Chapter 1: The Delicate Monster
The gazes that had showered her with flattery just two weeks ago now looked upon her with hatred. The students' whispers around her were unmistakable. Some stared at the angel lying on the ground, an angel Heaven itself had cast aside. Others fixed their eyes on the delicate girl they called a “murderer” and “the one to blame for everything.”
They felt no shame in their superficiality, nor did they ever experience remorse. After all, how could a mind that had never been forced to analyze anything, or a heart that had never mistaken every little discomfort for suffering, ever comprehend the depth of keen observation?
The two girls who had been everyone's favorites just two weeks ago had both been drained of their souls. One was truly dead. The other's body, however, was the only thing still standing in that courtyard... 
Although the sun illuminated everything around her, it was still only mid-April. Unlike those who woke up every morning to the sound of pigeons, Shafaq heard the call of a partridge, and she found it rather strange.
Despite the sunlight streaming into her room, Shafaq, accustomed to darkness, had no desire to get out of bed. However, she had to attend her classes to avoid being marked absent. Unlike students who skipped lectures whenever they felt like it, she had no such luxury.
After finishing her morning prayers, Shafaq got ready and left the house, only to miss the bus again. Fortunately, she had left an hour earlier than necessary.
As Shafaq walked down the street, her neighbors looked at her with mocking expressions. Such unsettling stares were nothing new to her. In fact, they were unusually quiet today. On other days, she would have heard remarks such as, “The mullah's daughter has become a mullah herself,” “She deceives people with fortune-telling using prayer beads,” and “Fraudster.”
Shafaq had lost her father when she was eight. The only things he had left behind for her were his prayer beads and prayer rug. Although people regarded what she did as fraud, Shafaq charged only ten qəpik for each fortune-telling session.
Lost in these thoughts, Shafaq almost missed the bus once again.
Things were already strained between her and her childhood best friend, and, as if she wanted to sink even deeper into sadness, Shafaq listened to “Human Sadness” by The Voidz. The sound pouring from her headphones gave her a headache, yet she refused to stop listening throughout the journey.
The university she had spent years struggling to enter had suddenly lost all meaning in her eyes.
After her father's death, Shafaq had lived with her mother and endured every kind of psychological abuse. When her mother remarried without giving much thought to her late husband, Shafaq was truly left alone. Her mother became so absorbed in her new husband that she seemed to forget she even had a daughter.
She had reduced her own child to the status of a servant. Knowing that she would be thrown out of the house if she failed to do all the chores, Shafaq desperately tried to fulfil every demand placed upon her.
Despite everything, Shafaq had once considered herself the happiest person alive because her childhood best friend had always been by her side.
Although they spoke different languages and studied in different departments, their hearts beat as one.
Now, however, even the friend she loved more than anything had stopped coming near her.
Shafaq had earned her place at this university, where the children of wealthy foreigners studied, through years of hardship. She had worked from a young age, attended extra classes in rain and snow, and continued going to school at the same time. She was the first student ever to gain admission to this university on a full scholarship, while everyone else seemed to pay their way through.
The fake friendships and all the other nonsense around her had never attracted even the slightest bit of Shafaq's attention.
Yet the girl who had been her childhood friend, classmate, and university groupmate could no longer even look her in the eye.
That day, they had a lecture with the entire cohort, and the seat beside Shafaq was empty once again.
Judging by the circumstances, Arzu would not be coming today either.
But she had to come.
Despite her considerable wealth, Arzu was an exemplary student. As the class representative, she had not attended lectures for two or three days, and Shafaq was growing increasingly worried and irritated by the situation.
She knew what would happen if this continued. The very people who had been gossiping about Arzu behind her back would start smiling in her face again, pretending to be her friends.
As Shafaq was lost in thought, a girl suddenly tried to force herself into the seat beside her. Shafaq reacted quickly and stopped her.
The girl, who belonged to the Russian-language section, suddenly switched to Azerbaijani.
According to her, Arzu's family had forbidden her from attending university because of her “immoral behaviour.” Apparently, neither her stepfather nor even her own mother liked her.
