If there was one thing everyone at the coaching centre knew about Subhangi Das, it was this:

Silence and Subhangi had never been properly introduced.

She could enter a room quietly.

She could sit quietly.

She could even open her book quietly.

But somehow, within five minutes, the entire building would know she had arrived.

Subhangi was short—very short compared to most of the students in her college batch—and she had absolutely no intention of letting that stop her from occupying as much space as possible.

Not physically.

Verbally.

She talked.

A lot.

She talked before class.

She talked during the five-minute break.

She talked after class.

Sometimes, she even talked while solving questions.

And occasionally, she talked to herself.

Her friends had stopped trying to understand where one topic ended and another began.

One minute, she would be discussing a history chapter with Snigdha.

The next, she'd be complaining about her phone battery.

Then cricket would somehow enter the conversation.

Then she would remember an embarrassing incident from three years ago.

Then she'd suddenly ask Poulomi whether she thought their professor had checked the assignment.

And before anyone could answer, Subhangi would already be telling them another story.

It wasn't intentional.

Her brain simply worked faster than her mouth could keep up.

She was chaos in human form.

A walking panic button.

And yet, strangely, she was also one of the brightest students in the batch.

Except for one tiny problem.

Maths.

And Physical Science.

Those two subjects had personally declared war on her.

Subhangi could study for hours and understand complicated chapters perfectly.

Her notes were neat.

Her handwriting was beautiful—the kind professors actually paused to admire.

Her memory was ridiculously good.

But put a mathematics paper in front of her and suddenly all her intelligence packed a suitcase and left.

Her most legendary achievement remained—

9/100 in Mathematics.

Nine.

Out of one hundred.

Not nineteen.

Not twenty-nine.

Nine.

She had stared at that paper for several minutes after receiving it, completely expressionless.

Then she'd looked at Joy.

Then at the paper.

Then back at Joy.

"At least I got a single digit."

Joy had nearly fallen off his chair laughing.

That was Subhangi.

She could turn even her academic disasters into comedy.

And her laugh?

That was an entirely different phenomenon.

Subhangi didn't laugh normally.

She laughed like she had just discovered the funniest thing in human history.

A loud, completely uncontrollable—

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The first time someone heard it, they genuinely thought somebody had been attacked outside.

Snigdha had once whispered, "Girl, control yourself."

Subhangi had tried.

She lasted approximately three seconds.

Then she started laughing again.

Her laugh was contagious.

One person would laugh because of the original joke.

Another would laugh because Subhangi was laughing.

Then someone else would laugh because everyone else was laughing.

Within minutes, the entire row would be useless.

And despite all that chaos, Subhangi was still a bookworm.

Just...

A bookworm with a phone.

Her textbooks were always inside her bag.

Her phone was always in her hand.

She loved studying, but she also loved scrolling through Instagram, watching cricket clips, sending ridiculous reels to her friends, and checking cricket updates every five minutes.

Cricket wasn't merely something she watched.

It was practically her first love.

If someone asked her about a chapter she'd studied that morning, she might need a second to remember.

Ask her about a cricket match from months ago?

She'd remember the score, the over, the player, and probably the exact ball that annoyed her.

Her friends had accepted that this was simply how Subhangi worked.

And then there was Abir Das.

The complete opposite.

If Subhangi was a storm, Abir was the quiet after one.

He was tall.

Extremely tall.

Tall enough that whenever he stood beside Subhangi, she looked even shorter.

He was one of the tallest students in their entire first-year college coaching batch.

He was also probably the quietest.

Abir rarely spoke unless someone spoke to him first.

He was shy, calm, soft-spoken, and almost permanently buried in his books.

While everyone else was discussing movies, games, professors, gossip, or whatever random nonsense had happened that day, Abir could usually be found solving another problem.

Maths.

Physical Science.

Anything involving numbers or formulas seemed to make perfect sense to him.

He was the kind of student professors could trust without checking twice.

And he loved cricket too.

That was probably the only obvious similarity between him and Subhangi.

But even there, they were different.

Subhangi watched cricket loudly.

Abir watched it quietly.

Subhangi celebrated boundaries as if she were personally responsible for them.

Abir would simply smile and continue watching.

Subhangi reacted to everything.

Abir reacted to almost nothing.

At least, not visibly.

And that was exactly why nobody noticed anything when Subhangi first started noticing him.

It wasn't dramatic.

There was no slow-motion moment.

No sudden background music.

No magical eye contact across the classroom.

It was much more ordinary than that.

One afternoon, Subhangi arrived at coaching a little late, slightly breathless from rushing upstairs.

She pushed open the classroom door while still fixing her bag strap.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry—"

Everyone turned.

The professor looked at her.

Subhangi gave an innocent smile.

"I am extremely punctual."

A few people snickered.

The professor sighed.

"Sit down."

