The whole evening felt stranger than all other strange evenings. Arthur, the master of calming Sophia, had given up. And she, who usually told me everything, refused to even look at me.
Sometime after midnight, while I was asleep on the sofa, she shook my shoulder.
When I stood up, her eyes were fixed on mine. Her voice was soft but clear. "Arthur being with other girls hurts me, but I can breathe. But you being close to another girl, even a little, will break my heart."
My heart began pounding so fast that I thought it would burst. Before I could calm myself, she asked in that innocent voice of hers, "Do you want to do those things to me that Arthur does to those girls?"
My mind went empty. I did not know whether I understood her or whether my brain refused to believe my own ears. I stood frozen as she took my hands and placed them on her waist.
It was the first time I felt her skin like that. Soft, warm. I forgot how to breathe. Slowly, without thinking, I slid my hand beneath her shirt. The moment my fingertips brushed her stomach, she let out a small moan.
The sound startled both of us. Her face turned bright red. Before I could even react, she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed my lips.
I barely had time to feel the warmth of her lips when Arthur screamed.
It was a loud, terrified scream.
Our hearts nearly jumped out of our chests. We ran to the bedroom. In the faint moonlight, his eyes glistened with tears. His face looked like he had just escaped from a nightmare so real that it followed him into waking.
When he saw Sophia, he threw his arms around her, trembling uncontrollably.
I switched on the lights. Sophia sat beside him, gently patting his back, her voice soft as she tried to calm him.
It took us a few moments to realize he actually woke up from a nightmare and didn't see us kissing
But once the confusion settled, I felt something painful twist inside my chest. I had never seen Arthur look afraid and seeing him in that state for the first time brought tears to my eyes.
That night, the three of us slept together on the floor, just like we used to when we were children.
Indra fell silent. Without waking Isha, he slipped a worn wallet from his pocket and carefully took out a small photograph. He studied it for a moment, then handed it to Obero.
In the photo, a young Indra stood on the right. Beside him, a teenage boy smiled weakly, his arm wrapped around a blushing girl. She looked flustered but happy, her eyes shyly turned toward Indra instead of the boy holding her. Indra, in the picture, seemed too nervous to look at either of them.
While Obero examined it, Indra said, "Just like the saying, a picture equals a thousand words. That one was taken a week after my first kiss. It was enough for us to understand that Arthur already knew about us."
He gave a sad, nostalgic smile.
"I did not react much. But for Sophia, it was a shock. She knew exactly how Arthur felt. It took her no time to draw a line between us and say that we should not take our relationship further until Arthur accepted it."
His voice softened.
"After that, she began avoiding me."
At first, it was only at school, but soon it crept into work and even followed us home. She stopped talking to me, stopped eating with me, stopped even glancing my way, until it felt as if we were strangers passing in the same rooms. Her silence made me furious; more than once I snapped at her, scolded her, demanded an explanation. She never answered. And when I finally forced myself to look straight into her eyes, I found them shimmering on the verge of tears, her whole face drawn into a quiet, aching sadness.
She never wanted to hurt Arthur, yet keeping her feelings for me locked away was tearing her apart. For every hour I struggled not to see her, she struggled twice as hard to avoid me. I could not bear adding more weight to her shoulders, so I stopped trying to meet her and kept our conversations at home as short and gentle as possible.
We endured this brittle distance for nearly two years. Then, one midnight, she shook me awake. Her hair was messy, her voice barely above a whisper. "We are going shopping tomorrow. Alone."
I stared at her, confused why she chose the dead of night to announce it, but the thought of spending a whole day with her brushed all questions aside. I fell asleep already picturing the two of us wandering shops together.
The next morning, just as she said, we took a train to a town miles away from ours. The moment we stepped onto the platform, she led me straight to a men's boutique, moving with the certainty of someone who had planned every step. Inside, she spoke quietly with the owner, and he returned carrying several neatly packed outfits. She pointed me toward the changing room with a little flick of her hand.
When I came out, she rushed to me, rising onto her toes to press a quick kiss to my cheek. "The next time you wear these," she said, her eyes glowing, "I promise I will kiss you on the lips the moment I see you in them."
Before I could react, she kept kissing my face, my jaw, my temple, utterly unconcerned about the small boy standing nearby, staring at us with wide, stunned eyes. She paused only long enough to lean down and kiss him on the cheek too, because, as she later said, he looked too cute to ignore.
Afterwards, she guided me into a street lined with women's boutiques and told me to pick a dress for our first date. Then, as if stating the weather, she added that Arthur himself would send us on that date within the month.