Chapter 5: Night Shift and the Masked Stranger

10

But hope or not, I still had to save Rohan Malhotra. That was why the system resurrected me, and the only way I could keep living.

But before I could save him, I had to solve my own survival problems first.

I managed to get a job as a night-shift librarian at the bookstore downstairs from Rohan Malhotra’s company. My shift ended at midnight.

The lights in the building across the street were still on. I sat on the bookstore steps, opening a tiffin box that had already gone cold.

At 12:07, Rohan Malhotra’s black Audi drove past.

The tinted windows blocked my view, but I knew he was inside—because the bullet comments were noisily discussing it, as if they had X-ray vision, making jokes at my expense.

[The system’s given up, and so has she...]

[Other strategists try everything to get close to the villain as soon as they arrive, desperate to make themselves known.]

[But her? She just found a job and started living her own life.]

[Did the bodyguards scare her off the first time?]

[So are we just going to watch her shelve books every day?]

[She’s hopeless. She shouldn’t have agreed to the mission in the first place...]

I ignored the agitated comments, only then noticing a stray dog wagging its tail at me, eyes full of longing.

I gave it the only two pieces of paneer in my meal, sharing my dinner with it under the night sky.

The city’s midnight was never silent—the whoosh of BEST buses, a radio playing old Kishore Kumar songs in a distant cab. As I stroked the scruffy dog, its tongue lolling in gratitude, I felt, for the briefest moment, not so entirely alone. The paneer was cold, but the dog’s nuzzle warmed my palm. I whispered, “Bas, dost, at least you’re happy with little.”