It was the last evening of the school holidays, and Aarav sat on the steps with a hard decision pressing on him.

A famous art teacher in the city had offered him a place in her class, but it meant leaving the village for months, living with cousins he barely knew, being far from Dadu and the beach and everything he loved. Part of him ached to go. Part of him was terrified.

"Just tell me what to do, Dadu," he begged. "You always know. Tell me to go, or tell me to stay, and I'll do it."

Dadu set down his net. The lamp threw their two shadows long across the wall.

"I could tell you," Dadu said slowly. "And maybe you'd obey me. But then it would be my choice riding inside your life, not yours. That is not how I want to love you."

So instead he talked. He laid it all out, calmly and completely, leaving nothing hidden. He spoke of how rare such a teacher was, and how Aarav's hand had always known how to draw before his mind caught up. He spoke, honestly, of the homesickness, of the cousins, of how hard the first weeks would be. He named the fear and the hope side by side, neither hiding the hard parts nor pretending the gift away.

"There," Dadu said at last. "Now you know everything I know. I have held nothing back from you."

Aarav waited for the verdict. It did not come.

"And now?" Aarav asked.

Dadu smiled and rested a warm hand on his head. "And now, my boy, you think it over fully — all of it — and then you do as your own heart decides. That is the gift I can give you that telling you what to do never could. The truth, laid out plain, and the freedom to choose what you make of it."

Aarav looked out at the dark water for a long, long time. And somewhere in that quiet, with everything laid before him and no one pushing, he began — slowly, truly his own — to choose.