"It's him," Saachi whispered.
The air around them went dead still.
Ron's screen flashed again with the trace confirmation. IP. Signal tower. Login location. Registered backup email. All of it pointed to one name.
Ben Calloway.
Debate kid.
Straight-A student.
Said "please" and "thank you."
Held doors open.
Talked softly. Smiled shyly.
The kind of boy people forgot to look at twice — which made him perfect.
"Ben?" Aditya's voice cracked, disbelief cutting through the tension. "Ben from our debate team?"
Ron didn't look up. "Yeah. We cross-checked all metadata. The audio recordings — pulled straight from internal storage synced to his cloud backup. That's why he still had them."
Saachi clenched her fists. "The number. The texts. The tone. It all matches."
"He was there that night," Rey murmured, realization dawning. "During the breakup. He was just a few tables away. Pretending to be asleep. Jaanvi didn't notice him. None of us did."
"And he's been collecting pieces of her life since," Siya said softly. "Waiting."
Aditya felt sick. "He acted like he was harmless."
Saachi's eyes burned. "That's how people like him survive."
For a few moments, no one said anything.
The group stood around Saachi's laptop, the name Ben Calloway still glowing from the top of the screen like a curse.
Meera broke the silence.
"We don't tell Jaanvi yet."
"What?" Aditya turned, eyes wide. "She deserves to know—"
"She will," Aryan cut in. "After we're done with him."
Kiara crossed her arms. "He's smart. Careful. Calculating. If we confront him now, he'll vanish. And the last thing we want is for him to disappear before we destroy everything he's been building."
"Besides," Siya added, calmly but with steel in her voice, "Jaanvi's already spiraling. One wrong word and it could crush her. We need her steady. And protected."
Ron nodded. "We do this smart. Strategic. Debate-style."
"Cold. Calculated," Rey said.
"Personal," Saachi finished.
Aditya didn't like it. Not one bit.
But when he looked back at the screen — at the face of the boy he'd once waved to in the hallway, shared team notes with, defended when others mocked his quietness — something snapped in him.
And for the first time that morning, he said:
"Let's make him regret ever thinking she was weak."
Some monsters don't hide in shadows.
They hide in smiles.
In quietness.
In kindness that was never kind.
And when you finally see their true face—
you don't scream.
You fight.
Together.
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