It was dusk and the sky was painted in reddish-orange due to the reflection of the sunset. The lights inside the verandah were only enough to search for the electric switchboard with squeezed eyes. Mr Ahuja turned the lights on to clear the darkness and turned to return to his room, but a slapping sound echoed in the house and pulled his legs against to walk. He turned around in the direction of his son Shiv's room, which was across the verandah. The door of his son's room opened with a jerk and Suhana walked out of the room with tears in her eyes.

Suhana was a childhood friend of Shiv and lived in the same colony with other kids.

But they were not kidding anymore and were grown enough to handle their problems. That was the reason which held Shiv's father to interfere and he preferred to let Shiv and Suhana sort their problems together. Suhana, a 28-year-old fashion designer ran towards the main gate with her peacock coloured shoulder length hairs bouncing with sync to the steps. She walked out of the house with the gate slammed shut behind her.

Mr Ahuja killed his urge to talk to his son and walked to his room.

An hour passed and Mr Ahuja came out of his room again to walk to the kitchen to prepare the evening tea for himself. He could have enjoyed the tea with some snacks if the second echoed the sound of the slap had not caught his attention. He turned to watch the door of Shiv's room open again, but this time it was Priya who walked out with tears in her eyes.

Priya, a 27-year-old PhD scholar, was also one of the friends from Shiv's group and lived together in the same colony.

The curiosity bank of Mr Ahuja had reached the limit and he dropped the idea to sip the tea but decided to understand the situation which caused his son to receive two slaps from two of her childhood friends.

He walked to his son's room and sat on one corner of the bed.

"What is happening, Shiv?" He decided to talk bluntly with Shiv.

"It is complicated, papa," Shiv replied as he hid his face inside the blanket on the bed. Shiv was a responsible officer in the bank and watching him hiding from the problems inside the blanket made his father more concerned.

"Shiv, I guess this is not the time to hide anything," his father pulled the blanket away from Shiv. "What is it all about? I am your father, tell me."

"Papa, you will not understand," Shiv sat with crossed legs and head bowed down in an attempt to ignore the eye contact with his father.

"Shiv, please be honest and tell me, have you cheated with Priya and Suhana in love?"

Shiv raised his head to look into the eyes of his father, who had a story with him after watching Shiv receive slaps from two women.

"You think that I got trapped in a love triangle?" Shiv asked his father.

"It does seem the same,"

"Papa, it is more than a love triangle" Shiv scoffed and walked to the mirror hanging in the wall to look at the mark on his face because of the slaps.

"More than a love triangle?" His father followed him and stood behind Shiv. "Are you saying the possibility of love quadrant?"

Shiv turned to face his father who was chuckling, thinking it was a joke.

"Papa," Shiv paused before saying. "More than that."

His father's laugh faded beneath the expression of surprise and his eyes filled with more questions than before, "Love pentagon?"

Shiv nodded to his question and walked back to his bed to sit cross-legged.

"Will you take the honour to explain your nod please?" Shiv's father took his previous place and sat on the corner of the bed.

"My pleasure," Shiv replied and bowed his head a little. "As you know we are a group of four people, who are friends from school. I was friends with Suhana, Priya and Ranveer from childhood. So the problem in my life started a long time back."

"Problem of my life started when you took birth, I don't have time for the drama," his father was not in the mood to give a fuck about the timeline, he wanted to know the plot as early as possible.

"Okay," Shiv took a deep breath before continuing, "I fell in love with Suhana when I was in the school itself."

"So, you and Suhana love each other from school?" his father questioned. "And I was paying a monthly fee of thirty thousand rupees for that?"

"You were paying thirty thousand rupees for the one-sided love only," Shiv clarified.

"So Suhana doesn't love you back?"

"No, she is different," Shiv took a deep breath again.

"Of course, she is," it was the father's time. "She is different and smart enough to reject you."

"Papa, when I said she is different, I meant that... she is different," Shiv completed his sentence with a hesitation in his tone.

"Shiv, a different meaning is different, in all languages," his father replied in the same tone to mock him.

"Papa, different in the sense of preference," Shiv continued. "Suhana is in love with Priya."

"What?" That was received as a complete shock from his father. "Suhana and Priya are lesbians? I had never imagined this."

"Not Priya," Shiv corrected him. "Only Suhana. Only Suhana is in love with Priya."

"Then what about Priya?" His father had built a heap of curiosity inside him by that time.

"She is having a crush on Ranveer," Shiv revealed.

"Oh," the words fell from his father's mouth. "So, Ranveer and Priya are already a couple? Well, Ranveer is a deserving person. He has been with you all from childhood and is currently a successful lawyer."

"But papa, Ranveer is also different," Shiv revealed the words in a low voice. His father leaned forward towards him to ask, "Different as in? Only different? Or different-different?"

"As in different-different," Shiv too leaned forward to reveal the secret. "He is in love with Arjun, his law school classmate."