She quickly walked toward her usual place, muttering under her breath about how the stairs had personally attacked her.

And as she dropped her bag beside her chair, she happened to glance toward the other side of the room.

Abir was sitting there.

Head bent over his notebook.

Pen moving steadily.

Completely unaffected by the chaos around him.

Subhangi stared for perhaps two seconds.

Then she looked away.

Nothing happened.

At least, that's what she thought.

She didn't know yet that the quiet boy she'd barely noticed would eventually become the person who listened to every ridiculous story she had to tell.

She didn't know that the boy who hardly spoke would eventually have more patience for her than anyone else.

She didn't know that the tallest boy in the room would eventually have to bend down just to hear her properly when she whispered something.

And she definitely didn't know that while she would be the first one to fall...

Abir Das would eventually fall much, much harder.

But for now?

She was simply Subhangi.

The loud college girl.

The cricket-obsessed bookworm.

The mathematics survivor.

The girl who could make an entire classroom laugh without even trying.

And Abir?

He was just the quiet boy sitting a few seats away.

At least...

for now.

If Subhangi was chaos by herself, putting her with Joy, Amit, and Poulomi was basically a public safety concern.

The four of them had been friends long enough to develop a completely unreasonable level of comfort around one another.

There were no formal conversations.

No graceful behaviour.

No concept of personal dignity.

And absolutely zero volume control.

Together, they were the kind of group that made people passing by the coaching classroom stop for a second and wonder what exactly was happening inside.

One afternoon, the four were sitting together during the break.

Subhangi had her phone in one hand, a packet of snacks in the other, and absolutely no intention of studying during those precious ten minutes.

Poulomi was trying to tell them something.

Trying.

Because every five seconds, either Joy interrupted her, Amit added something completely irrelevant, or Subhangi started laughing.

"WAIT—WAIT—listen to me!" Poulomi protested.

"I'm listening!" Subhangi insisted.

"You literally weren't."

"I was!"

"You were watching a reel."

"I can multitask."

Joy leaned over dramatically.

"She cannot."

Subhangi immediately turned toward him.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

Amit started laughing.

That was enough.

Subhangi looked at Amit.

Amit looked at Joy.

Joy looked at Poulomi.

Poulomi looked at all three.

And somehow, without anyone saying anything, all four started laughing.

Not normal laughing.

The kind where one person laughs harder because another person is laughing, which makes the third person laugh, which makes the first person completely lose control again.

Within seconds, Subhangi was practically folded over her desk.

Poulomi was holding her stomach.

Amit had his head down.

Joy was wiping tears from his eyes.

A student sitting two benches away slowly turned around.

Then another.

Someone near the door whispered,

"Are they drunk?"

The person beside them shrugged.

"I don't know."

They weren't.

Not even remotely.

They were simply themselves.

Their conversations were equally chaotic.

They could begin with assignments and somehow end up discussing cricket, professors, someone's Instagram story, a random childhood memory, food, and whether a particular actor looked good in a particular movie.

There was never a logical transition.

One minute—

"Did you finish the maths assignment?"

Two minutes later—

"Bro, imagine if India wins the World Cup."

Thirty seconds after that—

"WHY DID YOU LIKE THAT REEL?"

And then—

"Wait, does anyone have a pen?"

Nobody understood how they got there.

Least of all them.

Joy was usually the instigator.

He could turn the smallest situation into a full-blown comedy scene.

Amit was the one who encouraged him.

He didn't even need to say much.

One look from him was enough for Joy and Subhangi to understand that something stupid was about to happen.

And Poulomi?

Poulomi was supposed to be the sensible one.

Supposed to.

She tried.

She genuinely tried.

But being sensible around Joy, Amit, and Subhangi was like trying to keep a white shirt clean during Holi.

Eventually, she gave up.

The four of them had developed their own language of expressions, eye-rolls, hand gestures, and completely unnecessary dramatic reactions.

Sometimes they didn't even need words.

Subhangi would glance at Joy.

Joy would raise an eyebrow.

Amit would immediately understand.

Poulomi would already be laughing.

And whatever had just happened would become a five-minute comedy routine.

The funniest part was that none of them considered themselves particularly chaotic.

They genuinely believed they were behaving normally.

That belief was severely challenged one day when the four of them were walking down the corridor after class.

Subhangi was telling a story.

Joy interrupted.

Amit disagreed.

Poulomi took Joy's side.

Subhangi became offended.

Joy started laughing.

Amit joined him.

Poulomi tried to stop everyone.

That lasted approximately four seconds.

By the time they reached the staircase, all four were laughing so loudly that several students turned around.

At the top of the stairs, Abir happened to be standing with his notebook tucked under one arm.

He looked at them.

Then at the corridor they'd just crossed.

Then back at them.

His expression remained calm.

