[Mahesh12345]

The way Ravi claims Lakshmi as his own, the way he makes her his every morning, and especially the way he convinces her to give in to his conditions—oh my God! What are you even writing, sir? This is not just writing; it’s an experience! The intensity, possessiveness, emotions, and chemistry between Ravi and Lakshmi are written so beautifully that you literally get lost in their world. Every scene feels so real and emotionally charged. Seriously, sir, you are not writing this story like an ordinary writer you are creating magic with words!

[Raj_Rohan]

I have created some AI images - marking some of the scenes from the story but unable to upload it due to some error/limitation on my account.

Just found out that a minimum of 30 replies should be made before i can upload it so...

I'm not sure about limited comments, but there are some external links to upload and past the link in this forum.
For what 30 replies.

The uploaded Images are really awesome. Take with author and try to upload pics/gifs into the story. It should not be one person upload story and other upload pics in seperate section. Then it will be completely failure.

[joyeity]

Thank dear writer for super update. Can you add "Rough talk" from the next chapter. Though Laxmi surrender from mentally and physically. Like, fuck me harder Ravi, yes! yes! take me. Make me yours! like that.

Anyway, Hats off to you.

[Lousy1995]

I’ve written Lakshmi’s character with the visual image of someone from my real-life family who is from a village background. If anyone is interested in seeing the reference image, you can ping me privately. 

Also, thank you to everyone who has been sharing images related to the story. I really appreciate the effort and support from the readers.

Just one small request: please keep the number of images limited. Too many images can make the thread a little cluttered and distracting. If you’re posting images, please try to keep them relevant to the story.

And if possible, feel free to share a few GIFs that fit the story as well—but please avoid spamming the thread with too many pictures or GIFs.

Thanks again for all the support, comments, and replies. I really appreciate everyone who is following the story and enjoying the updates.

[Wangi]

Mind blowing! The reality hard core.. not exaggerating the village women nd men. Your the only kind who writes like reality.. 

Your story is like slow poisoning....

[vk64]

Next update

[aravindkkumar08]

Bro nice update. But need to focus on Meena also. It's become routine if concentrate only Lakshmi. Just m observation

[elon musk1]

Update?

[Lousy1995]

Chapter-22 The Dreams

The jasmine bush had stopped trembling, but I had not.

I remained crouched behind the dense foliage long after the maroon silk disappeared down the lane, long after the heavy gate of Ravi's compound swung shut with that final, resonant click that had sounded to my ears like the closing of a tomb. The morning sun climbed higher, burning away the last of the dawn mist, turning the dirt lane into a pale ribbon of heat. My veshti, damp and stiff with the evidence of my own repeated weakness, clung to my thighs like a shroud.

I could still smell it—the composite scent of sex and coffee and jasmine that hung in the air around Ravi's compound like an invisible fog. It had seeped into my clothes, my hair, my skin. I brought my hand to my face and inhaled, and there it was: the musk of Ravi's sweat, the sweetness of my mother's perfume mixed with the saltier undertones of their coupling, the sharp metallic tang of my own seed dried against my palm and the fabric of my veshti.

The images played in relentless loops behind my closed eyelids. The bridal carry—Ravi lifting Amma as if she weighed nothing, her head lolling against his shoulder, the maroon silk riding up to expose her calves. The open blouse, the black fabric gaping to reveal the soft weight of her breast marked by his teeth. The navel kiss—that moment when he had bent his head to her stomach and she had let out that sound, that loud, unguarded "ah" that had echoed in the morning stillness. And finally, the deep creampie, the way he had held himself inside her, the way she had nodded to whatever condition he had whispered in her ear.

I had watched it all. I had watched, and I had touched myself, and I had spilled my cum into my hand and onto the earth, not once but multiple times, until my body was empty and my mind was a screaming void.

