2:13 AM

2:1 3 AM

The room was silent in a way that didn’t feel peaceful. It felt heavy, like the air itself had slowed down just enough to make Noor more aware of her own existence. She sat on the edge of her study chair, staring at her laptop screen without really seeing it. Medical notes were open in one tab, half-read and forgotten, while a coding tutorial played in another—muted, lifeless, just moving images she wasn’t paying attention to anymore. She wasn’t studying. She wasn’t resting either. She was simply existing in a space that felt increasingly distant from her.

Outside her window, the world was asleep. Even the silence felt layered, as if everything had agreed to pause except her. Noor rubbed her eyes slowly, the tiredness inside her not the kind that sleep could fix. It was deeper than that, something that had been sitting inside her for so long it no longer felt like a temporary feeling. It felt permanent. She leaned back slightly and stared at the ceiling, thinking nothing in particular, or maybe thinking too much at once.

Her phone lay face-down on the desk, silent and forgotten, just like most things in her life. No messages. No calls. No notifications that meant anything. The kind of silence that should have been normal by now, but somehow still felt a little too empty. She exhaled softly and reached for her water bottle, but paused halfway when her attention shifted—her phone had vibrated.

Noor frowned slightly. At this hour, it was unusual. She turned it over slowly, expecting spam or a wrong number, something meaningless. But the screen displayed something that made her pause for a fraction of a second longer than usual: Unknown Number. Her fingers hesitated in the air before she unlocked it. One message was waiting.

“Tomorrow, don’t go to the anatomy lab.”

For a moment, she didn’t react. Her mind treated it like noise, something irrelevant that didn’t deserve attention. A prank, maybe. A random message sent to the wrong person. It was almost laughable. She placed the phone back on the desk and turned to her laptop again, whispering softly to herself that it was stupid and continued scrolling without thinking about it.

Time passed in a blur of silence and half-focused thoughts. The clock on her laptop slowly changed to 2:12 AM, unnoticed by her. Her eyes felt heavier now, her mind drifting in and out of focus as exhaustion pulled at her quietly. One minute passed. Then her phone vibrated again.

This time, the sound felt different. Not just a notification, but something sharper, like it demanded attention. Noor reached for it slowly and turned it over. Again—Unknown Number. Another message, shorter this time.

“I told you.”

Her breath paused slightly, though she didn’t fully understand why. Something about it didn’t fit into logic the way it should have. She opened the first message again, reading it more carefully this time. “Don’t go to the anatomy lab.” Her mind tried to process it rationally—coincidence, spam, meaningless warning—but something about the timing, the certainty, made it feel strangely personal.

She checked the number. Nothing. No name, no trace, no identity. Just a blank digital presence. Noor leaned back slowly, her gaze drifting again to the clock.

2:13 AM.

The moment it changed, her phone vibrated once more.

She froze.

For the first time that night, something inside her didn’t feel sleepy anymore. It felt awake in a way that was uncomfortable. Reluctantly, she opened the message. This time it was a voice note.

There was static at first—low, broken, like something struggling to form sound. Then a voice came through, distorted but calm. Too calm. It said, “Kal tum jaogi,” followed by a pause, as if it was listening. Then it continued, “Aur tumhe lagta hai tum safe ho.”

Noor’s hand lowered slightly as the voice ended. The phone was still glowing in her palm, but her focus had shifted. The room felt colder now, not physically, but in a way that made her more aware of its emptiness. She looked around instinctively—same walls, same desk, same silence—but something about it no longer felt the same.

She placed the phone down carefully, her fingers steady but her thoughts unsettled. After a long pause, she whispered into the silence, almost to herself, “Who are you?”

There was no answer. Only the quiet of the night.

And then, her phone lit up again.

Unknown Number.

typing…