The first three days after marriage felt... weirdly quiet.
No toothpaste drama.
No side-of-the-bed arguments.
No complaints about his laptop wires or code windows open at 3 A.M.
Sreeja just... adjusted. Smoothly. Silently. Like she had a manual titled "How To Be a Perfect Wife (Spy Edition)" and had memorized every page.
His mother was thrilled.
"She's like gold-plated Lakshmi Devi, ra. No attitude. No Instagram. God bless this match."
Arjun smiled and nodded. But inside?
He was suspicious.
Because nothing this smooth ever ends well — especially when you're the Head of Cybersecurity and your new wife runs like an encrypted operating system.
It started small.
He took a casual candid of her on Day 2 — soft morning light, coffee in hand, wearing a sky-blue saree. The kind of picture that earns a thousand heart reacts in family WhatsApp groups.
He saved it to his private folder.
The next morning, the file was gone.
Not moved. Not misplaced.
Just... vanished.
No trace in recycle bin. Not in backup. Not even cached.
Even the metadata looked scrubbed.
He opened a terminal window and ran a netstat check on a hunch.
Sreeja walked by at that exact moment.
"Trying to trace me already?" she said, not even looking at the screen.
He turned to respond —
But she was already gone, sipping coffee like nothing happened.
On Day 3, he was helping organize the kitchen when he found a strange steel dabba tucked behind the masala box.
No label. Cold to the touch. Sealed tight.
He opened it.
Inside:
One unregistered SIMA
pair of black gloves
A folded note that read:
"Mission on hold. Code: Sarpika. Stay low."
He stared at it for a full minute before putting everything back exactly the way he found it.
That night, over dinner, she served him extra dal and asked if he wanted appadam.
He stared at her.
"Do you like crime thrillers?"
She didn't look up from her plate.
"I prefer live action."
He smiled. Nodded. Chewed slowly.
But forgot what dal was supposed to taste like.
He started keeping notes. Quietly. In a locked document titled:
"Wife – Possible Agent? Do not share."
On the fourth night, after lights-out, he whispered from the dark:
"Good night…"
"Good night, Arjun."
There was silence.
Then she added, casually:
"And next time you open that dabba, wear gloves. Fingerprints are annoying to wipe."
He didn't move for a full minute.
Just blinked. And stared at the ceiling.
His wife knew he touched it.
She was calm. Unbothered. Polite.
Too polite.
And somehow, that was scarier than shouting.