Chapter 1: "You Can't Do It"
"You can't do it."
Kishori had heard those words more times than she could count.
She wasn't the topper of her class.
She wasn't the loud, confident girl who won every competition.
She was just… ordinary.
When her 10th-grade results came out, her marks were average. Not bad. Not impressive. Just enough to pass quietly through the crowd.
At home, the silence was heavier than any scolding.
One relative sighed and said, "Her future doesn't look very bright."
Kishori stood there, pretending not to care.
But that night, she cried into her pillow so no one would hear.
It wasn't the marks that hurt.
It was the feeling of being invisible.
The feeling that no one expected anything from her.
She stared at the ceiling and whispered to herself,
"Maybe they're right…"
For a moment, doubt wrapped around her like darkness.
But deep inside, beneath the fear and embarrassment, there was a small voice.
A stubborn one.
"What if they're wrong?"
The next morning, nothing looked different.
The same house.
The same people.
The same ordinary girl.
But inside Kishori, something had changed.
She opened her books—not because someone forced her to,
but because she made a decision.
Not to become perfect.
Not to become number one overnight.
But to become better than yesterday.
Just a little better.
That day, she studied one extra hour.
The next day, she woke up thirty minutes earlier.
It wasn't dramatic.
There was no applause.
No one noticed.
But for the first time in her life, Kishori wasn't trying to prove others wrong.
She was trying to prove herself right.
And that was the beginning of everything.