And as he opens the door to the corridor, he can feel the building watching him the way a woman watches a man she has started to suspect is not as simple as he pretends.
Behind him, Nandita’s voice stops him once more.
“Aalekh.”
He turns.
Her face is unreadable again, but her eyes are not. There is a warning there, yes. And something else, darker and more difficult to name.
“If this is the kind of game you think it is,” she says quietly, “you may already be behind.”
He holds her gaze, the corner of his mouth lifting in that slow, impossible way that has unsettled more than one woman in this building.
“Then I’d better catch up.”
And he walks out before she can decide whether to be offended, intrigued, or both.
The corridor outside is full of light and movement and people pretending not to know what they know.
Aalekh steps into it with the same easy grace as always.
But now, for the first time, the air around him feels thinner.
And somewhere above, behind glass and marble and polished silence, the story is no longer only being whispered.
It is being written.