By then the wanting had become a constant presence under his skin. It no longer waited for night. It lived in ordinary hours. He would look at her across a room and feel his mouth water. He would hear her soft laugh at something their mother said and feel his cock twitch inside his trousers. One afternoon she fell asleep on the sofa, body curled, one arm under her head, the soft weight of her breast resting against the cushion, the thin fabric of her top pulled tight. He stood in the doorway for a long time and simply looked, hand already moving slowly, until the sound of footsteps on the stairs forced him to step away, heart beating hard, the ache between his legs sharp and unfinished.
He was twenty-seven. He lived in the same house. He saw her every day. And every night the same hunger returned, heavier than the night before, until there was no part of his private life that she did not already occupy.
Sonam had been preparing for the UPSC for a long time. The days had turned into months of notes, mocks, revisions, and the quiet pressure that sits on every serious aspirant. When the exam date finally approached and the centre list came out, her paper was allotted in Mirzapur—two hours from home by road. The timing left almost no room for error. She needed to reach a day early, rest, settle her nerves, and give the last revision a clean environment. Their father was not well enough for the journey. Their mother had never travelled alone with her for something like this. Relatives were busy or too far. For a short while the house carried that familiar middle-class worry: who would take the girl and stay with her so she would not be alone in a new city the night before the paper.
Keshav simply said he would do it.
“Main le chalunga. Tension mat le. Main leave le lunga branch se. Tu bas apni taiyari pe dhyan de.”
He said it the way an older brother says ordinary practical things—calm, final, leaving no space for argument. Their parents looked relieved at once. Sonam looked at him with that soft, grateful expression she still wore when he solved something for her. She packed her notes, her admit card, two simple sets of clothes, the small bottle of perfume she always carried for luck, and the soft cotton things she wore at night. He packed lightly as well. Inside his own bag, folded deep and out of sight, were two of her bras and three pairs of her panties that he had taken from the laundry over the previous weeks. Soft, used cloth that still held the faint scent of her body. On his phone, locked behind a hidden folder, were the photoshopped images he had made over many nights—her face carefully placed onto the naked bodies of other girls, skin tone matched, lighting adjusted, until the fake pictures looked real enough to stare at while he stroked himself.
They left early, while the colony was still half-asleep. He drove. She sat in the passenger seat in a peach-coloured kurti and black leggings, hair in a neat braid that rested over one shoulder, notes open on her lap. She talked about the paper—the nervousness, the chapters she still wanted to touch once more, the way certain topics always slipped at the wrong moment. He listened, nodded, answered when she needed him to. His eyes kept dropping. To the soft shape of her thighs against the seat. To the way the seatbelt pressed across the full weight of her breasts and made the cloth of the kurti pull tight. To the small movements of her mouth when she spoke. Every glance fed the same heavy pulse that had lived between his legs for months.
