Chapter 3: The Smelly underwear
The missing underwear had become a quiet, humming background noise in Priya’s life, like a faulty appliance you learn to ignore. At first, she’d chalked it up to the move, to boxes misplaced. A pale blue pair of sensible cotton briefs. Then a lacy black thing she’d bought on a whim and never worn. Things vanished from the laundry basket with a soft, deniable regularity.
She stood in the sun-bleached laundry nook, folding a warm load of Rohan’s scrubs. The scent of fabric softener and clean cotton usually soothed her. Today it felt cloying. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. Her hands moved on autopilot: smooth, fold, stack.
Another one was gone. She knew it. The sage-green silk. She’d counted it into the hamper two days ago.
Her mind, a traitor, replayed the grainy monochrome image from the security feed a week prior—the silhouette in his room, the desperate, lonely arc of his back. She had closed the browser, her heart a trapped bird against her ribs. She had spoken to him less that day, her voice feeling unfamiliar in her own mouth. He’d noticed, asking if she was tired. She’d said yes, the migraine lie easy and smooth.
The click of the door behind her made her jump. A towel slipped from the pile.
Rohan stood in the doorway, holding a half-empty coffee mug. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up.”
“It’s fine,” she said, too quickly. She bent to retrieve the towel, using the movement to hide her face. “Just finishing up.”
He lingered. He did that more now, a silent presence in doorways, as if anchored by an invisible thread. “Need help?”
“No, no. Almost done.” She folded the towel with excessive precision. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the fluorescent tube and the distant rumble of the dryer.
“Priya…auntie?” He used the honorific, but it sounded strained, like a shirt that no longer fit. “Is everything okay? You’ve been quiet.”
She forced herself to look at him. He was leaning against the doorframe, his kind face etched with a concern that was painfully genuine. This was the boy she’d welcomed into her family, the man who had loved her daughter. The man whose secret she now carried, a hot, shameful stone in her own stomach.
“Everything is fine, beta,” she said, the endearment ash on her tongue. “Long week. Your mock exam is on Tuesday. We should focus on that.”
He nodded, but his eyes didn’t leave hers. They were dark, tired. “Right. The mock exam.” He took a sip of coffee. “I was just… I came to get some things. From my hamper.”
“It’s all here,” she said, gesturing to the neat pile of his clothes on the washing machine.
He moved into the small room, and the space shrank. He was close enough that she could smell the clean, soapy scent on his skin, underneath the faint hint of antiseptic from the hospital. He reached past her for a stack of his t-shirts, his arm brushing lightly against her shoulder.
A static jolt. She flinched.
He pulled back as if burned. “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” she murmured, turning back to her folding. Her hands trembled slightly. She clutched a pillowcase.
He didn’t leave. He stood there, holding his clothes, a man drowning in plain sight. “Priya,” he said, dropping the ‘auntie’ completely. His voice was low, ragged. “I feel like I’m… I’m losing my mind sometimes.”
The confession hung in the detergent-scented air. Priya froze, the pillowcase a wrinkled ball in her fists. She knew. She knew the shape of his madness. She had seen its outline on a screen.
“Grief does that,” she said finally, her doctor’s voice surfacing, calm and clinical. “It is a form of psychosis. You must be kind to yourself.”
“It’s not just grief.” The words were a whisper, torn from him. He was looking at the floor, at the faded linoleum tiles. “It’s… this house. It’s so empty and so full at the same time. It’s the silence. And sometimes… sometimes the silence is so loud I have to… I don’t know.”
Fill it, she thought. You fill it with a ghost of me.
She couldn’t breathe. The air was thick with everything unsaid. She saw his fingers, white-knuckled around the stack of t-shirts. The same fingers that had—
“You should get some rest,” she said, her own voice sounding miles away. “We’ll study later.”
He nodded, a short, jerky motion. “Yeah. Okay.” He turned to go, then paused. His gaze swept over the basket of her clothes, the one waiting to be folded. His eyes lingered for a fraction of a second too long on the tangled pastel fabrics within.
Then he was gone, his footsteps retreating down the hall.
Priya didn’t move. The hum of the light was a drill in her skull. Slowly, she unfolded the crushed pillowcase, smoothed it out on the machine. Her movements were mechanical. She reached into the basket for the next item.
It was one of Rohan’s t-shirts, mixed in with her load by mistake. She pulled it out. It was soft, well-worn grey cotton.
And tucked inside it, as if nestled there, was her missing sage-green silk underwear.
She stared. The delicate fabric was a vibrant splash against the grey. It hadn’t been lost in the wash. It had been here, hidden, then carelessly—or perhaps intentionally—returned, wrapped in his scent.
Her first reaction was a cold wave of violation. It washed over her, prickling her skin. This was a line, crossed in the dark.
But as she stood there, the cold receded, replaced by a terrifying, slow-moving heat. This wasn’t just about his shameful act. This was a message. A cry. A thing deliberately placed in her path, a secret too heavy for him to carry alone. He was handing her a piece of his madness, daring her to see it.
She lifted the silk scrap. It felt sinfully soft between her fingers. She thought of his face in the doorway, raw and pleading. I feel like I’m losing my mind.
Carefully, deliberately, she folded the green silk inside the grey t-shirt. She made the bundle neat and square. She walked out of the laundry room, down the hall, and stopped outside his closed bedroom door.
Her heart hammered against her sternum. She could hear the faint sound of shower water running from the ensuite.
She knelt, her knees protesting softly, and slid the folded bundle across the polished wood floor until it rested just inside the threshold, where he would have to see it when he opened the door.
No note. No words. Just a returned secret, an acknowledgement.
She rose and walked back to the kitchen, her legs unsteady. The ball was in his court now. The next move, the next word, the next unbearable look—it was his to make. And she, who had spent a lifetime maintaining order, had just willingly stepped into the chaos.