"Did any of you get a chance to look at the register and see what my last name was?" asked Abhi.
"I don't think the boys saw it, but I got a good look. I think you put your mom's name as your last name, right? Abhi Archana?" replied Dep.
"Yes, I go by Abhi Archana. But as you can tell, that's not exactly my actual name. I'll be open and share the reasons behind using my mother's name as my last name because I believe there’s no friendship without trust…"
The trio exchanged wide-eyed glances, a mix of suspense and guilt evident in their expressions.
"... I have no last name. Ever since I can remember, my mom and I have never seen my dad. We don’t affiliate with him or his last name. Whatever my original last name might have been is completely irrelevant to me. I also don’t have a last name from my mother’s side because she was an orphan without one herself. So, I just use her name as my last name. I'm not ashamed of it; in fact, I’m proud of it. I just avoid announcing it because it leads to more questions that don’t need to be answered," said Abhi, gazing calmly into the sky.
"Aww, dude, you could've just said you were uncomfortable telling us. I promise we wouldn't have been so stubborn," said Dep.
"Yeah, man, I’m sorry for all of us. We wouldn’t have pushed so much if we’d known the truth. It felt like you were making so many excuses, so we thought there had to be some crazy secret behind it. If you’d just said you don’t share your last name for personal reasons, we wouldn’t have dug deeper," said Veer.
"It's all right; you don’t need to apologize. But I’ll tell you this: I didn’t make any excuses—not in the way you think," responded Abhi.
"Okay, bruh, we just got deep into trusting each other, and now you're saying this? Come on, stop capping," said Veer.
"Just give me a chance to share my side," said Abhi.
"Go ahead, I guess," said Kevin.
"So, this morning, when I was coming to school, I saw some weird-looking mushrooms near an electricity pole. They’re right there; you can even see them," Abhi pointed out.
The trio turned around to see where Abhi was pointing. After noticing what he meant, Dep said, "Oh yeah, there are three near the dog and the pole, but they don’t have caps, just the stems."
"Yeah, because I ate the caps," said Abhi, with a neutral expression as if it were no big deal. Upon hearing this revelation, the trio exclaimed in unison, "HUH!"
"Yeah, they looked pretty tasty. So, I ate all three of them, even though I only wanted to try one. At first, nothing much happened, but since break started, I began to feel dizzy; even people's faces looked mashed up…"
"No way this dude is real," said Veer, still not interrupting Abhi.
"...And when I was sitting down to eat with all of you, I had to leave multiple times—not because I didn't want to talk about my last name, but because I was about to bomb the whole goddamn bathroom..." said Abhi, maintaining a straight face.
"Nahh..." The whole trio burst into laughter at Abhi's explanation. They leaned on each other’s shoulders, giggling heartily as they realized the silly truth behind the 'last name mystery.'
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"I was feeling weak after that 'event,' so I went to lie down and eat the rest of my food in the classroom. But I woke up to the noise of your shenanigans near the teacher's cabinet. I was too embarrassed to tell you all about this before, but now, I guess I just spilled the beans, ha ha," Abhi said, finally letting out a chuckle.
"Brother speedrunning trust and friendship," said Veer, still softly laughing.
"Ha ha, it do be like that sometimes," Abhi joked.
Suddenly, a loud stylized honk echoed from a distance.
"Whoops, seems like my bus is here. Gotta go," Abhi said.
"Hey man, why don't you stay a bit longer? We could hang out at my house if you're down," Kevin suggested, smiling at Abhi.
"Aw man, thanks for the invite. But as I told you, I have a job, and I have to catch some pretty infrequent buses to get there on time. So, I’m gonna have to decline this time, but maybe some other time?" Abhi replied.
"Sure, though one question: I don't recall a route that requires catching two buses in all of High City. Is there a new route opened up or something? My dad always drills those routes into me, so I’m surprised I don't know about it," Kevin said.
"No, no, my house is down... down at Low City, so my journey is quite long," Abhi clarified.
…
There were a few seconds of silence in the conversation, but this time it wasn’t necessarily awkward but rather just everyone getting stumped by Abhi’s revelation.
"Oh damn, I didn’t know you weren't from High City. You’re actually the first student I've heard of who’s from Low City," Veer broke the silence, still looking surprised.
"Guess I got lucky. Well, the bus is near, gotta go... see ya," Abhi said while jogging towards the bus and waving goodbye to the trio.
"Bye Bye!" they waved back.
…
"Explains a lot, doesn't it?" Kevin said.
"You mean him being from Low City, right?" Veer asked.
“Exactly, how could they let him in? When I was younger I used to think the school has a rule against accepting students of Low City or something” Kevin Replied while being in thought.
“Yeah, this is something we need to look into, there are a lot of mysteries behind him, Right?” Said Dep as she saw Abhi’s bus leave past their sights.
"Yeah very mysterious. I sensed he felt a bit different. Glad to have another person in our class who isn’t just another pompous snob like everyone else in High City to be honest," Kevin remarked.
"Though he is still such a goofball, ha ha," said Dep, grimacing.
"Ha ha, so true. His confessions honestly made me feel like he’s just a genuine dude too, bit weird but still real" Veer added with a chortle.
"Same, hehe," replied Dep.
Unlike the other two, Kevin appeared less cheerful. He rubbed his chin, gazing into the distance as though in deep thought. Noticing this, Dep asked:
"Yo! Why so serious? What are you thinking about? Do you want to eat those mushrooms too, hehe?" she teased.
"No!"
"So what’s up then?" Veer inquired.
"See, now, I think Abhi is a chill guy. He’s funny and maybe even trustworthy. But one thing keeps bugging me," Kevin said.
"What is it?" asked Dep.
"In our whole day of conversation, from the break period to now—from trying to use him as a lead, to confessing about trying to research his last name, to him catching us red-handed, and then all of us even sharing our secrets with each other..."
"What are you getting at?" interrupted Veer.
"Even in the last confession, where we were trying to be open, we still never told Abhi the full truth about ourselves. Just like how we hid some things from him, he hid some things from us too. We asked him about other topics far more than we asked about his last name."
Veer and Dep squinted their eyes at Kevin, listening intently.
Kevin continued…
"Even though we brought it up far more and even tried to revisit it in our last conversation... Abhi didn’t say a single word about Rakvill or Incident 99..."
....….