Now the lane was empty. The morning had moved on. The village was waking to its routines—cows being led to pasture, bicycles rattling past on the main road, the distant sound of a temple bell. I had to move. I had to go home.

I forced my legs to straighten, my knees to unlock from their cramped position. Pins and needles shot through my calves. I stumbled once, catching myself against the compound wall, and the jasmine bush rustled as if scolding me for my presence. I took the long way home, skirting behind the rice mill, cutting through the dried paddy fields where the mud had cracked into geometric patterns, circling around the back of the temple rather than taking the main lane.

My heart would not stop racing. It hammered against my ribs as if trying to escape the cage of my chest, as if it knew something my mind refused to accept. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see Ravi emerging from his gate, expecting to see Amma walking toward me in her maroon silk, her eyes accusing, her mouth forming the words: *I know you were watching, Arjun. I know what you did.*

But the lanes remained empty. The sun climbed higher. By the time I reached our back gate, the morning had slipped into mid-morning, the heat beginning to press down with the weight of a physical hand.

The house was quiet.

I slipped through the back gate, closing it with the softest click, and stood in the small yard listening. From the hall came the sound I had known my entire life: Appa's snoring. Heavy, wet, arrack-soaked snoring that rattled in his throat and died and began again in a rhythmic cycle of self-destruction.

I moved to the doorway of the hall and looked in. He lay exactly as we had left him the morning—sprawled on the cot, one arm hanging off the edge, the other still loosely clutching the near-empty bottle of arrack. His mouth was open, a thin line of saliva tracing from the corner to the pillow. The sour-sweet stench of fermented palm liquor hung thick in the air, mixing with the smell of unwashed clothes and stale urine.

He had not moved. He had not woken. He knew nothing of the previous evening's humiliation, of the slap Amma had delivered in front of the neighbors, of his wife's disappearance into another man's house, of the morning claiming that had just occurred in the daylight. He was oblivious, drowning in his own poison, while the world around him burned.

I felt a surge of hatred so pure it made my hands tremble. Then it collapsed into something worse—pity, despair, the crushing recognition that this man was my father, that his blood ran in my veins, that I was perhaps more like him than I dared admit. The drunk and the voyeur, both of us hiding from realities too painful to face.

I turned away and moved silently to my room.

Once inside, with the door closed and the latch slid into place, I allowed myself to look down at my veshti. The evidence was unmistakable—stiff patches of dried semen that had turned the white cotton translucent and hard, fresh stains from the final release as I had watched Ravi carry Amma inside. The fabric stuck to my inner thighs, pulling at the hair and skin with every movement. It was disgusting. It was shameful. It was the physical manifestation of my corruption, worn like a badge against my body.

My hands shook as I untied the veshti. It fell to the floor in a stiff heap. I stood naked in the center of my small room, the morning light streaming through the single window, and I looked at myself in the small mirror propped on the wall. My eyes were red-rimmed, hollow. My cheeks were sunken. I looked like a ghost of myself, a boy who had aged decades in a single night.

 I dressed in a clean cotton veshti and a thin shirt, the fabric feeling alien against my sensitized skin.

Then I sat on the edge of my cot and I waited.

I knew she would return. I knew she would come home carrying the weight of the morning—the daylight sex, the unknown condition she had accepted with that nod, the residual marks of Ravi's claiming on her body and inside it. I knew that facing her immediately would force a confrontation that neither of us could navigate, an unbearable awkwardness of glances and silences and things that could not be spoken.

So I stayed in my room. I sat on the edge of the cot, my hands clasped between my knees, and I listened. I listened for the click of the back gate, for her footsteps in the hall, for any sound that would announce her return.

The minutes crawled by. The sun moved across the window, casting a parallelogram of light that slowly shifted across the floor. The house remained still except for Appa's snoring, which eventually sputtered, paused, and then resumed in a different rhythm.

Then I heard it.

The soft click of the back gate. Footsteps—hesitant, careful—moving across the yard. The back door opening with the particular squeak of its hinges.

