The temple's incense still clung to Ananya's dupatta as she walked back home with her parents, her steps small and obedient. Outwardly, she was silent, her eyes lowered as her father liked. Inwardly, her body still trembled from that single, reckless kiss.
But the air around her was no longer safe.
Because somewhere in that packed courtyard, too many eyes had been watching.
The First Spark
By evening, as lamps were lit in the houses across the neighborhood, voices stirred like moths around a flame.
"Did you see? That girl—wasn't she Ananya?" a woman whispered, adjusting the brass pot on her hip."With a boy, right there in the temple crowd," another murmured, her tone sharp with scandal and delight."I don't know if it was a boy—""Oh, I know what I saw. They were close. Too close."
It wasn't proof, not yet. Just a murmur slipped between women returning from prayers, traded like gossip over water pots and under verandas. But whispers had sharp teeth.
Riyan heard the shift first at school.
Two classmates leaning against the notice board smirked when he walked past."Temple visits are suddenly sacred for him, huh?" one snorted under his breath.The other chuckled, "Maybe the gods weren't the only ones he was praying to."
Riyan froze, his jaw tight. He didn't react, didn't even turn his head—but his pulse pounded against his temples. He had known the risk. But hearing their taunts made it real.
Still, he walked on, chin high, because fear was useless now. If people had seen—if the whispers had begun—the storm would find her before it found him.
_______________
At home, the walls grew closer. Her mother's watchfulness sharpened, though Ananya couldn't tell if it was suspicion or merely her usual suffocating vigilance. Her father was more distant, but that silence was worse—like a sky waiting for thunder.
Ananya moved through her chores with trembling care: folding laundry, serving tea, copying notes under her mother's watchful gaze. But inside, every second replayed that temple moment.
The heat of his hand at her waist.The crush of the crowd.The wild, reckless brush of his lips against hers.
She touched her mouth once in the dark of her room and almost cried from the memory of it. But even as she treasured it, a chill ran down her spine. Because she had caught the way a woman in the temple had narrowed her eyes, turning to her neighbor. She had felt the prick of unseen stares.
They saw.
And if they talked—if even one rumor reached her parents—her cage would tighten to iron.
The Web Tightens
By the week's end, the rumors had grown legs. No longer just whispers over temple lamps, they slipped into the schoolyard, into the corners of tuition classes, into the pauses of neighbors' conversations.
"I heard she was seen—""With him, that boy—""In the temple, can you imagine?""Shameless, right under God's eyes—"
The words weren't said loudly enough for Ananya to hear directly. Not yet. But she felt them, like the brush of spider threads across her skin—an unseen net drawing tight.
Closing In
One evening, as Ananya cleared the dinner plates, her father spoke for the first time in a week."You'll stop going to tuition for a while," he said flatly, not looking at her.Her spoon clattered against the plate. "But—"Her mother's sharp look silenced her.
She bent her head, hiding the panic in her eyes. The cage was closing faster than she had feared.
And somewhere, perhaps in the next neighborhood, perhaps only a wall away, Riyan would be realizing the same thing—that the temple's smoke had not hidden them well enough.