Chapter-1 The Listing
Aarav didn’t remember clicking the link, and that was the first thing that felt wrong, because one moment he was just lying on his bed scrolling through random videos, half-bored and half-lost in time, and the next moment his screen flickered and everything disappeared, replaced by a black page with a single line of white text glowing at the center.
WELCOME TO THE MEMORY AUCTION
He frowned, tapping the screen once, then again, but nothing changed, and before he could exit or lock his phone, another line appeared beneath it, slower this time, almost like it wanted him to read it carefully.
BID FOR WHAT OTHERS WISH TO FORGET.
A soft click echoed through his headphones. Suddenly, the screen shifted into something that looked like a live auction site—dark, minimal, and unsettlingly clean—filled with listings that made his chest tighten the more he read them.
Childhood memories. First heartbreaks. Deep fears. All of them displayed like objects, each with descriptions, timers, and prices that kept rising in real time as if people were actually bidding on pieces of someone’s life.
At first, Aarav almost laughed, thinking it was some weird game or ARG, but that feeling didn’t last long, because the more he scrolled, the more real it felt, and when a notification appeared saying he had been given ₹10,000 as a “trial balance,” his heartbeat picked up.
Then he saw it.
A single listing pinned at the top, different from the rest, with no description, no origin—just a title that made his stomach feel strangely heavy.
“Unidentified Memory”
The timer beside it was already counting down, dropping faster than it should, and for a brief second the screen glitched, flashing an unclear image of what looked like a dark room with someone inside it, before snapping back like nothing had happened at all.
Aarav stared at it,his mind told him to ignore it, to sc and forget this whole thing—but something about it pulled him in, something quiet and unsettling that didn’t feel like curiosity anymore.
The timer hit three.
He didn’t think.
He tapped.
BID PLACED — ₹5,000
For a second, nothing happened, and then the screen went completely black as a final message appeared, slow and deliberate, like it had been waiting for him.
Memory transfer initiated.
The lights in his room flickered once, twice, and then everything went dark, and in that darkness,Aarav saw something he knew wasn’t coming from his eyes—a closed door, old and silent, locked from the outside, with a sound rising from behind it.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock. He jolted upright, the lights suddenly back, his phone normal again in his hand, the room exactly the way it had been before—except his heart wouldn’t slow down, and a voice that wasn’t his own lingered in his head.
