They didn't wait for the night anymore.
By morning, the city had become a charged wire. Concrete hummed. Curtains twitched. Balconies carried the scent of bare skin, and the sky no longer judged.
Rhea sat on the edge of her bed—naked, legs open, breath already uneven. The fan above spun too fast, like her thoughts, like her pulse. She stared out at the buildings opposite her window, and she knew it without needing confirmation:
Another woman was doing the same.
She moaned into the daylight, not waiting for privacy. "Aaah… mmm… ahh–haaah…" It wasn't porn. It wasn't performative. It was the release of decades of holding back.
Her voice was low at first, like smoke curling from lips. But then it surged. "Unnava? Vinipistundaa?" she gasped in Telugu. Are you there? Can you hear me?
Because now, the moan wasn't just a sound—it was a call. A signal.
From the apartment opposite, a window opened. A woman in a white slip stepped out onto her balcony. Eyes locked. No words. But her moan answered Rhea's like thunder to lightning. "Ahh… yes… yes…" Her fingers disappeared beneath the hem of her slip.
Somewhere below, a delivery boy slowed his scooter, looked up, mouth slightly open, unsure whether to feel aroused or defeated by wonder.
The city had changed.
Women were no longer hiding their pleasure. They were sharing it like revolutionaries shared poems.
Inside Rhea's flat, Kanchu walked in from the kitchen. Shirtless. Holding two cups of black coffee. But she was already panting, a thin sheen of sweat glistening over her breasts, her belly rising and falling like a protest flag.
She didn't take the coffee. She took his wrist and placed his hand between her legs.
Wet.
"Can you feel what I didn't say all these years?"
He nodded, jaw clenched.
Then silence, but only for a beat.
She let out a long, drawn moan as his fingers moved. Not fast. True. Slow and painful and knowing. "Aaaahhh... mmmhhh... fuck, right there..."
Her hips rose. She bit her lip, then let go. Blood. No shame. She smeared it across his chest and laughed—wild.
He knelt before her like nothing divine was watching and everything real mattered. Mouth between her legs. Her fingers gripped the back of his head.
And from her throat it rose—"Haaah... mmmnnn... ohh–yes..."—a moan that shattered something in the air. A painting fell from the wall.
She kept going. She didn't stop. Not when he lifted her, not when her back hit the wall, not when his cock entered her with that sharp, unforgiving truth.
The rhythm was not sweet. It was angry. It was loving. It was true.
And her moans came again—"Naa swaram idi… naa swaram idi…" (This is my voice... my voice...)
No metaphors.
No gods.
Only this—flesh against wall. Pulse against skin. The city was listening.
And responding.
Across town, in a college dorm, a girl pressed her thighs together under a blanket and whispered her moans into her phone's voice recorder. She would send it later to her lover. Not as porn—but as poetry.
On the metro, a woman played an audio clip of moaning women through her earphones and smiled. A businessman beside her grew nervous. She looked him in the eye and turned the volume up.
In a luxury villa, a woman in her sixties touched herself to the memory of the husband who never made her come. Her moan cracked her. It wasn't pretty. It was hers.
Back in Rhea's room, Kanchu came with a growl. But her moan outlived him. It echoed.
Long after they collapsed on the floor, it was still there.
The Moan That Made Walls Tremble.