The next week I was invited to a brand event at a hotel in Aerocity, all glass and cold air and expensive water served in bottles so narrow they looked embarrassed to exist. The place was full of women pretending not to be aware of one another’s shoes. Men hovered near the bar, gauging value as if they were at a cattle fair with lighting design. I walked in wearing a silver dress that caught the light nicely and made enough of a statement to be borrowed by the room.
A photographer took my picture from three angles. A promoter introduced me to a woman from a fashion website. Someone else asked whether I was available for a campaign in two weeks. I smiled, answered, moved, held my posture, all of it automatic now. This was the part I had wanted when I came to Delhi. Not love. Not even money, though money was useful. I had wanted the right to enter rooms and have the room adjust itself.
And it had.
That was the problem.
Because the room adjusted, but it did not open. It only made space for you to stand inside it and be measured.
Later, near the terrace area where the music was loud enough to make conversation into a form of flirting, I saw Arnav again. He was speaking to someone from the event management team, but his eyes moved once over the room in a way that made me uneasy. Not because he stared. Because he did not.
He came over after a while and said, “You are becoming difficult to miss.”
“Is that a compliment or a warning?”
“Usually both.”
I smiled, because he was clever enough to deserve one. “And you are still writing things down like a man with insomnia.”
“Something like that.”
There was something unsettling about his calm. He did not behave like the others. He asked no vulgar questions, made no clumsy promises, and therefore could not be bought off by charm. Men like that were either too honest or too dangerous. I had not yet decided which.
Khanna texted me while I was still at the event.
Come over after. Need to see you.
Need.
That word from a rich man was never really a request. It was a leash made of grammar.
I looked at the message, then at my reflection in the glass door beside me. My hair was perfect. My lipstick had survived the room. My smile looked expensive. I should have felt triumphant. Instead, I felt that same thin ache under my ribs, quieter now but more stubborn, as if the body had begun to send letters the mind refused to read.
Sanjana called while I was still there. She told me the larger campaign had been confirmed.
I said, “Congratulations, darling. Did you cry in gratitude?”
“No. But I did say thank you.”
“Disgusting.”
She laughed, then hesitated. “Nisha, Arnav Joshi asked me some questions after the shoot.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“About Khanna. Not directly. He was asking around.”
That name landed in me with a small hard click.
“What kind of questions?”
“Enough to be careful.”
I looked across the event space. The crowd had shifted, a little more drunk, a little less disciplined. A woman in a black sari was laughing too loudly near the bar. Someone’s watch flashed under the lights. A tray of canapés passed untouched because Delhi’s rich always wanted the photo more than the food.
Arnav stood near the edge of the room, speaking to a waiter now, his notebook tucked away.
I should have dismissed it. I should have laughed and told Sanjana not to be paranoid. Instead I felt the first tiny wrinkle in the smooth cloth of my life.
Khanna’s message lit up my screen again.
Where are you?
I typed back a smiley face, then deleted it. That was the thing about men like him. They wanted obedience to look like affection.
Sanjana was still talking, telling me Sunita had warned her not to trust anyone in the industry too quickly, that every offer came with a price hidden somewhere in the fine print, that a girl had to build her own spine if she wanted to keep her shape.
I said, half listening, half not, “You and your lectures.”
“They are not lectures.”
“They are sermons.”
“They are warnings.”
I looked at my reflection again. It was starting to feel like a stranger’s face.
Across the room, Arnav turned and looked in my direction. Not at me exactly. Through me, perhaps. As if he had already begun collecting the shape of what I would become to other For the first time, Nisha sensed that being photographed everywhere did not mean being safe anywhere.