Prologue
The fog hanging outside her window was thick enough to swallow the streetlight below, but inside the small room, the chill felt heavier. Ana wrapped her faded shawl tighter around her shoulders and pulled her feet up onto the chair, trying to keep her toes warm.
On the desk in front of her, the laptop screen glowed brightly against the dark, displaying half-finished paragraphs of a Hindi-to-English document. The payment for this freelance gig wouldn’t be much, just a few hundred rupees, but every single rupee meant one less piece of pocket money she had to ask from her father. At twenty-two, asking him for college project fees or a bus pass felt less like a request and more like begging for permission to exist.
Downstairs, a door slammed shut.
Ana’s hands froze over the keyboard. Her shoulders instantly hitched up toward her ears. The muffled voices from the living room grew sharper, rising into the familiar rhythm of an argument that had been playing out her entire life. Her mother’s soft, defensive murmur was quickly drowned out by her father’s rising, sharp voice.
It was always about the monthly expenses. Or the tea being late. Or the unwashed dishes. It didn't matter how the fight started; Ana knew, with bitter certainty, how it would end.
"She’s twenty-two!" her father’s voice rang clear through the thin ceiling, carrying that distinct, heavy edge. "She sits upstairs all day! Look at other families, their daughters are settled, or at least they don't act like royalty. She is a burden, and you have spoiled her!"
Ana closed her eyes, letting out a slow, quiet breath. There it was. Her name brought into a fight that had nothing to do with her.
She remembered the only time she had dared to stand up to him, months ago. She had walked downstairs, her voice shaking, asking why every frustration in the house had to end with her being blamed.
His reaction had been swift and sharp.
"Wow. We feed you, we raise you, and now you talk back to your father? This is the respect you learn at college?"
After that day, the wall between them had grown taller, thicker, and colder. He spoke to her now only when necessary, treating her less like a daughter and more like a permanent guest who had overstayed her welcome.
She wanted to pack her bag and walk out. She thought about it every night. But then she would look at her mother, the sweet, tired woman who stayed up late just to leave a glass of hot milk on Ana’s desk. If Ana left, her mother would bear the entire weight of her father’s resentment alone.
A sharp glare of light lit up her desk as her phone screen flickered. An alarm: 09:30 PM - Report home status.
She looked at the clock, then at the half-translated page, and finally at the closed door of her bedroom. In this house, her life was run by tight schedules, unspoken curfews, and the heavy air of conditional affection.
Ana let out a long breath, placed her cold fingers back onto the keyboard, and resumed typing. She couldn't control the house, and she couldn't change her father. But word by word, translation by translation, she was going to buy her way out.