I held my breath.

She paused in the hall. I could feel her presence through the thin wall, could sense her eyes scanning the space, looking for me. I sat perfectly still on my cot, not making a sound, my heart hammering so loudly I was certain she could hear it through the wall.

A long moment of silence. Then—a breath. A small, almost invisible exhalation of relief.

She had seen my closed door. She knew I was inside, or at least she knew she did not have to face me immediately. The relief in that breath was a blade that cut both ways—relief for her, that she could delay the confrontation, and relief for me, that I could remain hidden a little longer.

I heard her move toward Appa's cot. I imagined her standing over him, looking down at his unconscious form, and I wondered what she felt. The outline had suggested anger, disappointment, pity. But I knew my mother. I knew the complexity of her heart. She would feel all of those things and more—the silent accusation that he had caused this, that his failure had driven her to Ravi's bed, that his drunkenness had made her betrayal both necessary and irreversible.

I pressed my ear against the wall, straining to hear. There was no sound of crying. No dramatic collapse. Just silence, heavy and complicated.

Then she moved away. I heard her in the kitchen—the sound of the water filter being filled, the stove being lit, the mechanical motions of morning routine. But it was not the confident, efficient movements of the Amma I knew. There was a carefulness to her gait, a slight stiffness in her steps. The gait of a woman whose body still remembered the stretch and the seed, who moved carefully because she was tender inside, because she had been claimed thoroughly in the morning light and her body was still processing the invasion.

I sat back on my cot and closed my eyes.

The day unfolded under a thick layer of unspoken tension.

I emerged from my room only when necessary—to use the toilet, to drink water . Each time I passed through the hall, I kept my eyes downcast. Appa had finally woken around noon, irritable and hungover, his face a mask of resentment and physical discomfort.

The first thing he did was turn on the radio.

The volume was aggressive, deliberately loud—film songs from the seventies crackling through the static, announcements in Tamil that filled the house like a physical wall. He sat on the edge of his cot, his head in his hands, and when Amma tried to lower the volume to a reasonable level, he shouted at her. He shouted at me when I walked past too slowly. He shouted about the coffee being too hot, then too cold, about the light coming through the window, about the very air he was breathing.

Neither Amma nor I mentioned the previous evening. The slap, the public humiliation, her disappearance into Ravi's house, my own absence through the night and morning—these things hung in the air like smoke, visible but unacknowledged. Pride sealed our wounds shut. We simply continued, moving around each other in a dance of avoidance, our eyes meeting only by accident and then sliding away like magnets repelling.

I returned to my room and sat on the edge of the cot, staring at the wall. The helplessness was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest. I was the most damaged of the three of us, I realized—the silent witness who could neither stop the corruption nor protect his mother, the son whose own body had betrayed him repeatedly while he watched. The fever that had been building since morning was not just physical. It was the fever of guilt and arousal and despair, burning me from the inside out.

After lunch, which I barely touched, the exhaustion finally claimed me.

Two nights of almost no sleep—the first spent wandering the village in search of Amma, the second spent in fevered watching behind the jasmine bush—combined with the emotional whiplash of the past forty-eight hours. It crashed down on me like a physical blow. I lay back on the cot and closed my eyes, intending only to rest for a moment.

I fell into a darkness that was not restful.

In the nightmare, the village square was transformed. The familiar buildings—the tea shop, the temple, the panchayat office—loomed like giants around a central stage. Amma stood in the middle of the square, dressed in her maroon silk, but the blouse was gone, the saree dbangd in a way that exposed her shoulders, her neck, the tops of her breasts marked with bruises I recognized as Ravi's handiwork.

She was saying goodbye. Not to me specifically, but to the entire family. Her voice was calm, almost serene. Then she turned, and Ravi was there, and she kissed him. Not the forced, reluctant kisses I had witnessed, but an open, tender kiss that she gave willingly, her mouth soft against his, her eyes closed in acceptance.

