“How long will you take?”, Reyona asked Leela  cheerfully.

Leela was glued to her computer screen, right hand resting on the table, fingers curled around the mouse. In her left hand, she held a blue fountain pen.

Leela had been assigned here only a week before. Reyona and Leela had been returning home together for the last four days now. Theirs was a pleasant companionship.

“Five minutes”, she replied.

Reyona seated herself and started twisting the unmodified Rubik’s cube from Leela’s desk.  Fifteen minutes passed while Reyona struggled to get a perfect red top. In the next attempt of altering the sections, she glanced at her watch.

“Will it take long? Should I help?", Reyona asked.

Leela maintained her gaze at the passive screen, unmoved.  She wore a stern face.

"Yes and No", she replied in an unflavored tone, lips pressed together; eyebrows pulled down into a narrow stare.

"Should I…," Reyona could not decipher and responded.

Leela clenched the pen in her left arm till it deshaped into a blue filthy mass.

 "You may go", she ordered in an unearthly voice.

Reyona stood, stunned. She sensed the gravity of the situation but she could not abstain herself from asking a tiny, innocent question, “What happened?”

Leela unloaded the chair and thrust it back violently.  As it collided with the wall, she dropped the pen. Blue stains spread like raindrops on the floor.  She clutched Reyona’s hand, dragged her out of the cabin and jammed the glass door in her face.

Reyona, unable to collect the sequence of events, hurried to the exit from the empty hall. For once, she turned. Leela was watching her from behind the door, her teeth biting deep into the blemished thumb of her left hand.

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