SEI SIKIKAMI

Mornings in Norevia always began with the same three sounds: the tram bell outside, Mrs. Aldric's radio downstairs, and my alarm going off three times before I finally dragged myself out of bed.

That morning was no different. At least, not until I reached the bottom of the stairs.

Biscuit was missing.

Biscuit belonged to Mrs. Aldric, who lived on the ground floor and treated her beagle as if he were a particularly difficult child. He was small, stubborn, and possessed of a bark that could wake half the building. Every morning, without fail, he announced my arrival on the stairs as though I were trespassing on his property.

We had maintained this arrangement for two years. I disliked him. He disliked me. It was the most stable relationship in my life.

Except that morning, he wasn't barking.

He sat outside Mrs. Aldric's door, watching me descend. When I reached the last step, he lowered his head and backed away, slowly enough that I noticed every movement.

I stopped.

"What?" I asked him. "Did my face finally offend you?"

Biscuit didn't respond. He slipped through the half-open door and disappeared inside.

I waited for the usual barking to start.

It didn't.

For a moment, I considered knocking on Mrs. Aldric's door to ask whether something was wrong with him. Then I remembered that I was already running late, and I had no intention of explaining to my neighbour why I was concerned about a dog that spent most of his life trying to frighten me.

I left.

By the time I reached the street, I had almost convinced myself there was nothing to think about. Dogs behaved strangely sometimes. So did people. Neither fact usually deserved an investigation.

I worked at the Municipal Records Office, where my job involved digitising documents that most people had forgotten existed. Birth certificates, property disputes, complaints about broken drains, requests for street repairs that had gone unanswered for decades. I had recently scanned a letter from a man who had spent eleven years arguing with the city about a tree that supposedly blocked his bedroom window.

Sometimes I thought the entire history of Norevia was one very long grievance.

The work was predictable, the building was cold, and the tea in the staff kitchen tasted as if someone had washed the cups with the same cloth for a month. I had learned not to complain. Complaining required the belief that something might change.

Around noon, while I was on my third cup of tea and scanning a parking dispute from 1998, Carles walked in.

He never told me when he was coming.

At first, I had assumed he was forgetful. Later, I began to suspect that he liked arriving without warning because it gave him a chance to study my reaction. Whether he was right about that depended on the day.

"You don't answer your phone," he said.

He placed a small paper bag on the counter beside my scanner.

"You don't need to call if you're going to show up anyway."

His eyes moved briefly to my computer screen before returning to me. He didn't ask what I was working on. He already knew I spent most of my days surrounded by records nobody wanted to read.

I nodded towards the bag.

"What's that?"

"Cheese pastries. From the bakery near your office."

"And?"

"You like them."

"I liked them."

Carles looked at me for a moment.

He had a tell. Whenever he had an answer but didn't want to give it, he straightened his watch. He did it now, adjusting the strap even though it was already sitting perfectly on his wrist.

"Fine," he said. "I'll take them back."

"Leave them. I'm hungry."

His shoulders relaxed a fraction. He didn't smile, but I knew I had won a point.

That was how things worked between us. Neither of us enjoyed losing, and neither of us knew what to do when we won. We kept score anyway.

We had spent two years learning each other's habits and considerably longer misunderstanding what they meant. I knew how Carles took his coffee, which subjects made him go quiet, and when he was pretending not to be annoyed. He knew which remarks would make me defensive and exactly how long I could maintain a silence before I filled it myself.

We had become very good at recognising each other's weaknesses.

We were less talented at leaving them alone.

"You didn't come home last night," I said.

I made it sound casual. I was rather proud of that, considering I had been thinking about it since I woke up.

Carles didn't answer immediately. He pulled out the chair opposite mine and sat down, resting his hands on the table.

He worked as a technician in the Water and Sanitation Board's laboratory. He described his job as though it were simultaneously the dullest and most important occupation in Norevia. Most days, I couldn't tell whether he genuinely found the work interesting or simply preferred talking about water samples to talking about himself.

"I got held up," he said. "Stayed late at the lab."

"Until three in the morning?"

"Yes, Mona. Until three in the morning."

"Who stays in a water-testing lab until three in the morning?"

His expression barely changed.

"Mona."

"I'm just asking."

"No, you're checking."

I looked down at the document on my screen. The parking dispute suddenly seemed fascinating.

He was right, which was inconvenient.

"Maybe there's something worth checking," I said.

Carles leaned back in his chair. "If you want to know something, ask me."

"I just did."

"You asked a question you already had an answer for."

"Then perhaps you should give me a better answer."

His jaw tightened.

I could have stopped there. I knew that. There was a point in every argument when I recognised the sensible thing to do and deliberately chose something else.

"You do this every time things get difficult," I said. "You hide behind work. Your whole life is work. That's why nobody stays."

The words landed between us.

For a second, neither of us moved. Behind the counter, the photocopier started up, dragging a sheet of paper through its rollers with a mechanical whine.

I knew exactly what I had done. I had taken something personal, something I knew he carried with him, and used it because I wanted to hurt him before he could make me feel foolish for caring where he had been.

