One humid evening, a schoolteacher named Meera came in with a lad named Arjun. Arjun was quiet and pale; he missed school often, not from laziness but from fear—fear of his father's anger, fear of failing math, fear that his heart didn't belong to him anymore. The clinic had dismissed his fainting as nerves. Bun listened, sat cross-legged on the floor, and asked for nothing but tea. He watched Arjun tuck his knees to his chest and hated the thought of that boy shrinking in the world.