By the next morning, the campus had changed.
Not in any physical way—same dusty corridors, same noisy cafeteria, same rigorous training schedule. But there was a palpable shift in the air. Like the oxygen itself had learned something new about her, and now it couldn’t stop whispering about her to everyone who breathed it in.
Her dance the night before had detonated like a slow-burning bomb—no loud bang, just a wave of stunned silence that kept expanding across departments and hallways.
And now, everyone was talking.
“I mean… bro. Bro! That was not a ‘bro’ performance. That was a—an awakening.”
Three boys sat at their usual corner table in the canteen, untouched sandwiches sitting limp in their trays.
“Did you see her hair when she flipped? I thought the projector lights were creating special effects or something.”
“No, forget the hair—her eyes, man. She looked through me.”
They went quiet for a second. Then all three groaned in perfect sync and sank into their chairs, holding their heads like lovesick poets.
At the next table, a group of girls were very obviously not trying to hide their giggles.
“Oh no, what happened to your poor little hearts?” Priya cooed dramatically.
“Too fragile to survive her chaal?” (walk) added Sanya, hand to her chest.
“Should we call HR? This is a serious case of collective heartbreak.”
Another girl chimed in, “No one even remembers what came after her dance. I’m pretty sure someone sang after that but who cares? Ira dropped the mic without saying a word.”
Laughter broke out around the girls’ table while the boys groaned louder.
“She was our bro,” Arjun muttered. “She wore that ugly grey hoodie and yelled at us during warmups. And now—now I can't unsee it. My brain rewired itself.”
That afternoon, as the trainees filed into the lecture hall, the reactions followed her like shadows.
Some boys tried to act normal.
Too normal.
"Yo, Rathore!" one of them called a little too loudly, forcing casualness into his voice like a bad actor. "Nice moves yesterday, huh?"
She gave him a simple nod. “Thanks.”
Another tried to pull her into the usual roughhousing—half-hearted shove, like always.
But this time, his hand barely made contact with her shoulder before he dropped it awkwardly. Like his brain suddenly realized that this shoulder belonged to The Girl Who Danced.
Others just stared. Discreet glances stolen during lunch. Eyes lingering a little too long in the mirror behind her. The boy who’d always sat diagonally across from her in sessions suddenly pulled his chair one row forward—not enough to make it obvious, but just enough to have a better view.
Ira noticed.
Of course, she noticed.
But she said nothing.
No teasing comment, no smug smile, not even an arched brow. She showed up in the same kind of hoodie, same jeans, same loose hair tied back without a care. Walked the same, talked the same. Answered questions during training with the same dry logic. Even scolded two juniors for arriving late.
But the campus? Oh, the campus was not the same.
Later that week, someone made a poster. A very poorly photoshopped one.
At the center was Ira—hair flying mid-dance, edited to look like she was floating in fire. The poster read:
"BRO NO MORE – QUEEN RATHORE HAS RISEN"
It was stuck to the coffee machine.
No one dared to take it down.
By Friday, a running list had begun on the whiteboard in the library:
"Boys secretly in love with Her"
The list was long.
Anonymous entries like:
“Blue hoodie guy – 2nd floor, caught staring for 5 min straight”
“Karan – whispered ‘she’s so graceful’ and then pretended to choke on his samosa”
“Tanmay – changed playlist to Bollywood classical fusion after THAT performance”
Someone added a bonus round:
“Symptoms of Ira Crush Syndrome:”
Unexplained silence when she enters the room
Loss of appetite during group lunch
Sudden interest in semi-classical dance videos on YouTube
Staring at hoodies in online carts for no reason
Even the instructors weren’t spared.
One of the female trainers, Mrs. Kapoor, joked during a seminar, “Ira, darling, you’ve traumatized half our male trainees. I hope you’re proud.”
And Ira? She smiled politely and went back to scribbling notes. Not a flicker of ego. Not a trace of embarrassment.
That just made things worse.
Now the crush wasn’t just about the dance.
It was about the mystery.
The final straw came when one of the boys, usually loud and goofy, accidentally dropped his water bottle in front of her and turned red when she handed it back with a quiet “Here.”
The girls exploded.
“BRO blushed!”
“HE. ACTUALLY. BLUSHED.”
Ira blinked, slightly amused. “What happened?”
“Oh nothing,” said Priya with a wide grin. “Just watching the downfall of an empire. One bro at a time.”
And just like that, the bro code was broken.
The moment she danced, the label they’d lazily pasted onto her— ‘one of the guys’—shattered in slow motion.
She hadn't tried to impress anyone. She hadn't flirted, winked, or even acknowledged the chaos she'd caused.
And that made her irresistible.
Not a bro anymore.
Not to anyone.6Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ90DpFoQB08