How strange.
The only real difference between the two friends was their financial circumstances.
The entire cohort, perhaps even the whole university, knew why Arzu and Shafaq's friendship had fallen apart.
Danny, Arzu's former boyfriend, had chosen Shafaq instead.
Danny was half American and half Azerbaijani. Since his family lived in Azerbaijan, he was studying there as well.
On several occasions, he had approached Shafaq under the pretext of starting arguments. But Shafaq did not believe in such games. Instead, she quietly observed people, waiting to see how they would reveal their true nature.
Besides, abandoning a childhood friend over a boy seemed utterly illogical to her. She had assumed Arzu would feel the same way.
The girl suddenly opened her mouth, apparently about to call Arzu a witch.
Before she could finish, Shafaq slapped her across the mouth.
Normally quiet and melancholic, Shafaq, for some reason, had no desire to remain withdrawn that day.
In the past, she would have responded to such insults with silence. This time, however, the target was someone close to her.
She would not usually have reacted so violently, but no one had ever dared to cross the line this far before.
Arzu was not the kind of girl who cared about gossip. Nevertheless, as always, Shafaq chose to protect her closest friend.
After all, as far as Shafaq was concerned, no one except herself had the right to scold or insult Arzu.
Suddenly, the girl's shrill voice echoed throughout the lecture hall.
When she tried to raise her hand against Shafaq, Shafaq caught her before she could strike.
This time, Shafaq refused to tolerate the same disrespect.
She turned to the girl and replied:
“What good are strong hands when your soul is weak?”
Shafaq had attended the same secondary school as this girl. Back then, she had not been nearly as courageous as she was now. Because of that two-faced girl, her school years had been filled with difficulties.
The same girl had tormented Arzu back then, too, never giving her a moment's peace.
After that, everything escalated.
Shafaq found herself in the dean's office, facing the rector and answering for her actions.
She had always been well-liked by both teachers and students, and this time, she was given some leniency. She received no formal reprimand, especially since there was CCTV footage of the incident.
In any case, Shafaq did not care whether she received a reprimand. She was already in her fourth year.
Two days passed, and Arzu still did not show up. She reached the attendance limit.
Then she missed another class.
And another.
Eventually, she failed three or four subjects...
(Two Weeks Later)
At last, there was news of Arzu.
Arzu, who had always dressed in shades of pink, had stopped paying attention to her appearance in recent days. Not that it mattered anymore. The entire university seemed to hate her anyway.
Suddenly, voices began to spread through the crowd.
“The witch has finally returned to her true self.”
“Black is her colour.”
“Now she and Shafaq finally match.”
Although Shafaq was generally well-liked, she sometimes became the target of hatred simply because she was Arzu's friend. One could only wonder how the students who called Arzu a witch would react if they ever discovered what Shafaq really did.
Anyway, a day or two passed, and Arzu continued to keep her distance from Shafaq.
It was not Arzu's coldness that worried Shafaq. It was her condition.
The first lecture began. Arzu, who had suddenly disappeared, was about to be marked absent. Hoping that she might be in the cafeteria, Shafaq interrupted the lecturer and went out to look for her.
Eventually, she found Arzu in one of the empty rooms.
For a moment, everything went dark.
What Shafaq saw before her filled her with horror.
Normally, she experienced such visions while asleep. But this was nothing like those visions.
Arzu no longer looked human.
Her hands were clasped behind her neck, her head twisted upside down. Blood covered her eyes and mouth, yet she gazed at Shafaq with a smile.
Her complexion had always been pale, but now she looked like a corpse in the truest sense of the word.
Suddenly, Shafaq felt as though all the blood had drained from her veins.
Although she did not have her prayer beads with her, she began to pray.
Wa nunazzilu mina-l-Qur'āni mā huwa shifā'un wa raḥmatun lil-mu'minīn.
“And We send down of the Qur'an that which is healing and mercy for the believers.”
