The hotel had converted one of its conference suites into what the team jokingly called “The Whisper Room.”
It was Rhea’s idea.
A soundproofed, tech-free space. Dim lights. Floor cushions. One table. No clocks. No phones. Just silence — or conversation, if they wanted it.
She called it Emotional Reset Protocol.
But in the team group chat, it was just: 🧠🧘♂️ Rhea’s Zen Dungeon
That afternoon, her experiment had a new twist.
Today wasn’t about confession.
It was about recalibration — using biometric breathing feedback and real-time heart rate mapping on a simple wearable band. The cricketers sat in silence, one at a time, while the device graphed their stress response as she asked a series of seemingly innocent questions.
Nothing invasive.
Nothing threatening.
But the catch? The screen was turned toward them.
They had to watch themselves react.
Shreyas went first. Curious, calm — until she asked about pressure at the crease with two wickets down. His pulse spiked.
“Interesting,” he muttered. “Didn’t even feel nervous.”
“That’s the point,” Rhea said gently, typing notes. “Your body feels before your mind registers.”
Siraj went next, laughing at first — until she asked about media trolls. His jaw tensed, heart rate ticked up. By the time she reached Axar, the silence in the room was sacred. No one joked anymore.
It wasn’t therapy.
It was insight.
She asked questions that sounded like cricket — but weren’t.
“Describe the moment before a toss.”
“What’s your first thought when your name flashes on the scoreboard?”
“What do you remember from your worst innings — not what the world remembers, but what you felt?”
And then, when Rahul quietly asked, “Do we get to see the patterns later?” she nodded.
“I’ll send each of you your own graph. No one else’s. This isn’t comparison. It’s clarity.”
---
That evening, as she sat alone reviewing the biometric logs, she noticed something strange.
One graph had no spikes.
Not a single fluctuation during any of the ten test questions.
Shubman Gill.
His graph was unnervingly flat. Not dead — but controlled to the point of being robotic. Like every answer had been rehearsed in the mirror of his mind a thousand times.
She stared at the readout, fingers stilling on her laptop.
Control wasn’t calm.
It was defense.
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almost, Always.
FanfictionA Shubman Gill fanfiction There are some people you never really get over. Not because you still love them-sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. But because what happened between you and them carved something so deep, even time walks around it car...
