That is how colonial kings get elected.

The first year of university is a specific kind of chaos. Nobody knows anyone. Everyone is looking for the canteen, looking for friends, looking for any familiar face in an unfamiliar building that somehow all looks exactly the same. Most people are still figuring out which faculty wants attendance and which one has not taken roll since 2019.

And somewhere in the middle of all that collective confusion, there are certain people. Overly energetic, suspiciously sociable, already learning names, already making rounds, already remembering who sits where and what they had for lunch. In a room full of people trying to survive the first week, these are the people trying to win it.

Nobody asked them to. They simply cannot help themselves.

When the batch advisor calls for elections, the room does not vote on ability. It votes on recognition, which, in week three of university, means whoever smiled at you in the canteen queue.

Mr. Big Smile and Ms. Perfection won by a landslide. The colonial rulers take the throne, believing they are now the official bridge between students and faculty. The middle party. The voice of the batch. The ones who matter.

What they do not know is that there is a fourth party.

Nobody tells them about the fourth party. It does not send a calendar invite. It does not introduce itself with a handshake and an agenda. It simply appears when the time is right, with a calm hand, a very specific smile, and absolutely no intention of explaining itself.

As Mr. Big Smile and Ms. Perfection settle into their new authority, still warm from the victory, still enjoying the title, a calm hand lands on their shoulder.

Thirty-two teeth. Full smile. “Salam koi?”

Mr. Big Smile had some idea this moment was coming, so he launched immediately into his full introduction. Every detail included. Hometown, school name, current address, father’s profession, which area of the city, which road, which building, which floor.

Ms. Perfection stood beside him, wondering at what point an introduction became a government document and why any of this information was necessary for someone they had met forty-five seconds ago.

Then another shady senior of the female species threw a sharp glance in her direction. Unhurried, unbothered. The glance of someone who has done this many times before and will do it many times again.

“Where are your manners?”

And that was the precise moment our colonial kings discovered the emperor. No announcement. No ceremony. Just a glance, a question, and the quiet understanding that the throne they had won by popular vote had always had someone standing behind it who did not need to run for anything.

The next day, Mr. Big Smile and Ms. Perfection arrived to class early, told everyone to come early, and made an announcement. The batch assembled, mildly curious, mostly still processing being awake. The newly elected CRs unrolled what can only be described as a colonial policy document, freshly drafted, suspiciously detailed for people who had been in office for seventy-two hours.

Full introductions mandatory for all batch members. Salam to seniors compulsory at all times. No exceptions. Ten additional rules followed in quick succession, each one more specific than the last, as if someone had spent the previous evening thinking very hard about every possible way a junior could accidentally offend a senior and decided to legislate against all of them.

Mr. Big Smile read the list with the energy of someone who had been thoroughly briefed the night before, which he actually had been. Ms. Perfection stood slightly to the side, in the corner, with the expression of someone who had run for class representative and somehow ended up in a different job entirely.

Then came the rule about sunglasses and headphones on campus.

The batch started losing patience.

Days passed. Batchmates ignored the rules, which were never theirs to begin with. Mr. Big Smile and Ms. Perfection kept receiving emergency calls from the proverbial Buckingham Palace at hours that were frankly unreasonable.

The emperor’s instructions kept arriving. The batch kept ignoring them. The CRs stayed permanently caught in the middle, passing messages up and down a chain they had not known existed when they smiled their way into office.

The first year ended eventually, the way first years always do, with a strange mix of relief and disbelief that it went so fast and somehow so slowly at the same time.

Second year brought a new CR duo. Calmer people. Quieter people. The kind who received the hand on the shoulder, heard the “Salam koi”, nodded with a perfectly polite smile, and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing they were told. The emperor called. They were busy. The policy document never got written. The rules never got announced. The batch exhaled collectively and moved on with their lives.

But something else happened quietly on the side. Some of that same batch, the very ones who had rolled their eyes hardest at the rules, complained loudest in the group chat at 11 pm, and made the most jokes about Mr. Big Smile and Ms. Perfection and their freshly laminated colonial policy document, became second-year students.

New juniors arrived, fresh and disoriented, looking for the canteen, looking for friends, looking for any familiar face in an unfamiliar building that somehow all looked exactly the same.

Another calm hand landed on a fresh shoulder. Thirty-two teeth. Full smile.

“Salam koi?”

The cycle, as it always does, found a new host.