"I am confused," his father threw himself back to put his head to rest on the wall behind. "So, you are in love with Suhana. But Suhana prefers girls over boys. Same way, Ranveer prefers boys over girls. But Priya still feels attracted to Ranveer. In this equation, Priya is already a crush of Suhana, because Suhana is a lesbian but Priya is not. Since Priya is straight, she likes Ranveer, but Ranveer is a gay."

"Apparently, correct!" Shiv replied.

"And out of all this chaos, no one loves you back?" Shiv's father asked.

"I was not asking for the truth bomb, papa. Ouch!" Shiv said.

His father ignored his comment and went into calculating in mind, he was murmuring in a low voice about the chain, "Priya is equalled to Ranveer. Shiv is equal to Suhana. Ranveer is equal to Arjun, but Arjun is equal to Suhana. Suhana is equal to Ranveer. Ranveer is equal to Shiv."

"Papa, you are saying it all wrong," Shiv interrupted. His father realised the same and stood from the bed to take the paper and a pen from the table, and started drawing the graph explaining the love train.

"But, I still didn't understand one thing," he asked, turning towards Shiv. "Why did you get slapped by Priya and Suhana?"

"To know that, you need to walk into flashback with me," Shiv replied.

"Continue," his father walked back to the bed and sat to hear the story.

"Today morning, I and Priya were together in her room and were discussing our failures in love." Shiv began with the story. "I was sad over the ignorance of my love from Suhana. And Priya was hurt by not receiving the mutual feelings from Ranveer."

Shiv's POV started.

"Newton was an asshole," Priya said.

"Why are you abusing a dead person if you are not able to complete your PhD," I said while struggling with the unsolved Rubic's cube in her room.

"I am not talking about my PhD," she was walking continuously in the room. "I am talking about his law that says every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If that is so, then why is Ranveer not reflecting with the same reaction against my action. You know what happened yesterday?"

"It is a very illogical question, but I will still reply as no, I don't know what happened," I replied while continuing with the cube solving.

"I told Ranveer that I am all alone in the house, can you come over to accompany me?" She continued. "He came over with his friend Arjun and they both started playing table tennis in my house."

"You have table tennis?" I was surprised to know that.

"They were playing on my dining table, with my PhD books as a bat," she revealed the truth.

"And the ball?" I still had my queries.

"That they bought," she replied in a dull voice. "But can't he come over just to meet me?"

"Priya, you are aware that he is gay, right?"

"He is not gay, he hallucinates it only. Deep in his heart, he likes me," she replied and jumped on her bed and dug her head in the blanket.

"A typical straight human behaviour," I chuckled and threw the Rubic's cube back on the table after solving it.

"Who are you to pass this judgement, fucker?" She raised her head again to yell at me. "You are yourself in love with a lesbian."

I gave a plain sharp look to her and said, "She is hallucinating over it. She is not lesbian."

"Oh! You should read the flirty message she sent me," it was her time to laugh at me.

"You should focus on Ranveer, instead of trying to be my co-wife"

"I don't want that," she said and walked till me. "You know what I want?"

Before I could have said anything, she grabbed my T-shirt and pulled me close to her.

"I want Ranveer in this place and," she held my face in both of her palms and pulled it close enough for her to touch my forehead with her forehead and closed her eyes. "And to just be like this, forever."

She left my face and turned around to walk back a step from me.

"Is this too much to ask?" She asked in a low voice.

"You do love him a lot na?" I asked her, knowing exactly how it feels to be at her place.

"The same way you do love Suhana," she replied with a smile. "What do you want from Suhana?"

"Same as you want," I said with a chuckle and took a step closer to her and held her face in my hands to place my forehead on her forehead. "To be like this forever."

I guess the god wanted this to be forever, not with Suhana but with Priya itself because, at that exact moment when I was standing there holding Priya, her parents entered the room without notice.

"Shiv?" her mother's voice exclaimed my name.

"Aunty!" I screamed and pushed Priya with enough force to make her fall on the floor.

"I always knew that you two are together," her father expressed his happiness. "I had always seen the love for each other in your eyes. I would be very happy to turn this childhood friendship into a lifetime relationship"

"But uncle," before I could have countered him, the situation escalated from control and uncle hugged me as my father-in-law.

"My medical empire will be yours after the marriage," he declared to me as his business's heir in excitement.

"Medical empire?" I pull myself away from the hug. "You have a medical shop on the main road, that's it."

"We will fix the dates soon," the parents rushed out in excitement, leaving me behind in the room in shock.

Shiv's POV ended.

His father heard the story till the last word and made a 'tch-tch' sound to show his grief.

"That explains why Priya slapped you," Shiv's father continued. " But why did Suhana slap you?"

"Priya didn't slap me for this," Shiv told. "To understand things much better, you first have to hear the second chapter of this drama."

"Second chapter?" His father was more than surprised. "What else happened?"

"A lot more," I tried to hide my pain with a smile on my face.