What does waiting do to a body? Not metaphorical waiting — not patience, not hope, not philosophical suspension. The physical act of counting days on a wall until your fingers wear down. The biological fact of staring at a road until your eyes lose their light. Chapter 127 is spoken by a woman whose lover has left on the king's business, and she is not philosophizing about absence. She is deteriorating. Her body is keeping score — dimmed eyes, thinning arms, bangles sliding off wrists that no longer fill them. But Valluvar does something extraordinary with this inventory of damage: he lets it escalate into fantasy, then longing, then a confession so honest it stops the chapter cold. When he finally returns, she asks, will I sulk or will I grab him? The question is not rhetorical. She genuinely does not know. And beneath her private anguish runs a political undertow — a soldier's voice wondering whether the king's victory is worth more than one evening at home with his wife. The chapter ends not with reunion but with the terrifying arithmetic of love: if the heart breaks before the lover returns, then returning is just arriving at a grave.