The neighbors watched in silence. Hundreds of eyes, unblinking, judging not her but me. For my weakness. For my inability to stop this. For the fact that I had watched and desired and done nothing.

I woke with a jolt around 6 p.m., my heart hammering against my ribs, my body drenched in sweat that had soaked through my thin shirt and veshti. The room was dim, the sun having moved past my window. I tried to sit up, and immediately realized something was wrong.

My limbs felt leaden, as if filled with wet sand. When I moved my head, a dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. My skin was hot to my own touch, burning with a heat that radiated from my forehead and chest.

The fever had arrived.

It was not the seasonal illness that sometimes swept through the village during the monsoon. This was something else—pure exhaustion, accumulated stress, the body's rebellion against the continuous adrenaline and guilt and sleeplessness. My body had simply reached its limit.

"Amma," I called, but my voice was thin, barely more than a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Amma."

The sound did not carry. From the hall, the radio continued its aggressive assault—Appa had kept it at the same volume all day, using it like a wall to shut out the rest of the family, to drown his own guilt and shame in noise. The film songs and crackling announcements completely swallowed my weak calls.

"Appa," I tried, but the word died in my throat.

I lay back down, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows lengthen across the room. The fever made my thoughts slippery, difficult to hold onto. Images from the nightmare mixed with memories from the morning—the navel kiss, the nod, the maroon silk. My mother's face in pleasure and my mother's face in shame became indistinguishable.

*Does anyone in this family actually care about me?*

The thought crystallized with painful clarity. If they did, someone would have checked on me. Amma had been moving through the house all day, preparing meals, cleaning, avoiding my gaze. Appa had shouted at me when I emerged for lunch. But neither of them had looked at me—truly looked at me—to see the hollows under my eyes, the tremor in my hands, the fever burning in my cheeks.

I was invisible. I was the silent witness, and silent witnesses were not supposed to need care. They were supposed to watch and endure and remain unseen.

The sense of being completely forgotten inside my own house settled over me like a second fever, heavier than the first. I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me again, not sleeping but sinking, sinking into a half-conscious state where time lost meaning and the boundaries between self and the room and the world began to blur.

When I next forced myself awake, the room was fully dark.

I did not know what time it was—perhaps 9 p.m., perhaps later. The house was silent except for the sound of Appa's snoring, which had resumed its heavy rhythm from the hall. The radio had finally been turned down or switched off, but its aggressive presence still seemed to linger in the silence, a ghost of noise that rang in my ears.

My body was still extremely weak, but something had shifted. The fever had burned through whatever resistance remained, leaving me hollowed out, emptied of everything except a desperate need for connection. I could not stay in this room alone. I could not bear another minute of invisibility.

I dragged myself to the edge of the cot and stood. My legs shook, barely supporting my weight. I shuffled to the door and opened it, bracing myself against the frame.

The hall was dim, lit only by a single bulb that hung from the ceiling, casting long shadows. Appa lay on his cot, the bottle still in his hand, muttering fragmented sentences to empty air. His eyes were half-open but unfocused, staring at something that existed only in the alcoholic haze of his mind.

I looked for Amma.

She was not in the kitchen. Not in the back yard. My heart began to race with a panic that was disproportionate to the situation—she had left, she had gone back to Ravi, she had abandoned me to this house of silence and snoring and radio noise.

Then I saw her.

She was sitting alone in the front yard, on the low stone wall that bordered our property, staring into the darkness of the lane. Her posture was slumped, her shoulders curved inward as if protecting something precious and wounded. She was lost in thought, so far away that she did not hear my shuffling footsteps as I moved toward the front door.

"Amma," I called, but my voice was barely more than a breath, a whisper that carried no weight.

She did not hear me.

