It started on a Monday, which was already a bad sign.

Aarav woke up late, missed the first bell at school, and arrived to find that Kiran had been picked as cricket captain for the inter-class tournament. Again. Aarav had practised all summer — his off-spin was better, his fielding was sharper — but the teacher had chosen Kiran, and Kiran had given Aarav a sympathetic shrug that somehow made it worse.

That evening, slumped on the verandah, Aarav told Dadu everything. The unfairness. The wasted practice. The feeling that nothing he did ever counted.

Dadu listened. He was mending a fishing net, his fingers working the knots without looking. When Aarav finished, Dadu said, "Try something for me. One week. Seven days."

"Try what?"

"Do everything you're supposed to do — homework, chores, helping your mother, practice — but do it without keeping score. Don't count who notices. Don't measure whether it's fair. Don't wait for someone to say thank you. Just do the thing because it's in front of you. One week."

Aarav wanted to argue. It sounded like giving up. But Dadu's eyes were calm and sure, and Aarav had learned that when Dadu was calm and sure, something worth finding was usually hidden in the instruction.

So he tried.

On Tuesday, he washed the breakfast dishes without being asked. Lakshmi stared at him like he'd grown a second head. He said nothing.

On Wednesday, he helped a younger kid — Raju from the second row — with his maths homework during the lunch break. Nobody saw. Nobody clapped. His stomach grumbled through the whole thing because he'd skipped half his lunch to do it.

On Thursday, he bowled twenty extra overs at practice after everyone else had left. His shoulder ached. No one was watching. The stumps stood silent in the evening light, and the only sound was the ball hitting the crease over and over.

On Friday, his mother asked him to sweep the courtyard. He did it without the usual negotiation about whose turn it was. Lakshmi swept the other half without being asked either, and they didn't talk about it.

Saturday and Sunday blurred together — errands, practice, a trip to the market with Dadu to carry fish baskets. Aarav did everything that came to him.

On Sunday evening, sitting on the same verandah where the experiment had started, Aarav realized something had shifted. Not outside. The world was exactly the same. Kiran was still captain. The teacher still hadn't noticed his bowling. His mother still asked him to sweep.

But the weight was different. The resentment that had been sitting on his chest like a wet blanket — it was thinner now. Not gone entirely, but thinner. He had done the work, and the work itself had been enough. Not because someone had rewarded him. Because doing it without demanding a reward had quietly untangled something inside him that he hadn't even known was knotted.

"It's lighter," he told Dadu.

Dadu smiled and tied off the last knot in the net. "It always is," he said. "That's how it works."