The pressure of exams pressed on his mind like a constant weight. At twenty-eight, he couldn’t escape the whispers of relatives—“Shaadi kab karoge?”—nor his own nagging thoughts that maybe he was running out of time. His friends from college had scattered into jobs, marriages, cities, even foreign countries. Meanwhile, he was still here, circling through books and coaching notes, caught in a loop of preparation.
At night, when the house slept, he would often lie awake, scrolling aimlessly on his phone. Sometimes his mind drifted back to the easy laughter of his college days—long bike rides with friends, bunking classes for movies, nights spent on hostel rooftops joking about love and sex. Back then, porn had been just another part of the curiosity, another joke passed around in whispers. But now, in the silence of adulthood, it had become something else: a lonely distraction, a reminder of intimacy he didn’t have.
Relationships had never worked out for him. A couple of brief flings in college, some late-night texting that fizzled out—nothing stayed. Perhaps it was his seriousness, or maybe the expectations he carried like a shadow, but love had slipped past him. And now, with each year, the absence felt heavier.
It was during one of those mundane afternoons, the kind that stretched endlessly, that his gaze accidentally lingered where it shouldn’t have. Sonam was in the living room, cleaning the glass shelf that held their mother’s neatly arranged crockery. She had tied her dupatta carelessly around her waist to keep it from falling as she stretched up to dust the higher corners. For a fleeting moment, the curve of her neckline, the soft glimpse of skin as she bent forward, caught Akshay’s eye.
He blinked, turned away quickly, his throat dry. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen women before—he had lived in hostels, had friends, had seen enough screens to dull any thrill. But this was different. This was Sonam. His own sister. And yet, something in him had shifted—an awareness he didn’t ask for, didn’t want, but couldn’t completely dismiss.
The thought unsettled him. He shook it off, went back to his notes, tried to drown himself in pages of history and polity. But that accidental moment stayed with him, flickering at the edges of his mind like an uninvited shadow.
Life in the duplex had become a rhythm of books, pressure, and silence. Akshay often felt suffocated by the endless cycle of coaching notes and exam forms. At twenty-eight, the loneliness in his life was more than just the absence of a lover—it was the ache of missed chances, the nostalgia of hostel nights filled with cheap rum, laughter, and whispered porn jokes that felt daring back then. Those memories came back to him often, only to dissolve into the pale quiet of his current nights.
It was in this emptiness that his focus began to wander. And Sonam, without meaning to, became the center of that restless attention.
At home, she was careless with appearances. She moved freely in her soft cotton t-shirts and loose boxers, often skipping a bra altogether. It gave her an effortless sensuality Akshay couldn’t ignore. Her 34B breasts, unrestrained beneath thin fabric, shifted gently when she bent forward, the curves pressing against cotton in ways that made his throat tighten. The t-shirt sometimes rode up when she stretched, revealing the smooth, flat line of her stomach, the teasing dip of her navel.