The moment she looked at the man driving the car, her heart skipped a beat.
He seemed to have poured nearly a hundred grams of oil over his head and slicked his hair straight back. His face looked dark and greasy with oil, and she could hardly bear to look at him. And then there was his terrifying moustache, which he had curled up at the ends.
“Ugh! His shirt is even worse. He looks like some savage. What if he has stolen this car and brought it here?”
Look at him driving, glancing here and there with that face of his. There was definitely something shifty in his eyes. He had to be a thief. What a mess her aunt had landed her in!
Tormented by her thoughts, Saranya peered out through the car window and began watching the road.
The trees along the road and the darkness frightened her. She could not keep looking outside continuously. Every time she noticed his eyes turning toward her, an alarm seemed to go off rapidly inside her head.
She began memorizing the identifying details of the vehicle. If he took a wrong turn, she was ready to dial 100 immediately. She sent a message home saying which vehicle she was travelling in and asking them to come and pick her up by the roadside in twenty minutes.
She even checked whether her fingernails were sharp enough.
Turning on the internet on her phone, she searched for what one should do in a dangerous situation. Apparently, she was not supposed to look frightened.
“Hmm-khmm…”
Clearing her throat, she sat upright and tried to look brave.
Not a single thing she did escaped his notice. His eyes moved alternately between the road on either side and her.
“She looks like such a tiny, young girl,” he observed. On her makeup-free face, her cheeks and eyes particularly caught his attention.
Suddenly, the car screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. Several men surrounded it in an instant. They were carrying weapons.
The driver immediately pulled a revolver from his bag, opened the door hurriedly, and confronted them.
Caught completely off guard, Saranya crouched down and hid herself in the back seat, her heart pounding. The “savage” glanced back at her for a microsecond and then continued fighting. Saranya could not understand the expression in his eyes at that moment.
What she had imagined about him—and the way he handled that gun—were two entirely different things.
He attacked his opponents with astonishing ease. Trembling, she watched through the car window as he treated them like footballs, knocking each one around.
He was six and a half feet tall, broad-shouldered, upright and commanding in both appearance and stride. Only when the men who arrived in a police vehicle to collect the people he had subdued saluted him did Saranya understand how high his rank was.
“Oh no! I hid in the back seat like a coward. That must be why he looked at me that way.”
She felt deeply embarrassed.
Without revealing to the others that she was inside the car, he said goodbye to the members of his department and drove Saranya all the way to her village.
After thanking him, she saw her younger brother and father waiting by the roadside to pick her up. She quietly went back with her brother. When she turned around because her father was not coming with them, she saw him talking to the man.
“Does Appa have to talk to everyone he has never even seen before?” she thought irritably, and walked ahead.
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