But there was the faintest hint of amusement in his eyes.

Subhangi noticed.

She immediately stopped laughing.

For approximately one second.

Then Joy whispered something into her ear.

She burst out laughing again.

Abir looked away, hiding a small smile.

He didn't know it yet, but that loud, impossible group of four was going to become a regular part of his college life.

And somewhere inside that group was a girl who talked enough for five people.

A girl who would eventually make the quietest boy in the batch talk more than anyone expected.

But that was still far away.

For now, Abir simply watched the four of them disappear down the staircase.

And Subhangi?

She was already shouting from downstairs—

"JOY! GIVE ME MY PEN!"

"I DON'T HAVE IT!"

"AMIT HAS IT!"

"WHY WOULD I HAVE IT?!"

"Poulomi, check his pocket!"

"WHY WOULD I CHECK HIS POCKET?!"

Their voices echoed through the entire building.

A professor passing by closed his eyes for a moment.

He looked exhausted.

The coaching centre had officially survived another day of the four-person disaster.

She was Subhangi Das.

She could argue with Joy for twenty minutes without blinking.

She could shout across an entire classroom.

She could laugh so loudly that the professor threatened to send her outside.

Yet one quiet smile from Abir Das had somehow turned her into a person who forgot what she had been saying.

She had fallen for the boy who could solve almost any mathematical problem—and who never once made her feel like she was the problem.

And the funniest part?

Abir still thought she came to him only because she needed help with Mathematics.

Poor boy.

He had absolutely no idea what was coming.

ABIR ASKED ME FOR HELP TODAY.

Poulomi replied almost immediately.

WITH MATHS?

YES OBVIOUSLY 😭

AND YOU'RE STILL TALKING ABOUT IT?

Subhangi stared at the screen.

Then typed:

SHUT UP.

Poulomi sent a laughing emoji.

Subhangi threw her phone onto her bed, buried her face in her pillow, and let out a muffled scream.

Because she could handle Mathematics.

She could handle Trigonometry.

She could handle even a hundred difficult sums.

But one shy request from Abir Das?

Apparently, that was beyond her syllabus. ❤️

Abir was still quietly turning up to coaching, solving his sums, and wondering why the loud girl beside him had suddenly become so much better at Trigonometry.

He had no idea that she was choosing outfits a little more carefully.

He had no idea that she'd started practising extra questions.

And he certainly had no idea that his two-word compliment had been replayed in her head more times than she would ever admit.

For now, she kept her little secret.

She laughed with her friends.

She studied.

She argued with Mathematics.

And whenever Abir looked her way, she tried very hard to behave like a perfectly normal college girl.

She wasn't particularly successful.

But then again—

Nobody had ever accused Subhangi Das of being normal. 😭❤️

No confession.

No secret message.

No dramatic romantic moment.

Just a chocolate bar.

The biggest one in the packet.

And a girl who had somehow managed to give away her favourite boy's share without admitting that he was her favourite.

She fell first.

And Abir, who still hadn't figured out why her smile made ordinary coaching afternoons feel a little less ordinary, slipped that chocolate wrapper into his bag without a second thought.

Well.

Maybe with one small thought.

Subhangi is nice.

He had absolutely no idea how much trouble that thought was going to cause him. 😭❤️

Abir still had absolutely no idea that the girl who could talk for three hours straight had started losing every single word whenever he looked at her.

He only knew one thing.

Subhangi Das really, really needed to stop walking backwards.

And maybe—

Just maybe—

He should keep an eye out for wet floors whenever she was around.

Because apparently, someone had to protect her from the laws of physics.

And for reasons he hadn't quite figured out yet…

He didn't mind being that someone. 💗

Poulomi burst out laughing.

And somewhere down the corridor, Abir heard Subhangi's familiar, unmistakable shriek.

He turned towards the sound.

His smile appeared before he could stop it.

There she was.

His favourite kind of chaos.

Although, if anyone asked him that directly, he would deny it.

Obviously.

He was Abir Das.

Quiet. Shy. Sensible.

And absolutely, definitely, NOT smiling at the sound of one particular girl's laughter.

Not at all.

Meanwhile, Joy was already planning their wedding in his head. 😭💍💗

But there was one tiny problem.

The next time Subhangi unlocked her phone, Abir caught sight of Abhishek's photograph again.

He stared at it for a second.

Then muttered, almost under his breath—

"Must be nice."

Subhangi turned around.

"What?"

Abir's eyes widened.

"Nothing."

"ABIR DAS, WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

"Nothing, Subhangi!"

She squinted suspiciously at him.

He looked away, his ears pink.

And Poulomi, who had heard every single word, slowly covered her mouth.

Because, oh.

The quiet boy was jealous of a wallpaper. 😭🏏💗

The quiet boy and his chaos (part 1)

The quiet boy and his chaos (part 1)