Not dramatically. Not suspiciously — a grade change from B+ to A- was not the kind of change that would trigger an audit. It was the kind of small, defensible adjustment that a teacher might make after reconsidering feedback. It said: Kavitha Rao is still doing her job. She is on personal leave but still engaged. Everything is normal.
Everything was very specifically not normal.
Naina went back through the previous two weeks of activity logs and found four more instances of Kavitha Rao's account being used: a late-night login twelve days ago that accessed the class roll but changed nothing; a comment left on a parent communication thread seven days ago — a positive comment about a student's progress; an updated lesson note eight days ago; and Sunday's login, which she had already noted.
All of them at unusual hours. Late evenings, once at two AM. All of them small, normal-seeming actions. All of them designed to create the impression that Kavitha Rao was still engaged with her professional duties, still present in the system, still there in the way that people were there when nothing was wrong.
Someone was maintaining Kavitha Rao's digital presence. Someone with her login credentials — her username and password. Someone accessing the school system on her behalf to make the system look like she was fine and engaged and had simply taken a short leave.
She went back to Dev's notebook. His reflection again: Sometimes justice doesn't come at all. Sometimes the only thing you can do is remember that something wrong happened.
The specificity of the idea. Remember that something wrong happened. Not: hope for justice. Not: wait for things to get better. Remember. As if the act of remembering was itself a form of resistance. As if the thing that had happened was in danger of being forgotten, covered over.
And Kavitha Rao had changed his grade upward. After three weeks of silence. A small, private act — the activity log was not something students or parents saw. Only teachers and administrators could access it. It was not an administrative action. It was a message. It was Kavitha Rao telling Dev Malhotra — in the only language available to her inside the system — that she was still there. Still thinking about him.
Naina needed to talk to Dev. Without Ananya knowing.
