In his vicinity

Chapter 1 : Second kiss

Everyone who lives in a hostel or shares a room with friends encounters this problem: their roommate’s alarm.
My peaceful six hours of sleep are interrupted by a relentless series of alarms set by her, starting at 5:30 AM and going off every five minutes.After the relentless series of alarms, my beloved roommate Niranjana Rajeev, finally got up.

She wakes up and looks at me as if I was the one who set the alarm last night.

We have classes at 9 AM and are currently busy preparing breakfast. After spending an hour in the kitchen, we need to get ready for class. As usual, Niru got dressed in five minutes, while I'm still searching for the perfect outfit that I feel ready to wear.
For the tenth time, I asked Niru what I should wear to class today.

She replies, "Are you the person who doesn’t have anything to wear?"

I feel a bit confused, and then it hits me that she might be referring not just to my outfit but  also to the person  in the other room of the SAME apartment.

"Okay, but the room is locked. How can we open it?" I asked.

Niru responded with a mischievous smile and a glint of cunning in her eyes, as if she had already unlocked nearly 999 rooms and this was the 1000th. After this, she would be a seasoned pro with the experience of 1000 unlocked rooms.

She takes a slide out of her wavy hair, and I realize how many movies we’ve been watching lately. Honestly, I've witnessed a lot of drama involving Niru and that single piece of slide.

After five minutes of effort, Niru triumphantly announces, "And there it goes open, Abracadabra!"

The sound of the door unlocking makes me believe she truly is a pro at this. Now, I feel like the accomplice in this case.

We sneaked into the room, which was surprisingly clean and well-organized.
Niru tapped my shoulder and signaled me to look at the wall.

These were the photos of my next two flatmates : NIDHIN DEV and FAIZAL AHMED.

So, as you might be wondering, we have two guys in their twenties sharing an apartment with us. Niru and I have already answered countless questions about it. However, the local aunties keep hearing about it and then advising us that if we want to share an apartment, we should just get married.

Both of the boys are currently pursuing their dreams,  in their final year of MBBS at Madras Medical College. We’re a group of four living in Chennai, but we all have our roots in Kerala.

Both of them went to Kerala for 5 days and will return tomorrow. They won’t even notice that we sneaked into their room.
"Dude, hurry up, we have classes!" Niru shouted as I was lost in thought about them. "Find an outfit that suits you well."

Niru yelled at me and opened the closet. After searching for about 10 minutes, I pulled out a black shirt with white stripes—it belonged to Faizal.

I changed and looked at myself in the mirror. The shirt fit perfectly, and I loved how it looked, staring at myself for about three minutes. I then went to Niru and asked, "How do I look? Is there anything wrong with this shirt?"

She smiled and replied, "It looks great, dude. It fits you better than it does him”.

She paused, then continued, "Do one thing: just keep this shirt and never return it to him."

We snapped back to reality when we realized it was 8:30 and we had classes at 9 AM . We quickly ate breakfast.

We were ready to head out for class and stopped in front of the mirror for a final check.

Door knocked.
We were puzzled about who it could be, so I signaled Niru to open the door. She went over and opened it.There were two people at the entrance who were facing away. Niru, puzzled by their backs, realized she knew them.