The air inside the tiny meeting room buzzed with a nervous energy that Aruna hadn't felt in weeks.
They sat huddled around the battered old table Aruna, Reza, Naya, and Giselle staring at the laptop screen where an email blinked back at them.
It was real.
It was happening.
An executive from Helios Education Ventures, a major player in the ed-tech investment world, had agreed to a meeting.
Not just any meeting a pitch.
Aruna's hands trembled slightly as she scrolled through the email again, just to be sure it wasn't a mistake. Helios was massive. If they landed a deal even a small one it could catapult Veloria from a scrappy unknown startup to a real contender.
"How did you even get them to agree to this?" Reza asked Giselle, his voice half in awe, half in suspicion.
Giselle just gave her usual tight smile. "Connections. Leverage. Luck. You don't need to know the details. You just need to deliver."
The room fell silent.
Everyone knew this was the kind of opportunity that didn't come twice.
Preparation for the pitch consumed them.
Giselle was relentless.
Every part of their presentation was torn apart, rewritten, rehearsed, ripped apart again.
Every slide. Every line. Every metric.
"You have ten minutes to convince them you're worth their time," Giselle said, tapping her watch. "Make every second count. No rambling. No dreams. Show them numbers. Show them traction. Show them growth."
Aruna wanted to argue. She wanted to say Veloria was more than numbers, that their vision mattered.
But deep down, she knew Giselle was right.
Investors didn't buy dreams. They bought evidence.
Still, the tension between them simmered just under the surface. Every directive from Giselle felt like another cut across Aruna's ideals. She hated how Veloria was being shaped cold, sharp, pragmatic.
She hated how necessary it all was.
The day of the pitch arrived faster than any of them were ready for.
They gathered outside the towering glass building that housed Helios Education Ventures, Veloria's humble pitch deck loaded onto a single USB drive that suddenly felt like the heaviest object in the world.
Aruna smoothed down her blazer for the fifth time. Reza adjusted his tie awkwardly. Naya kept mumbling the key points under her breath like a prayer.
Giselle, of course, looked completely unfazed immaculate, composed, terrifying.
"Remember," she said quietly as they stepped toward the elevators. "You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be undeniable."
The elevator dinged open, swallowing them whole.
The pitch itself was a blur.
Aruna found herself speaking almost automatically, her voice steady even though her heart pounded in her ears.
Reza handled the technical details flawlessly.
Naya spoke about their users, their vision for empowering students with better tools, their dream of reshaping learning.
For once, Giselle sat in the corner, silent. Watching. Measuring.
The executives from Helios listened, impassive. They asked sharp, cutting questions. They challenged assumptions. They demanded metrics.
There were stumbles small hesitations, slight fumbles in phrasing but no disasters.
At the end, as they wrapped up, one of the executives, a woman named Clara, actually smiled.
"Interesting," she said. "Very interesting."
It wasn't a yes. It wasn't a no.
But it was hope.
And for the first time in a long time, it felt like real hope.
Afterward, they spilled into the sunlight outside the building, laughing and gasping as if they had just survived a battlefield.
"We did it," Naya said, wide-eyed.
"Well, we did something," Reza corrected with a grin.
Giselle simply nodded. "You didn't embarrass yourselves. That's a start."
Aruna rolled her eyes but couldn't suppress her smile. "High praise coming from you."
Giselle's expression softened just for a second. "Get some rest," she said. "You're going to need it."
"Why?" Aruna asked, wary.
"Because if Helios calls back," Giselle said, her voice low and serious, "everything gets harder."
They stared at her.
"What do you mean?" Reza asked.
Giselle's smile was sharp as a blade. "This was just the beginning. Real growth is brutal. Scaling up is a war. If you thought I was tough before..." She let the threat hang in the air.
Aruna's heart skipped. Part excitement. Part fear.
They had fought so hard just to get here.
Could they survive what came next?
She didn't know.
But for the first time, standing there with her friends, feeling the possibilities unfold in front of them like a map they had barely begun to explore, she was willing to find out.
Whatever it took.
Even if it meant burning through every ounce of strength she had left.