence.
"Interesting approach, Arjun. Substitution could work, but... let me think." Seconds stretched—five, ten—like a limit at discontinuity. She bit her lip, a fleeting curve that sent his pulse into overdrive.
"I have an old note on this, from my grad days. A quicker way. Visit me in the staff room after this period? We'll check together."
Arjun's world inverted. Out of the blue, a portal—staff room, alone(ish), her notes, her explanation. A chance not just to impress but to linger, to breathe the same air, to forge that special connection he craved. His heart differentiated exponentially: dH/dt = k * proximity, k infinite.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you."
She smiled—small, approving, the curve of her lips a minor arc that majorly undid him. The rest of the period blurred: more sums, her voice weaving through composites like thread through warp. The bell rang, a liberation and a tease. Meera gathered her things, orange georgette whispering farewells, and left without a backward glance that might have killed him.
Physics followed—D’Souza droning on electromagnetism, fields and forces that paled against her magnetic pull. Arjun scribbled equations but saw only orange folds, the loose bun's promise of unraveling. Chemistry next: titration curves that mocked him, pH asymptoting to neutrality while his desire spiked alkaline. Two periods stretched like improper integrals, infinite in agony.
Vikram nudged him twice—"Bro, you vibrating? Like a tuning fork?"—but Arjun waved him off, clock-watching with the desperation of a man counting seconds to salvation.
Finally, the interval bell—a shrill mercy. He bolted, bag forgotten, weaving through corridors alive with canteen queues and gossip clusters. The staff room door loomed, half-open, spilling the scent of Nescafe and newsprint. He knocked lightly, heart hammering like a Fourier series resolving to chaos.
"Come in, Arjun." Meera's voice, warm as the orange hue she wore.
She sat at a cluttered desk, papers fanned like a delta function, but stood as he entered, gesturing to the chair beside her. The room was empty save for a distant murmur from Mrs. Nair's radio. Up close, her jasmine lingered, mingling with the faint chalk dust on her fingers.
"Your method—clever, but let's see the note."
She rummaged drawers first, rifling through files labelled "JEE '22," "Integrals Backup." "I think I have one solution here... ah, no. Wait—top shelf. Old grad notes, dusty but gold." She moved to the bookshelf—a towering relic of warped plywood, crammed with NCERTs and dog-eared tomes. The top shelf taunted, just above her reach, a vertical asymptote of inaccessibility.
She stretched, arms rising like vectors to infinity, toes perhaps lifting in her chappals. The orange saree obeyed physics reluctantly: the pallu, pinned though it was, shifted leftward in the pull, sliding a fraction across her shoulder. And there—god, there—it revealed her left breast, cupped in the saffron blouse, the fabric taut against the swell.
Arjun couldn't believe his luck. He felt so fortunate, a chosen variable in her equation, witnessing Meera in this erotic pose: arms extended, body elongated like a catenary curve under tension, the breast thrust forward, a perfect sphere perched on the flat midriff surface below. No sag, no imperfection—just pure geometry, the hemisphere defined by r = constant, surface area 2πr h where h was the blouse's merciful constraint, volume (4/3)πr³ begging to be computed, integrated over his gaze. It rose proud, nipple's shadow a subtle dimple at the pole, the blouse's weave etching faint lines like latitude on an orange globe. His mouth watered, saliva pooling unbidden, as if tasting the salt of her skin; his hands itched to measure, to cup and confirm the radius, fingers as calipers tracing the great circle.
She rummaged blindly, fingers questing amid spines: "Calculus Vol II... no... ah, almost." Her body arched further, midriff pulling taut, and now the real tease began. The saree pleats, tucked low at her waist that first-day handspan, began loosening—inch by torturous inch. Gravity conspired, the georgette sliding downward in a slow unravel, the tuck at her hip giving way like a limit dissolving. Arjun's mouth hung open, breath suspended, watching the fabric creep: one inch, revealing more midriff glow; two, the shadow deepening; three, the pleats fanning loose, approaching the sacred dip.
He leaned forward unconsciously, eyes locked on the waistband's descent, eagerly waiting for the saree pleats to come down fully and reveal her navel—that oval zero he had glimpsed once in chiffon tease, now so close to unveiling. It was just coming down and down, the orange edge brushing the tip of her navel, the fabric's hem kissing the upper rim like a tangent grazing its curve. One more inch—one more eternal second—and it would part, exposing the deep, round concavity, the elliptical basin he dreamed of filling with his gaze, computing its eccentricity, integrating its depth like ∫ from 0 to ∞ of 1/(1+x²) dx = π/2, infinite in finite beauty.
But then—she found it. "Yes! Here." Her fingers closed on a slim notebook, blue cover faded. She lowered her arms, the pallu snapping back like a rubber band function, and in one fluid twist, she adjusted the pleats—tucking them secure, the navel forever barred, the reveal aborted at the precipice.
Arjun exhaled, a deflating balloon. Disappointment crashed like a wave function collapsing—deep, visceral, a curse on his luck. One moment late, one cosmic delay in her search, and he would have seen it: the navel in full, unhurried glory, not a wind-whisper but a deliberate descent. He cursed silently—god, fate, the shelf's height—kicking himself internally for not distracting her, for not breathing louder to prolong the stretch. Why now? Why tease the limit and yank it away?
Meera turned, oblivious, notebook in hand, and sat beside him—close enough for her sleeve to brush his arm, sending sparks like static discharge. "See here, Arjun. Your substitution works if we chain it properly: let u = sin x, du = cos x dx, then d/dx e^u = e^u * du/dx. Elegant, no?" She sketched it out, her handwriting looping like her bun's strands, explaining with that coastal lilt—soft, patient, turning the sum into poetry. He nodded, half-listening, mind replaying the stretch: breast sphere, pleats' crawl, the almost-navel like a partial fraction decomposed but unresolved.
"Got it?" she asked, eyes meeting his—concern flickering, as if sensing his distraction.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you." He stood too quickly, chair scbanging like regret. "Brilliant."
She smiled again, that curve. "You're quick, Arjun. Keep questioning like this." He left the staff room in a haze, the notebook's solution secondary to the unsolved tease. Back in class, he slumped at his bench, mixed ecstasy and agony churning: lucky beyond measure for the pose—the stretch, the reveal of breast in isolation, erotic as a standalone integral; unlucky to the bone for the navel's evasion, that one moment's delay a divine prank. He cursed god under his breath—one second, bas one second—kicking the desk leg until Vikram shot him a look. Why me? Why show the sphere but hide the center?
![[+]](https://xossipy.com/themes/sharepoint/collapse_collapsed.png)