The worst part was that I couldn't dismiss the words as entirely untrue. There were things about Carles that made it difficult to stay close to him. There were also things about me that made staying close to anyone feel like a test they hadn't agreed to take.

He picked up the paper bag.

"And you," he said quietly, "always say the thing that will hurt most first. Then you watch to see if the other person stays."

He stood.

"Nobody has yet, Mona. Ever wondered why?"

I had an answer ready. Several, actually. I could have told him he was being unfair. I could have reminded him that he had walked into my office uninvited and expected me to be grateful for a bag of pastries. I could have asked why he had stayed away all night and then acted as if my concern were an insult.

Instead, I said nothing.

Carles set the bag back on the counter.

He didn't slam the door when he left. He didn't even close it properly. He simply walked away, leaving it open behind him.

That was worse in its own way. He never made a scene when he was hurt. He left me with the silence and enough room to understand that I had caused it.

I stared at the paper bag for several seconds before opening it.

The pastries were still warm.

I took one bite, discovered that I wasn't hungry anymore, and wrapped it back in its paper.

Then I returned to work.

By late afternoon, the argument had settled into the back of my mind, where it could irritate me without requiring any immediate attention. I had learned that keeping busy was easier than deciding whether I was sorry. There was always another file to scan, another document to rename, another box of forgotten paperwork waiting for someone to make it searchable.

That evening, I went down to the second archive.

The older Water Board records were stored there, in a basement room that smelled of damp cardboard and dust. A portion of Carles's department's paperwork eventually found its way into our collection, and I was responsible for digitising the boxes that had been sitting untouched for years.

I didn't particularly want to spend my evening among municipal records. My problem was with Carles, not with the Water Board. But work had one advantage over people. It didn't expect me to explain myself.

A small television hung outside the first archive. It was permanently set to mute, its sound having been switched off months ago after someone complained that the news was distracting. Nobody watched it anymore. It remained there because taking it down would have required a maintenance request, and maintenance requests could remain unanswered for years.

I was passing beneath it when the ticker caught my eye.

HARBOUR DISTRICT: SECTIONS OF WARD 4 WATER-LINE SEALED FOR ROUTINE MAINTENANCE. RESIDENTS ASKED TO COOPERATE.

I stopped.

There was something wrong with the wording.

I had spent four years scanning municipal notices. Maintenance announcements referred to streets, roads, intersections, and occasionally numbered service zones. They didn't usually refer to a ward without specifying the affected area.

I looked up at the screen again.

The ticker continued moving, but the notice had already disappeared. Cricket scores replaced it, followed by an advertisement for a local furniture shop.

I waited for the announcement to return.

It didn't.

Perhaps I had misread it. Perhaps the city had changed its reporting format and nobody had bothered to circulate the updated guidelines. There were plenty of ordinary explanations for things that looked unusual when you examined them too closely.

I repeated that to myself as I walked into the archive.

The room was almost empty. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the ventilation system rattled somewhere behind the ceiling. I switched on my workstation, checked the inventory list, and began opening boxes.

The envelope was wedged between two cartons on the lowest shelf.

At first, I assumed someone had filed it in the wrong place. It wasn't unusual. Documents migrated between departments, folders lost their labels, and entire records sometimes appeared in collections that had nothing to do with them.

But this envelope had no file number, no date stamp, and no departmental seal.

Only one line had been written across the front.

Carles H. | Lab Dept. | Verify before dispatch.

I stared at his name.

There were other technicians in the laboratory, and I had never memorised the complete staff directory. Still, the initial was enough to make me pause.

I should have put the envelope back.

Instead, I noticed that it was already open.

That made it easier to tell myself I wasn't doing anything particularly wrong.

Inside was a transfer slip.

The form was brief. It contained a date, the identification of the originating department, and the destination for a scheduled sample transfer.

Ward 4 to Annex C.

The transfer was scheduled for the day after tomorrow.

The signature line was blank.

I read the slip again, slower this time. There was nothing obviously alarming about transferring samples between facilities. That was ordinary laboratory procedure. I knew enough about Carles's work to understand that samples had to be collected, documented, and moved for testing.

What bothered me was the destination.

Annex C.

I had never encountered that name in the Water Board records I had scanned. Not once in four years of digitising documents from the department.

I turned the paper over.

Nothing.

When I held it beneath the fluorescent light, I noticed faint marks near the bottom of the page. Someone had written a line in pencil and then tried to erase it. The words were too faint to read properly, but the pressure of the pencil had left shallow grooves in the paper.

I tilted the slip towards the light.

A few marks became visible, but not enough to form a complete sentence. I could make out the beginning of a word and what looked like a number. The rest had been rubbed away.

I took out my phone and photographed the page.

Then I stopped and looked at what I had done.

If this was a routine transfer, there was no reason to photograph it. If it wasn't routine, taking a picture of a document bearing Carles's name was hardly a harmless way to satisfy my curiosity.

I deleted the photograph.

For several seconds, I considered calling him.

I could have asked him what Annex C was. I could have told him I had found a transfer slip with his name on it. If there was an innocent explanation, I would have it. If there wasn't, I would at least know that I hadn't imagined the connection between the laboratory and the strange notice on the television.

