Her days started at six-thirty.
He discovered this on Day One when he arrived at the Vasant Vihar building at six-fifteen and found the lights in the third floor flat already on. On Day Two, arriving at six, he saw through the gap in the curtain that she had a yoga mat rolled out in her small living room. She was not one of those people who treated exercise as a performance. She did it with the efficient seriousness of someone who understood her body was a tool and required maintenance.
She left for work at eight-twenty, walking to the coffee place three blocks from her building where she had the same order every day — black coffee, no sugar, a single idli that she ate while reading something on her phone. The coffee place was owned by a man named Raju who clearly knew her well; their exchange was brief and warm, the warmth of people who had shared a counter every morning for enough mornings that small talk had given way to comfortable silence punctuated by the occasional genuine exchange. Arjun noted the coffee place as a vulnerability — predictable, public, open. He noted Raju as an asset — observant about his customers and therefore likely to notice an unfamiliar face.
