He pointed vaguely toward the door.
“The agent. Clients. Whoever organizes this.”
He forced himself to speak slowly.
“Are you safe?”
Puja took several seconds to answer.
“Mostly.”
Sanjay shook his head.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one.”
He absorbed that.
Then asked:
“Do you actually want to keep doing this?”
Puja opened her mouth.
Stopped.
For the first time all night, she had no immediate answer.
And Sanjay realized that perhaps this was the only question that mattered.
Not how many clients.
Not how much money.
Not who knew.
Not what had happened during Class 12.
Not even what Sonam and Akariti were doing tonight.
Whether Puja was there because she wanted this life—
or because, somewhere along the way, she had forgotten that stopping was still an option.
Puja stared at her brother.
“I don’t know.”
Four words.
Quietly spoken.
They frightened Sanjay more than everything else she had told him.
He pulled another chair toward the centre of the room.
“Okay.”
Puja watched him.
“What?”
“We start there.”
Raja stopped pacing.
Vivek lowered his phone.
Sanjay looked at all three of them.
“No calling parents.”
Raja nodded slowly.
“No storming anybody’s hotel.”
Vivek reluctantly put his phone on the table.
“No judging each other tonight.”
Puja gave Sanjay a skeptical look.
“You can actually manage that?”
“No idea.”
That almost produced another smile.
Sanjay continued.
“But apparently all six of us have been living secret lives.”
He looked toward Raja.
“Us three pretending we had everything figured out.”
Then at Puja.
“And you three pretending everything was normal.”
Nobody disagreed.
Outside, Patna continued exactly as before.
Traffic.
Horns.
Lights in apartment windows.
People eating dinner.
Parents calling children.
Couples arguing.
Students studying.
Thousands of ordinary lives happening simultaneously.
Inside the third-floor flat, four childhood companions sat together with the wreckage of everything they had assumed about one another.
And somewhere else in the city—
Sonam and Akariti were still out there.
Their brothers now knew.
They simply had no idea what they were going to do with that knowledge.
Puja stood.
Nobody tried to stop her.
The night had already contained more revelations than any of them could properly process.
She picked up her handbag from beside the sofa and slipped the strap over her shoulder.
“I should leave.”
Sanjay looked at her.
“You’ll reach safely?”
“Yes.”
“Message me.”
She gave him a tired look.
“You’ve asked me that three times.”
“And I’ll ask a fourth.”
For the first time in nearly an hour, Puja’s expression softened.
“Okay, Bhaiya.”
Raja moved toward the door.
“I’ll book a cab.”
“I already did.”
Vivek checked the corridor.
“At least let us wait downstairs.”
Puja sighed.
“I’ve been travelling around Patna alone for years. I’ll survive an elevator.”
Nobody argued.
She reached the entrance.
Then stopped.
Slowly.
Something on the dining table had caught her eye.
She turned her head.
Three deodorants.
Mouthwash.
ORS sachets.
Mint gum.
Cold drinks.
Water bottles.
A box of condoms.
Lubricant.
And beside them, two small packets of tablets the three men had rather awkwardly purchased earlier in the day after being told one was marketed for men and another as a women’s arousal product.
