“You live on chai.”
“I have a salary. Different crime.”
Vivek asked Akriti about the hostel warden, about whether she was actually attending, about the night bus versus the morning train. Akriti answered, then squinted at him.
“You’re asking like a checklist. What is wrong with you.”
“Nothing.”
“Something.”
Sanjay asked Puja nothing about exams. Puja had already told him her paper dates last month on the phone, in another life, before last night. He asked if she had eaten. She said tea. He told her that was not food. She called him Bhaiya like a joke that still worked in public.
For a while it was only that.
Studies. Trains. Diwali. Who would reach the station first. Who would carry whose bag. Ordinary family noise on an ordinary field.
Then Sonam stopped walking.
Not fully. A half-step. Her smile thinned.
“Raja Bhaiya.”
“Hm.”
“Why do you keep looking at the grass.”
Raja looked up too fast.
“I’m not.”
Akriti had been watching Vivek’s ears. They were red.
“Vivek. You hugged me like I was a live wire. You don’t hug like that. You hug like a cupboard.”
Vivek said nothing useful.
Sonam’s eyes moved from Raja to Sanjay to Puja. The puzzle sat down in her face.
“Something happened. You three look washed and ruined. Puja looks like she slept one hour and won a bet. What happened.”
Akriti folded her arms.
“If this is office stress, say office stress. If this is a fight, say a fight. Don’t do the silent film.”
Puja’s brightness cracked.
She glanced at Sanjay. He did not save her. He only stood there, a man who had agreed, sometime between tea and the auto, that the truth would have to come from her mouth.
“Not here in a line,” Puja said. “Come.”
She took Sonam’s wrist and Akriti’s elbow and pulled them off the path, toward the thinner shade near the fence, far enough that a passing couple would only see three girls talking. The boys stayed where they were told, a stupid little triangle on the grass, not following.
Sonam: “Talk.”
Akriti: “Now.”
Puja swallowed. For the first time all morning she looked young in a way that was not teasing.
“Last night there was a booking.”
Sonam’s face changed in stages. First confusion. Then the old knowledge of what that word meant in their three-person private language. Then something colder.
“You took a booking.”
“Yes.”
“You said we were stopping.”
“I know what I said.”
Akriti’s voice went quiet, which was worse than loud.
“How many.”
Puja looked at the fence.
“Three.”
Silence.
Sonam followed Puja’s gaze, not to the fence, to the three men standing on the grass like they were waiting for a verdict.
The understanding landed all at once.
“No,” Sonam said.
Akriti said it too, almost together.
“No.”
“Puja.” Sonam’s eyes were already wet and angry. “Tell me you did not.”
“It was them,” Puja said. The sentence came out small. “Sanjay. Raja. Vivek. The group booking last night was them. They know. They know what we do. What we were doing. I told them. I showed them more than I should have. That is why they are walking like that. That is why they cannot look at you.”
Akriti took a step back as if the grass had moved.