I tried to step forward, to move into the yard, but my legs betrayed me. The world tilted, the shadows lengthening and then contracting, the stone wall seeming to rush toward me and then recede. I grabbed for the doorframe, missed, and felt myself falling.

"Arjun!"

The cry came from far away, distorted by the rushing in my ears. Then hands were on me, catching my weight, lowering me carefully to the cool floor of the hall. I looked up through fever-blurred eyes and saw her face above me—her real face, stripped of the masks she had worn all day, stripped of the mechanical efficiency and the avoidance. Her expression was sharp maternal alarm, the look I remembered from childhood when I had fallen from the mango tree, when I had cut my foot on the broken glass, when I had needed her and she had come.

"My boy," she was saying, her voice low and urgent. "My boy, what is wrong? Where does it hurt?"

I tried to answer, but the words would not form. The darkness was rising again, pulling me under. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was her face—the worry in her eyes, the residual sadness that had settled into the lines around her mouth, the beauty that remained despite everything, because of everything.

When I next opened my eyes, the room was dimly lit by a single candle placed on the floor beside my cot. The fever still burned, but it had changed quality, becoming something I could float on rather than drown in. I turned my head slowly, carefully, and saw her.

Amma was sitting on the floor beside my cot, her back against the wall, her head tilted to the side in exhausted sleep. She had changed into a simple night sari, cotton and unadorned, but even in sleep she looked uncomfortable, as if her body would not let her rest fully. One hand rested near my cot, close enough that I could have reached out and touched it.

I looked at her for a long time.

The candlelight played across her face, softening the harshness that had settled there over the past weeks, revealing the woman beneath the burden. I saw the girl she had been, the bride she had been, the mother she had become. I saw the weight she had carried for years—Appa's failures, the financial crises that had driven her to Ravi's door, the loneliness of a marriage that had died long before the body followed, the recent moral and physical destruction that had transformed her from a wife into something more complicated, more broken, more alive.

Tears filled my eyes but did not fall. They gathered at the corners, blurring my vision, turning her sleeping face into an impressionist painting of gold and shadow.

"My poor Amma," I whispered, the words soundless, shaped only by my lips.

For the first time, I questioned my own right to interfere in her personal life. She was an adult. She had made choices—forced choices, desperate choices, but choices nonetheless. She had walked into Ravi's compound, had allowed his claiming, had accepted his thaali and his seed and his conditions. Who was I to judge her? Who was I to security officer her body, her desires, her survival?

The thought arrived with the force of revelation: perhaps the kindest act I could offer was to stop trying to control her path. She was chained enough—to this house, to Appa's drunkenness, to the expectations of the village, to the poverty that had forced her surrender. She did not need another chain, another set of eyes watching and judging and demanding she remain the pure, untouchable mother of my childhood fantasies.

I wanted her to be happy.

The realization was simple and devastating. I wanted her to be happy, even if that happiness took forms I could not fully accept or understand. Even if it meant Ravi, meant the maroon silk and the daylight claiming and the unknown conditions. Even if it meant I was left behind, watching from behind jasmine bushes, burning with a jealousy I had no right to feel.

Yet even as this resolve settled over me, gentle and sad and mature, another feeling stirred beneath it. The memory surfaced unbidden, sharp and clear: the sight of her open mouth as Ravi kissed her navel, the wet sounds of their coupling, the way her body had arched into his touch despite her shame. The possessive heat that had burned me while I watched, the dark, secret wish that no other man should ever touch what I had witnessed so intimately.

The arousal coiled in my stomach, quick and guilty, a serpent waking in the fever-heat. I did not push it away. I acknowledged it as part of myself, this twisted desire that lived alongside my love, my pity, my newfound resolve to set her free. It sat beside the quieter wish for her freedom, two truths that could not be reconciled, only accepted.

I wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. I looked at her one last time—her face in sleep, vulnerable and strong, broken and whole—and I closed my eyes again.

