Sonam: “Start from the beginning. Not the field version. The real one.”
Puja did.
The booking. Three names she should have refused. The apartment. The talking first, the rules, the way it still became a night. She did not decorate it. She also did not whisper it into nothing. When she finished, the room hummed with the fridge in the other corner and nobody else’s voice.
Akriti stopped pacing.
“Unhone tujhe book kiya. Aur tu gayi.”
“Haan.”
Sonam laughed once, not happy.
“Tum pakka bhaichod nikli.”
The word hit the wall and stayed there.
Akriti turned, looking at Puja as if seeing a new person in an old sister.
“How can you be such a randi, Puja. Sanjay Bhaiya. Our house. Our stupid family WhatsApp. And you took money and you took them.”
Puja’s face went hot.
“Don’t blame me like I hunted them in a forest. Those three were virgins. All prepared. Waiting for a call girl like it was an entrance exam. Money already wasted in their heads. Room booked in their heads. If it wasn’t me it would have been some stranger who wouldn’t have cared if Raja cried after or Vivek shook or Sanjay sat in his own shame.”
Sonam: “So you did community service.”
“I taught them.” Puja’s voice rose and then she forced it down. “That’s all I’m saying. They taught me science and maths and how to fill a form when we were in school. They stood outside tuitions. They carried projects. Yesterday I taught them something else. How to ask. How to stop. How not to be animals with a receipt. You can call me randi. I already called myself worse at four in the morning.”
Akriti sat down hard on the plastic chair.
“Vivek was a virgin.”
“Yes.”
“My Vivek Bhaiya.”
“Yes.”
Akriti put her face in her hands, then took it out again, because hiding was not helping.
“And you showed them us.”
Puja did not lie.
“I showed them. I shouldn’t have. I was showing off and I was mean and I wanted them wrecked. That part is mine. I told them on the field that I won’t do it again. I meant that.”
Sonam’s anger had tears under it now.
“Raja Bhaiya saw me.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then Akriti, quieter, vicious, curious against her will:
“And they… last night… it was actually them. Not a story.”
Puja unlocked the phone.
She did not hand it over like a trophy. She held it like evidence.
“You can see. Or you can not see. If you see, you don’t pretend later I hid the size of it.”
Sonam stared at the dark screen.
“Show me.”
Akriti moved to the bed without admitting she was moving.
Puja opened the album from last night. Not the stolen clips of Sonam and Akriti. The new ones. The room. The bed. A photo she should have deleted. A short video she should never have taken. Three bodies. Her body. Hands. Mouths. The moment after, messy, lights ugly, nobody looking like a film.
Sonam’s breath caught.
Akriti whispered, “Pagal hai tu.”
They still did not look away.
The amazement came in through the shock, unwanted and obvious. A still of Sanjay. A still of Raja. Vivek turning his face from the camera and failing. The three of them hard, bigger in the phone light than the girls’ jokes about “brothers” had ever allowed room for.
