At seven forty, Raja arranged the things they were carrying.
Phone.
Wallet.
Water.
Condoms.
Lubricant.
Mints.
Sanjay watched him.
“You forgot something.”
Raja checked everything.
“What?”
“Common sense.”
“Left that in the village.”
At seven fifty, Vivek stood in front of the mirror fixing his hair for perhaps the fifth time.
Sanjay caught his eye in the reflection.
“What?”
Vivek shrugged.
“You know what’s stupid?”
“Almost everything we’ve done today.”
“I spent years imagining my first time would be with somebody I loved.”
Neither Sanjay nor Raja laughed.
Vivek looked down.
“Same,” Sanjay said.
Raja sat quietly on the bed.
“Me too.”
There it was again.
The real reason the night felt strange.
It wasn’t simply that they were virgins.
They had all once imagined something different.
A girlfriend.
A bedroom after months of trust.
An anniversary.
A vacation.
A nervous conversation between two people who cared about each other.
Life had not followed those scripts.
Naina was gone.
Vivek’s relationship had ended.
Raja’s had collapsed before becoming what he thought it would become.
And now three boys from the same village, who once exchanged crush stories beside a school playground, were preparing to leave a Patna hotel together for the most absurd night of their adult lives.
Sanjay picked up his wallet.
“We can still cancel.”
Raja looked at Vivek.
Vivek looked at Sanjay.
Nobody answered immediately.
Then Vivek stood.
“No.”
Raja stood too.
“No.”
Sanjay breathed out.
“Okay.”
Raja opened the door.
Then paused dramatically.
“Gentlemen.”
Vivek groaned.
“What now?”
Raja smiled.
“Whatever happens tonight…”
He looked from one friend to the other.
“…nobody tells our sisters.”
Sanjay started laughing.
Vivek pointed at him.
“Especially Sonam. She’d destroy you.”
“Akariti would destroy me.”
Sanjay imagined Puja discovering even ten percent of what they were doing.
“Puja would tell my mother before breakfast.”
Raja stepped into the corridor.
“Then we have our most important rule.”
The others followed.
The hotel door clicked shut behind them.
Three friends walked toward the lift.
Freshly shaved.
Overdressed.
Overprepared.
Terrified.
Trying not to show it.
At 8:03 p.m., the lift doors closed.
And for the first time since Raja had proposed the idea, nobody was laughing.
They were actually going.
At exactly 8:30 p.m., the doorbell rang.
All three men froze.
Nobody had expected the sound to be so ordinary.
Just a small electronic chime.
Once.
Then silence.
Raja looked at Vivek.
Vivek looked at Sanjay.
Sanjay swallowed.
“That’s him?”
“Agent,” Raja said.
“You answer.”
“Why me?”
“You spoke to him.”
“So?”
The bell rang again.
“Just open it,” Vivek muttered.
For reasons none of them could explain later, all three walked to the door together.
Sanjay opened it.
A man in his early thirties stood outside.
Plain shirt.
Jeans.
Helmet in one hand.
Nothing about him matched the dramatic picture Raja had created in his imagination.
“Raja?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
The agent stepped inside.
Professional.
Quick.
Almost bored.
He glanced around the apartment.
The building itself was new, one of those recently completed constructions where the stairwell still smelled faintly of cement.
