They did not look at each other.
A vendor shouted. A pigeon landed near Raja’s shoe and left.
Raja said, almost inaudible,
“Those men were lucky.”
Vivek’s laugh was ugly and small.
“The ones who paid. The ones who got the nights. They got to fuck them to the fullest and then leave. We got the hug and the train timetable and a lunch that sat in my throat.”
Sanjay watched the path where the girls had gone.
“They were lucky,” he said. “Whoever they were. They had Puja. They had Sonam. They had Akriti. All the way. No Bhaiya in the room. No exam dates. No evening talk hanging over the bed. They got the fullest version and we are sitting here promising to be better men while we can still see them naked with their clothes on.”
Raja rubbed his face with both hands.
“We just swore to take care of them.”
“We did,” Sanjay said. “That swear still stands. This talk does not leave this bench. If evening comes, we listen. If they want out of the work, we help them out. We don’t get to become the next booking just because our heads are filthy.”
Vivek stared at his palms.
“I can do both,” he said, and did not sound sure. “Keep the promise. And not forget.”
Raja: “Same.”
Sanjay: “Same.”
They went silent again.
Gandhi Maidan kept showing them other people’s ordinary lives. Three brothers on a bench, sworn to care and forgive, and under the swear the same pictures playing, dressed bodies walking away down the path while their minds kept them bare.
The boys were already mid-meal when the phone lit.
A cheap place. Ceiling fans. Steel plates. Raja had been pushing rice from one side of the plate to the other without eating it. Vivek had managed half a roti. Sanjay’s dal had gone cold.
Puja’s name.
A pin.
A line under it.
Come. Don’t come like a court. Talk first.
Raja wiped his hand on a napkin and leaned in.
“That’s her place?”
Sanjay turned the screen. A lane they knew. Not Sonam’s. Puja’s.
“She’s calling.”
Vivek looked at the three unfinished plates.
“We can’t walk in with our mouths full and their stomachs empty. They barely ate at lunch.”
Sanjay lifted a hand for the waiter.
“Bhaiya, teen plate pack kar dena. Jo table pe hai, wahi. Extra roti. Separate bags.”
The waiter glanced at the half-eaten food, then at their faces, and decided not to ask. He shouted toward the kitchen. Boxes. Foil. Three packets that smelled like the dinner they had failed to finish.
Raja paid for the extra before Sanjay could.
“If they throw it at us, we deserved the walk.”
Vivek took two bags. Sanjay took one and the phone.
“We listen,” Sanjay said. “We don’t start from last night. They start.”
They stood. The maidan was already dark at the edges. The pin glowed in Sanjay’s fist like a dare they had promised to walk toward carefully.
Earlier that evening — Puja’s room
The bolt was on.
Sonam sat on the bed with her dupatta still on, as if cloth could be a door. Akriti paced the two steps the room allowed, sunglasses on the table, eyes dry and sharp. Puja sat on the floor with her back to the cupboard, phone face down, like the phone might confess without her.
