Mitra couldn't decipher for a moment if time had stopped ticking on its own or if her neck had deflected the knife somehow, or if she had grown impervious to the pain of death. Her heart pounded against her chest as she looked into Sashi's cold eyes, sweat breaking through her brow as well as his temple, his teeth set into a frozen snarl.
What broke the fix of the moment was the moisture in Sashi's eyes that deepened, dissolving the red of his fury and reflecting a shade of restraint.
He hadn't killed her.
The knife stayed still near Mitra's neck, just a millimetre away from the porcelain skin and her death as he stopped himself.
Mitra looked on as the wetness in his eyes thickened, his face contorting more with an unknown agony. Tears came streaming down those unblinking, poignant eyes, first slowly and then unstoppably.
Sashi slowly released himself from the suspension he had imposed on himself. He took a step back, his hand retracting from its position with the knife as he pulled it back, dropping it inactively to the side of his body.
Normalcy returned to his previously tortured face as he took another step back, tears now slowing down.
Mitra's mind was completely blank. Her heart was still pounding hard, loud enough through the silence of the room. There was no thought in her brain, no emotion in her mind, complete void in her consciousness. Her eyes, involuntarily locked with Sashi's gaze, followed his movements without making any sense of them.
Time was still as she stayed consumed by the shock of escaping death by a millimetre.
"This is the kindness I can show you," Sashi said slowly, his breathing heavy. He sniffled as the flow of tears stopped.
The words brought an amount of consciousness back to Mitra's sense of reality. She felt herself breathing again. She was alive.
Sashi dropped the knife to the ground, stepped back and sat down in his chair. He didn't avert his gaze from a stiff Mitra. She was taking time to process it all and he gave her a few minutes of silence.
A long moment after he sat down, Mitra's brain started returning to its normal state of thought processing.
He didn't kill me. He didn't kill me...
Why? Why did he leave me alive? Is he trying to prove a point? Or was it all a show to threaten me that he has the upper hand on me no matter what I say or do?
As the thoughts repeated over a couple of times, bringing back a full blown avalanche of the realization of the situation, Mitra couldn't help but feel some ridiculousness in the happenings.
"What was that Sashi? I thought you were going to kill me. Wasn't that the plan?" she asked, the shock of the situation limiting the usual mockery she used in her speech.
"Are you disappointed to have survived?" he asked back with a serious, heavy tone. He didn't share Mitra's sense of humour regarding the whole scenario.
"I am more surprised that you can go back on your words and plans. What did you do? Was that all a ruse to threaten me? To bring me under your control? You thought if I can be scared to death I would be submissive to you, let you do whatever you want and make me do whatever you ask me to?" The earlier fury was returning to Mitra's tone.
"Why? Isn't it working on you?" he asked, getting back to his own sense of mockery.
"It never does, and it never will," Mitra snarled through her grit teeth. She leaned back in her chair and said with more confidence, "I made it clear to you from the start that death doesn't scare me. I was prepared for it the moment I started coming after you."
Sashi started cackling acrimoniously as he said in between, "Is that why you froze with shock?"
The jeering irked Mitra. Her expression turned cold as she uttered with tightly set jaws, "Shock? It was more of an oddity for me. Maybe I can take that knife and try to hack you down instead and see if you can smile like it is nothing. Ah, by the way, if I take that knife and bring it down on you, I am not going to stop midway. So, make sure I don't get the chance, if you wish to breathe a few more days."
There was an impasse as Sashi stopped laughing midway and looked at Mitra's stubborn face.
He felt an anger he had never felt towards her. Here he was, trying to befriend her, save her and make up for all the time he had to be away from her and yet, she didn't recognize him, misunderstood him, hated him and wanted to kill him.
This wasn't how he had pictured their bond to be.
"Thanks for the show Mitra. It must all be wonderfully recorded. Just enough fodder for the rat I am planning to unleash to get me what I want," he announced with an irked, cold voice.
Mitra jerked and turned towards the camera which she had forgotten about. It was on and running, recording everything that had happened.
Before she could process what all Sashi could do with the video, he got up from his chair saying in an amused tone, "I wonder what your boyfriend and the police would think if I cut the video off at exactly the point where I try to hack your neck and send it to them. It would look so much like you got murdered for real. Would they be worried about you? Would they come bursting through the door to collect your supposed dead body and apprehend me? Or would anyone's heart be broken enough to kill themselves for failing to rescue you? It is going to be an amazing after party today."
For the second time in the last ten minutes, Mitra felt her heart stopping in fear.