"It was an accident."
The words rattled in my skull like a dying engine as I sat through classes, my fingers drumming restless rhythms on the desk. The teacher's voice blurred into white noise. My classmates' laughter sounded distant, underwater. All I could hear was that wet crunch replaying in my memory.
When the final bell rang, I didn't move. The classroom emptied around me until I was alone with the buzzing fluorescent lights and the ghosts in my head.
No one saw.
No one knows.
The rationalizations circled like vultures, but the weight in my stomach wouldn't lift.
At 5 PM, when even the janitors had left, I finally dragged myself toward home. The setting sun painted Karachi in sickly orange hues, making everything look faintly unreal. Then I saw her.
Dabi's mother stood in our old cricket pitch, her silhouette wavering in the heat haze. This woman who'd sewn my torn school uniform, who always saved me the crispiest samosas during iftar. Now her shoulders shook with silent sobs that carried across the empty lot.
I approached like a condemned man walking to the gallows.
"Auntie?" My voice came out too high, too innocent. "What happened?"
She turned slowly. The sight punched the air from my lungs - her kohl smeared in streaks down her cheeks, the front of her dupatta damp with tears.
"Shery beta..." Her breath hitched. "Badoo... someone..."
The words died in a wet gasp. She didn't need to finish. The fresh mound of earth near her feet told the story.
My mouth moved before my brain caught up. "Who would do that?" The lie tasted like ashes.
She shook her head, staring at the grave where her fingers - still caked with soil - had buried her son's best friend. The relief that no one had seen me warred with something darker, something that slithered up my spine as I noticed the raw skin around her nails from digging.
"How's Dabi?"
The question slipped out before I could stop it. Her face crumpled.
"Broken," she whispered. "Just... broken."
That night, I lay staring at the water stains on my ceiling, listening to the distant call to prayer weave through the sounds of the city. Their grief echoed in my skull - Dabi's mother's quiet sobs, the imagined sound of Dabi himself shattered behind his bedroom door.
A plan formed in the darkness, slick and self-serving as oil.
I'll be his best friend.
Not out of guilt - no, this was justice. My noble punishment, my grand redemption arc. The hero of my own story, making amends in secret. The thought almost let me sleep.
The Reckoning
The next evening, I stood before Dabi's gate like a knight preparing for battle. My knuckles hovered over the rusted metal, suddenly unsure.
The gate creaked open before I could knock.
Dabi stood framed in the doorway, backlit by the dim bulb of their porch light. The boy who'd once been all soft edges and nervous laughter now looked carved from stone. Dark circles bruised his eyes, his pupils dilated wide enough to swallow the light whole.
"Look, Dabi..." I forced a grin, slipping into my role as the comforting friend. "What's dead is dead. Badoo was just a stu-"
The slap cracked through the evening air like a gunshot.
For one suspended moment, I felt nothing. Then the pain bloomed hot and sharp across my cheek, radiating outward until my entire skull throbbed in time with my pulse. My ear rang with a high-pitched whine, drowning out everything but the hammering of my heart.
When my vision cleared, Dabi stood trembling before me, his hand still raised. Not in anger - in grief.
"Don't," he whispered, voice raw. "Don't you dare."
The gate slammed shut between us, the clang of metal on metal final as a judge's gavel.
I stood there in the gathering dark, one hand pressed to my stinging face, and realized with dawning horror.