The Arts Faculty
The autumn air in Delhi was thick with the scent of roasting chestnuts and distant woodsmoke, the kind that settled into clothes and lingered long after the sun dipped behind the old stone walls of the university. It was late October, the campus of Delhi University bathed in the amber glow of sodium lamps that lined the arched corridors like silent sentinels. The Political Science department building stood quiet now, most students and faculty gone home, but a few lights still burned in the windows—late markers, stubborn graders, or those who simply preferred the hush of empty halls.
Anwar walked the familiar path from the Arts Faculty block toward the library, hands tucked into the pockets of his charcoal wool coat, the strap of his leather satchel resting across his chest. He carried himself with the quiet confidence of a man who had long ago learned to blend into any crowd. To the world, he was Anwar Khan, guest lecturer in Comparative Politics this semester, a scholar with a soft-spoken charm. To the few who knew the truth, he was something else entirely—a sleeper agent who had lain dormant for years, embedded so deeply that even his handlers sometimes forgot he existed until the signal came.
He stopped when he saw her. Tanya stood just outside the department entrance, a stack of marked answer scripts pressed against her chest. In the lantern light above the doorway, her creamy skin glowed warm, her long-lashed brown eyes scanning the courtyard with absent-minded intensity. She was beautiful in a way that felt effortless—proportionate, graceful, the kind of beauty that made the world slow for a heartbeat.
“Professor Tanya, isn’t it?” His voice was low, measured, carrying the familiar cadence of old Delhi. “I don’t believe we’ve properly met. Anwar. Comparative Politics, guest faculty.”
Her fingers were cool when they met his; he noticed the faint ink smudge on her index finger from red-pen corrections. He held the contact one responsible second longer before releasing. “I was just thinking,” he continued, nodding toward the scripts, “that whoever wrote those must have either brilliant ideas or exceptionally creative ways of avoiding them.”
She laughed softly—surprised, genuine—and the sound lodged somewhere deep in his chest.
