# Chapter Two: The First Chat

The next few days became a study in self-control, and I failed the course every single day.

By my second week, I had a routine. Daytime: find excuses to look at Sneha. Nighttime: lie in bed and replay everything I'd seen until I fell asleep with her name half-formed on my tongue. She'd stand up to stretch after a long call — I watched. She'd reach for the printer and flex that long, elegant line of her back — I watched. She'd walk to the pantry, come back with her water bottle, settle into her chair with that unhurried sway — I watched like a man with nothing better to do, because I had nothing better to do. By Wednesday I'd catalogued her entire working wardrobe. By Friday I could have drawn her from memory, right down to the way her kurta rides up a finger's width when she crosses her legs under her desk.

And some nights, I didn't fight it. I'd lie in the dark with my phone face-down on the pillow, replaying the day's footage — the flash of waist, the curve of her, the way her smile caught fire when someone made her laugh — and let my hand wander where my thoughts already were. It never took long. I'd come undone in the dark thinking about a woman who had no idea I existed, and then I'd lie there, breathless and faintly embarrassed, knowing full well I'd do it again the next night.

Somewhere in all that watching, I'd started noticing someone else. Pooja the girl with the glasses from the window side. Bright, warm, with a laugh that made you want to tell more jokes just to hear it. For about three days, I convinced myself she was the office crush worth having. The sensible one. The one you could take home to your mother without breaking a sweat.

Then came Diwali, and Sneha wore a saree, and Pooja's entire existence reset to zero like a corrupted save file.

It started a week before the festival. The whole floor caught the festive bug marigold garlands strung over cubicle walls, diyas lined up on window sills, fairy lights blinking over the break area. People were dusting their desks, hanging little torans, rearranging their lives. And that's when the housekeeping crew showed up at …