She laughed once, bitterly.
“And apparently seventeen comes very quickly.”
Sanjay shut his eyes.
Raja stared at the floor.
Vivek looked out into the night.
When Sanjay opened his eyes again, his anger was still there.
But something had changed.
The evening they had imagined was gone.
Completely.
In its place was something none of them could have anticipated.
A secret.
A family.
And four people sitting inside a silent apartment, realizing that by morning none of their lives would look quite the same.
Puja finally raised her eyes.
“Now you tell me something.”
Sanjay waited.
She looked from him to Raja to Vivek.
“What the hell are you three doing here?”
For three full seconds nobody answered.
Then Raja covered his face with both hands.
And somehow, impossibly, Vivek began to laugh.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes the human mind reaches a situation so absurd that laughter is the only remaining emergency exit.
Puja stared at him.
Then at Raja.
Then at her brother.
And Sanjay realized the longest night of their lives had only just begun.
For nearly a minute after Puja asked the question, nobody answered her.
She sat on the far end of the sofa, handbag clutched against her stomach.
The front door was still open.
Outside, the third-floor corridor remained silent.
Inside, four people who had known each other for most of their lives suddenly felt like strangers.
Puja looked at Raja.
Then Vivek.
Finally at Sanjay.
“Well?”
Sanjay rubbed both hands over his face.
“It’s a very long story.”
“I have time.”
Raja muttered, “Unfortunately.”
Puja’s eyes snapped toward him.
Raja immediately straightened.
“Sorry.”
Sanjay looked at his sister.
“You’re going to think we’re idiots.”
“I already think that.”
For the first time since she had arrived, something almost familiar passed between them.
Brother.
Sister.
Then it disappeared again.
Sanjay breathed out.
“Last night we were drinking.”
Puja closed her eyes.
“Of course you were.”
“Would you let me finish?”
“Go ahead.”
And so they told her.
Everything.
Not every embarrassing detail from childhood, but enough.
The reunion.
The whisky.
Raja’s ridiculous speeches.
The conversation about marriage.
Their failed relationships.
The discovery that all three had somehow reached twenty-six without ever having sex.
Puja’s expression changed several times during the explanation.
Confusion.
Disbelief.
Then outright amusement.
She looked at Raja.
“You?”
Raja frowned.
“What do you mean, you?“
“I thought you had girlfriends.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“And apparently relationships don’t come with mandatory completion certificates.”
Puja covered her mouth.
A laugh escaped.
Raja pointed at her.
“Don’t.”
That made her laugh harder.
Even Sanjay smiled.
It lasted perhaps ten seconds.
But after the tension of the previous twenty minutes, those ten seconds mattered.
Vivek continued.
“We started talking stupidly.”
“Very stupidly,” Sanjay added.
“Then Raja suggested—”
“Oh, blame me.”
“It was literally your suggestion.”
“Fine.”
Puja raised a hand.
“I understand that part.”
Her eyes moved around the apartment.
“You decided to hire someone.”