“Allahumma, la tadharhu wahidan fil-khawf. Askun qalbahu, washfi ruhahu. Ihfazhu min kulli sharrin, zahirin wa batin. Khaffif anhu kulla hammin wa kulla huzn. Wa aminhu bi-rahmatik. Allahumma, ihfazhu haythu la aqdiru an ahfazahu.”
“O Allah, do not leave her alone in fear. Calm her heart and heal her soul. Protect her from every kind of evil, seen and unseen. Ease all her pain and sorrow. Grant her peace through Your mercy. Where I cannot protect her, O Allah, protect her Yourself.”
Suddenly, the girl turned her gaze away from Shafaq and began moving toward the classroom window.
It appeared that someone had cast a suicide spell upon her.
Shafaq tried to stop her, but voices from the west began to rise, their horrifying intensity threatening to suffocate her.
Her voice failed her. She could do nothing but watch what was unfolding before her eyes.
Her feet would not move.
Apparently, this was not merely witchcraft. There were jinn involved as well.
Shafaq tried to take a step, but it was useless. Something was gripping her ankles, holding her firmly in place.
Arzu climbed onto the windowsill and, in a hoarse voice that sounded as though it were coming from the mouth of a dead woman, uttered her final words.
“You always protected me, but they sacrificed me.”
Her body was already dead, anyway.
After speaking those words, she jumped from the fourth floor.
Suddenly, the dark atmosphere in the room dissolved, and the voices fell silent.
Shafaq could speak and move again.
She ran, desperately trying to reach Arzu. It felt as though she were descending through the deepest layers of darkness, from one abyss into another. Her feet seemed to tread through the fires of Hell.
Breathless and suffocating, she felt like a block of ice melting in the midst of raging flames.
She was desperately trying to reach the person who had been her closest confidante before it was too late.
From the moment she had entered that room, she had known that everything was already over.
Yet she kept running.
Finally, after passing the green pistachio tree, she saw a sight she could not bring herself to accept.
The second person she loved most in the world lay on the ground, drenched in blood.
This time, she was truly a corpse.
Once again, those same toxic people had gathered around, daring to discuss a human life as though it were nothing more than a subject for idle conversation.
Shafaq could no longer cry.
She could not even react.
There was only one sound that disturbed her.
The call of a partridge.
She wanted to strangle that accursed bird with her bare hands.
Perhaps, without even knowing it, the bird reminded her of those people who passed judgment on others without ever bothering to understand them.
(A Day or Two After the Incident)
Arzu's family blamed Shafaq for her death.
Since there was no CCTV footage, their accusations came to nothing. But what difference did it make? Whether she was innocent or guilty, Arzu's family had never been willing to accept Shafaq in the first place.
After submitting her report to the university police and the dean's office, Shafaq returned home, utterly exhausted.
A day or two passed before new rumours began spreading across the university.
In short, someone had exposed Shafaq's private life on TikTok.
The footage showed her fortune-telling for a desperate family, a family that had nowhere else to turn...
By then, such things no longer affected Shafaq. She had witnessed far worse since childhood. She had been crushed by others from an early age and forced to learn how to protect herself.
After her classes ended, she prepared to return to the place she had rented.
But when she arrived, the sight of her belongings scattered along the road told her that even her last remaining hope had vanished.
Her landlord had thrown her out without warning.
Knowing there was no point in arguing, Shafaq boarded a bus and set off in search of another place to rent.
Suddenly, a car came hurtling out of a bend in the road, on the verge of colliding with the bus.
What could possibly go wrong now?
The bus came to a halt on its side, overturned.
Blood had already begun trickling down Shafaq's forehead.
For a brief moment, her vision went dark...
When she opened her eyes, she found herself in an old house, one decorated with carpets.
Something felt strange.
There were silver cups, an ashtray, and a half-smoked cigarette in the room.
As Shafaq suddenly shifted, she felt something beneath the blanket. Something had risen upward.
The moment she reached out, her hand brushed against something long and thick.
She was about to scream when a voice suddenly rang out from outside:
“Ayaz! My brave and only son, get up already! It’s lunchtime!”
To be continued...