*I just want you to be happy, Amma,* I thought, letting the words become a prayer, a mantra, a lullaby that carried me back into the fever-darkness. *I just want you to be happy.*

The morning came with grey light filtering through the window.

I woke to an empty room. The candle had burned down to a puddle of wax. The fever still clung to me, a low-grade heat that made my skin sensitive to the touch of the thin cotton sheet, but something had shifted. The worst had passed. I was weak, emptied out, but I was still here.

"Amma," I called, and my voice was stronger than it had been, though still rough, still thin.

She appeared almost immediately, as if she had been waiting just outside the door. Her face shifted instantly into pure maternal focus—the expression I had seen the night before, stripped of all other concerns.

"Arjun," she said, moving to my side. Her hand went to my forehead, cool against my burning skin. "The fever is still there. How do you feel? Dizzy? Nauseous? Does your head hurt?"

The questions came rapid-fire, the practical barrage that only a mother gives. I tried to answer, but she was already moving, already diagnosing.

"Pain anywhere? Stomach? Throat? Can you sit up? Slowly, slowly—don't rush."

She helped me sit, propping pillows behind my back with efficient, gentle movements. Her hands were sure, practiced, the hands of a woman who had nursed fevers and wounds and heartbreaks. For these minutes, she was only my mother—the one person who was still present when everyone else had disappeared.

“I’m fine, Amma,” I said, the words rough in my throat. “I just need some rest. That’s all.”

She did not look convinced. She pressed her palm to my forehead again, then to the side of my neck, checking the heat with the quiet intensity of someone who had done this a hundred times before. “The fever is still there. Not as high as last night, but it’s not gone.” She turned toward the door. “Stay sitting. Don’t lie down yet.”

I heard her in the kitchen—the soft clink of a steel tumbler, the scbang of a spoon, the low hiss of the stove. When she returned she carried a small steel bowl of warm water mixed with turmeric and a few crushed leaves of something bitter, along with two tablets on a saucer. She sat on the edge of the cot and held the tumbler to my lips.

“Drink. All of it.”

The liquid was warm and slightly acrid. I drank slowly, watching her face over the rim of the tumbler. The residual sadness was still there, settled deep into the lines around her mouth, but it was pushed aside by the focused, almost fierce concern of a mother. She waited until I had finished every drop, then handed me the tablets and a second tumbler of plain water.

“Swallow these. Then try to eat a little later. I’ll make kanji.”

I obeyed. The tablets left a chalky taste. She adjusted the sheet around my waist, then reached up and smoothed the damp hair from my forehead with the back of her fingers. The gesture was so ordinary, so purely maternal, that something inside my chest loosened.

After a moment of silence I asked the question that had been sitting in the back of my throat since I woke.

“Amma… does Appa know that I have a fever?”

She hesitated. Her hand stilled against the edge of the cot. “I told him.”

I looked at her. “Then why didn’t he come?”

She glanced toward the open doorway that led to the hall, where Appa’s snoring had already resumed its heavy, arrack-soaked rhythm. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Perhaps he doesn’t care. Or perhaps the drinking has made him blind to everything else.”

The words landed harder than I expected. Whatever thin residual respect I still held for my father began to dissolve, leaving a quiet, cold anger in its place. He had not even walked the few steps from his cot to my door. He had not checked whether his son was breathing properly. The radio wall he built around himself had become complete.

Amma stayed a little longer, rearranging the medicine on the small stool, pouring more water into the tumbler, making sure the pillows were firm. Her attention never left me. For these minutes the complicated, sexualised image of her from the previous morning—the open blouse, the navel kiss, the nod to Ravi’s condition—was pushed aside by something simpler and older. She was simply my mother, the person who was still here when everyone else had disappeared.

I lay back down. The fever made my eyelids heavy. Just before sleep took me again I watched her move quietly around the room, checking the window latch, adjusting the sheet one last time. The sight of her gave me a strange, fragile comfort.

