Aalekh does not move. He can smell something clean and expensive on her—jasmine, perhaps, or sandalwood, something restrained enough to be remembered only when standing this close. His pulse does one stupid, traitorous thing. She notices, of course she notices. Her eyes drop to his throat for a fraction of a second and then return to his face, as if she has registered exactly how human he is.
“I’m neither, ma’am,” he says.
“Not yet.”
The way she says it is almost soft.
That is what makes it dangerous.
He should step back. He does not. He has never been good at retreat when curiosity is involved.
Nandita lowers her voice further. “You have a habit of looking at women as if they are already giving you something.”
Aalekh’s smile thins. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
“And is that a problem?”
“It depends,” she says. “On what you intend to take.”
For a moment, neither of them speaks. The corridor hums faintly with distant college noise, but around them the air feels unnaturally still. He sees it now with startling clarity: this woman is not merely suspicious. She is lonely in a way that has learned to wear authority. A woman who has built herself so carefully that no one is allowed to lean on her, and yet some part of her still stands in the doorway of wanting.
He should not know that from one look.
He does.
He lets a beat pass before answering. “What makes you think I intend to take anything?”
Her gaze does not waver. “Because men who have your kind of face always do.”
A laugh almost escapes him. Instead, he says, “That’s unfair.”
“Life is.”
There it is again—that dry, contained edge. The thing beneath the professional shell. She is not flirting. Not exactly. She is testing. Warning. Perhaps both. Yet the space between them is charged enough to feel like a secret neither has agreed to keep.
A phone vibrates somewhere inside the room behind her. She does not turn.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” she says. “Varnika does not reward charm alone.”
“I’d be insulted if it did.”
“Good. Be insulted less. Learn more.”
Then she moves to pass him.
He smells her perfume again as she comes close, a clean, expensive trace that disappears too quickly. He catches himself looking at the line of her jaw before he can stop. It is a mistake. A beautiful one.
She pauses beside him, not quite facing him, not quite leaving.
“You may get the offer,” she says. “Or you may not. Either way, don’t confuse attention with welcome.”
Aalekh looks down at her, and for the first time since he arrived on campus, he feels the faint, thrilling prickle of a woman who might actually be able to wound him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
She tilts her head, as if deciding whether he is insolent or intelligent enough to be forgiven. “And one more thing.”
He waits.
“If you come to Varnika,” Nandita says, eyes steady on his, “do not assume the women here are lonely enough to be impressed by you.”
The corridor seems to narrow around the sentence.
Aalekh smiles then, but not in the easy way he does for interview panels. This one is slower, sharper, almost private. “I wouldn’t insult you by assuming that, ma’am.”
For the first time, her composure falters by a hair.
Not much. Just enough.
Then she turns and walks back into the room, leaving behind the faintest wake of perfume and warning.
Aalekh stands still for a moment after she disappears.
He should feel chastened. He feels, instead, awake.
By the time he returns to the waiting area, the other candidates have started to gather their belongings in the nervous, overdone way of men pretending not to be anxious. One of them mutters that Varnika’s panel is impossible. Another says the CEO looked like she could fire the whole batch with one glance. A third says the team lead with the green border saree is “strict as hell.” Aalekh nearly laughs.
Strict.
That is one word for it.
The result is announced forty minutes later.
Shortlist: Aalekh Srivastav.
A few others too, but his name lands like a match struck in a dark room. He keeps his face controlled as the coordinator reads it out, but inside, something hard and bright shifts into place. He has done it. Campus to empire. Student to recruit. From the crowd into the machine.
The shortlisted candidates are asked to wait for documentation and next-day onboarding details. Around him, some men clap too loudly, too falsely. One of them says “Congrats, bro” with the strained politeness of someone swallowing defeat. Aalekh nods, smiles, accepts it all.
He has learned that winning is easiest when you do not look hungry.
Yet hunger is exactly what he feels.
Not for the job. Not only for the job.
He looks once toward the interview room. The door is closed now. Through the frosted glass, he can’t see the women inside, but he can feel the company they make when together. Structured. Coloured by decision. A closed world with its own codes and appetites.
A woman passing by with files under her arm glances at him and then looks away too quickly. Another slows just enough to study his face, her expression unreadable. The whispers begin almost immediately, soft as silk sliding across skin.
He is handsome. He answered too well. Did you see how the CEO looked at him? No, the team lead was the one. He’s only twenty-three? He doesn’t seem like the others.
Aalekh hears all of it and files it away with clinical calm. Gossip is a form of introduction. In a place like Varnika, it is also currency.
Hours later, when the campus office empties and the shortlisted students are told to leave, Aalekh finds himself in the corridor near the lift, waiting for the administrative staff to hand over his formal offer letter. Most of the panel has already departed. Priya’s car had come first. Shalini left without ceremony, black heels clicking once against the marble and then gone. Vasudha Singhania was escorted out by the dean as though the entire campus had become a smaller, humbler place. Nandita, he has not seen since the corridor.
He is disappointed by that fact in a way that irritates him.
Then, just as the lift doors part, she appears again at the far end of the corridor, carrying a slim file against her chest. Alone this time. No panel. No audience. Only the two of them and the white, echoing hush of the office wing.
She sees him. Stops.
The lift waits behind him, open and patient, but neither of them moves.
Nandita’s gaze drops briefly to the folder in his hand, then returns to his face. “Congratulations,” she says, and this time her voice is lighter, though not kinder.
Aalekh inclines his head. “Thank you, ma’am.”
A beat.
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
He almost says something clever. Instead he says, “That would depend on how often I’m allowed to disappoint you.”
The words slip out before he can fully dress them.