But we had argued that morning.

And I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I was thinking about him.

That was the excuse I chose.

I placed the slip back inside the envelope, returned the envelope to the shelf, and entered the room's inventory number into my workstation. I made no note of the document. I didn't flag the box for review or request clarification from the department.

I left the archive exactly as I had found it.

Almost.

As I switched off the lights, I looked back at the shelf.

The envelope was barely visible between the cartons. Anyone else might have passed it without noticing.

I wondered who had put it there.

Then I wondered whether Carles knew.

A third thought followed, one I would have preferred not to examine. If he didn't know, I had information he didn't have. For once, I would be the person holding something back.

I left before I could decide whether that felt like satisfaction or revenge.

At 8:17 that evening, Carles sent me a message.

Sorry about this morning. That's all.

I read it twice.

My first instinct was to type, It's fine.

I deleted it.

Then I typed, Yeah. Me too.

I sent the message before I could reconsider.

He didn't reply.

I put my phone down and cooked dinner. The meal was ordinary, the kitchen was quiet, and nothing happened that could reasonably be described as unusual. I ate, washed my plate, and checked my phone twice before admitting that I was waiting for another message.

There wasn't one.

By midnight, I had decided that I was tired enough to sleep.

Outside my bedroom window, the streetlight had been flickering for months. It flashed at irregular intervals, sometimes going dark for several seconds before returning with a faint electrical buzz. I had complained about it to the building manager twice. Both times, I had been told someone would look into it.

That night, the light burned steadily.

I noticed it while turning off my bedside lamp.

For a moment, I watched the pale circle it cast across the pavement. The light didn't flicker or dim. Even the faint buzzing seemed to have stopped.

I considered getting up to check whether the bulb had been replaced.

Then I decided I didn't care enough.

I pulled the blanket over myself and closed my eyes.

At 11:52 p.m., my phone rang.

Carles.

I answered before the second ring.

"Hello?"

There was no reply.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked the screen. The call was still connected.

"Carles?"

A low hum filled the line. It reminded me of a ventilation fan running in a large, empty room. Somewhere beyond it, I heard footsteps. They were distant and uneven, as if the person making them were walking across a hard floor.

I sat up.

"Carles, can you hear me?"

A man's voice came through the interference.

It sounded far away, muffled by distance or something covering the microphone. There was no urgency in it, no obvious emotion. The words arrived slowly, separated by a pause that made me lean closer to the phone.

"...Verhaal, Mona. Contact pending."

I went still.

The voice had said my name.

Before I could respond, another voice spoke in the background. It was closer, but the sound broke apart before I could make out the words. I heard a brief scrape, followed by a sharp click.

The call ended.

I lowered the phone and stared at the screen.

Nine seconds.

That was how long the call had lasted.

I called Carles back immediately.

His phone was switched off.

I tried again, certain I had misdialled the number. The result was the same. I opened our messages and checked the time of his last text, as if the ordinary words he had sent earlier might explain why he had just called me from somewhere I couldn't identify.

Sorry about this morning. That's all.

I read the message once more, then returned to the call log.

Verhaal.

I didn't know what the word meant in that context. I didn't know who had spoken, where Carles was, or why the second voice had sounded as if someone were standing beside him.

But I knew one thing.

The voice had used my name as if it were reading from a record.

Not calling for me. Not asking for me.

Identifying me.

I got out of bed and crossed to the window. The street below was empty. A tram passed at the far end of the road, its lights sliding over the wet pavement before disappearing around the corner.

The streetlight remained perfectly steady.

Then, from somewhere downstairs, Biscuit barked.

Once.

The sound stopped so abruptly that I found myself waiting for the second bark, the furious continuation that had annoyed me every morning for two years.

It never came.

I stood at the window with my phone in my hand, listening to the silence.

Earlier that day, I had found a transfer slip bearing Carles's name. It mentioned a destination I had never seen in the records. Before that, a television ticker had displayed a water-line notice with wording that didn't belong on a routine maintenance announcement.

Now Carles had called me from a switched-off phone, and an unfamiliar voice had spoken my name.

I could still tell myself that each thing had an ordinary explanation.

I could blame a mistake in the records, a faulty broadcast, a technical problem with the call. I could pretend the strange word meant nothing and that I had simply been tired enough to imagine a connection.

But the details had begun to overlap, and I couldn't make them separate again.

I opened my messages and looked at Carles's name.

My thumb hovered over the screen.

I could tell him about the envelope. I could ask where he was. I could report the call and let someone else decide whether it mattered.

Instead, I opened a new message.

Where are you?

I stared at the words.

Then I deleted them.

I had spent the entire day keeping something from Carles because I wanted to hold on to an advantage. Now, for the first time, I wondered whether the information I had kept to myself had anything to do with the call.

I didn't know who had spoken.

I didn't know what Annex C was.

And I didn't know why someone had used my name as though they were confirming that I existed.

I only knew that I had been given a reason to stop pretending nothing was wrong.

Whether I would listen to it was another matter.