It Started Here
It was a summer day when Zack arrived in Thailand in search of an apartment, but despite the bright streets and restless crowds, something about the city felt distant and unfamiliar, as if it didn’t fully accept his presence; days passed in endless searching, every door he knocked on closing before hope could enter, until exhaustion led him into a quiet shrine one evening where the air felt heavy with silence and the faint scent of incense clung to the stillness, and there he met a saint who listened without interruption before handing him a small piece of paper and saying, “Go here, and you will find a place,” before disappearing inside again, leaving Zack with the uneasy feeling that this meeting had not been accidental.
The building at the address stood old and motionless, its walls faded but not broken, its windows dark yet watchful, and when Zack rang the bell an old man opened the door with a calmness that felt rehearsed, informing him that ten rooms were available but each already housed a single occupant; Zack hesitated before agreeing to share, only to be warned of one rule — no one was ever allowed to enter Room No. 17 — a rule spoken not as a suggestion but as something absolute.
Zack accepted the condition and after completing the payment, the old man handed him a small metal key, its surface cold against his palm, before guiding him to his assigned room.
But when he stepped inside, the air seemed to tighten around him because standing there was Z — his childhood enemy — now changed beyond recognition into someone colder, sharper, and disturbingly composed, whose face showed no surprise, no resentment, no familiarity, only a stillness that felt less human and more like absence.
Z never spoke.
He left without notice and returned without explanation, and while laughter and voices filled the corridors outside, their room remained untouched by sound, as if silence had claimed it, until loneliness finally pushed Zack to break the quiet and their past resurfaced in fragments — the broken guitar, the shattered bat, the childish anger — only for Z to reveal that the guitar had been the last gift from parents who died soon after, leaving him alone in a world that taught survival instead of comfort and silence instead of grief.
The warmth that followed their decision to let go of the past felt fragile, temporary, like a candle in a place that did not allow light.
Days later, the old man gathered everyone together, his nervousness impossible to hide as he announced that the landlord had ordered two rooms to be emptied, and if one remained vacant, a pair would have to move into Room No. 17 — the name alone shifting the air in the hallway.
Chits were drawn.
When the names were spoken, the silence that followed felt heavier than fear.
Zack and Z had been chosen.
The old man slowly handed them another set of keys — older, heavier — and informed them that from now on they would only have to pay half the rent.
No one congratulated them.
No one spoke.
And no one explained why Room 17 had never been opened.
