# Chapter One: The New Joiner

There are moments you remember in freeze-frame. The exact second your life splits into before and after. For me, it was my first morning at HRJ, walking into that open-plan office with my brand-new ID card swinging against my chest, a nervous knot in my stomach, and absolutely no idea that I was about to be undone by a woman in a kurta.

I saw her before I knew her name. She was crossing the aisle toward the printer, and the whole world just... slowed. Not in a cinematic way. In a fucked-up, can't-breathe, this-can't-be-real way.

Her hair was the first thing. Long, dark, impossibly shiny, swaying like a curtain in slow motion with every step she took. Then the walk itself — that unhurried, confident stride, hips moving just enough to be a statement and not a performance. She wore a long kurta the colour of burnt marigold, fitted in all the right places, hugging curves that made my brain short-circuit before it could even form a coherent thought. Her pyjamas underneath were the kind of skinny that left nothing to the imagination, wrapped around legs I could only describe as unfair.

I stood there with my joining documents in my hand like an idiot, and I swear she knew. She glanced at me from the corner of her eye on her way back, and there it was — a look like fire. Not angry. Just... enough to say I see you looking, and I'm not sorry about it.

She sat down on the opposite row, one seat to my right. I spent the next hour pretending to read the HR onboarding booklet while my peripheral vision did all the heavy lifting. Her hair, her forehead, the curve of her cheek when she tilted her head at her screen. I absorbed every pixel of it.

The introductions happened around noon. My manager walked me around the floor, and I met a dozen faces that all blurred together — a girl with glasses named something-with-an-K, a chatterbox in a salwar, a guy who shook my hand like he was proving a point. They were nice. They were forgettable. And then my manager said, "And this is Sneha, she's on your team too. Sneha, say hi to Vickey."

She stood up.

That was the moment. One second she was a seated profile at the edge …