When I next became aware of the world, time had gone soft and hazy. The light in the room had changed; it was afternoon, or perhaps early evening. My body felt hollowed out, still weak, but the sharpest edge of the fever had dulled. I lay still, listening to the familiar sounds of the house—Appa’s occasional mutter from the hall, the distant clatter of vessels in the kitchen.

Then a voice called from the front yard.

“Murugan anna?”

I recognised it immediately. Ravi.

I did not have the strength—or the desire—to get out of bed, but I lifted my head toward the open doorway. Footsteps crossed the yard. The front door opened. Through the frame I saw him standing in the hall, dressed in a clean white shirt and veshti, his posture calm, almost casual.

The connection formed at once, sharp and painful. Today was the day Amma had promised to return to his house under the unknown condition she had accepted the previous morning. She had not gone. She had stayed because of me. Relief and guilt mixed in my chest like oil and water.

I heard low voices in the hall—Amma’s quieter tone, Ravi’s steady reply. A short fragment reached me: “…didn’t come… waited… the boy is unwell…” Then footsteps approached my room.

Amma appeared first, followed closely by Ravi. They stopped just inside the doorway. Ravi looked at me with what appeared to be genuine concern.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked. His voice was mild, neighbourly. “Has the fever come down?”

I understood immediately that Amma had already told him. The contrast hit me harder than the fever itself. My own father had not once entered this room. This man—who was systematically taking my mother—had come, stood beside my bed, and asked after my health. Whether intentional or not, the gesture elevated him further in her eyes. It shifted the quiet balance inside the house another fraction toward him.

I managed a small nod. “Better. Just tired.”

Ravi studied me for a moment longer, then nodded. “Rest properly. Don’t strain yourself while you’re recovering. These things take time.”

The words were ordinary, almost kind. Yet beneath them I felt the careful measurement of a man adjusting his plans. Amma stood slightly behind him, her face composed, but I saw the faint tension in her shoulders—the awareness that she had broken the agreement because of me.

After a brief exchange they turned to leave. Just before they reached the doorway I called softly.

“Amma.”

She turned at once.

“Can you switch off the tubelight? I want to sleep.”

The request was deliberate. I wanted them—and Appa in the hall—to believe I was withdrawing completely, that the room would be dark and I would no longer be watching.

Amma crossed to the switch. The fluorescent tube flickered and died, leaving only the grey afternoon light filtering through the window. In the sudden dimness she looked at me with residual concern.

“Goodnight,” she said quietly. “Get some proper rest.”

As the door was almost closed, my eyes found Ravi’s face one last time.

The earlier expression of concern had vanished. In the half-light his face was calm, unreadable, almost calculating—the look of a man who had already adjusted his plans to the new obstacle of my fever and the missed daytime visit, and was quietly mapping the next move.

The suspicion settled coldly in my chest.

Was the concern real, or was it simply another careful step in the long game for Lakshmi?

I remained still in the darkness, eyes open, the low fever and the new unease pressing equally against me as the door finally shut with a soft, definitive click.

[saka1981]

Ravi is doing his job properly. I think Laxmi called Ravi because of arjun's fell down. Arjun keeps reflecting on his feelings again and again, trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong.

Let’s see what happens next. Will Laxmi leave her son, who is lying sick, and get involved with Ravi, or will she push Ravi away?

As always, your writing style is excellent, my friend. We are eagerly waiting for your next chapter, as always.

[vk64]

Nice update

[Waseem990]

next update waiting

[Wangi]

Exotic waiting for next update!

[Raj_Rohan]

Waiting for next update,...what happen next??

[Ankita b]

Need a big update

[Lousy1995]

Sorry for the delay, guys! The next updates will be posted tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

[ali ahmed]

Update

[Wangi]

Update!

[elon musk1]

Update?

[Plywo]

Sorry for the delay, guys! The next updates will be posted tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

WAITING BOSS

GIVE UPDATE