Chapter 12

—𝑹𝒂𝒚𝒂—

"...and then he called me for the nth time again this morning. Like, can you believe it? Who the fuck even has the time to keep tabs on someone this much?"

Nyra's voice bounced loudly across the crowded Raventon café, too fast-paced and way too frustrated.
"I swear, Raya, he doesn't even ask; he just tells me what to do. Last night, he fucking showed up outside my friend's place because apparently it was 'too late' for me to be there. Too late! It was barely twelve."

I circled my thumb against the rim of my coffee cup, watching the heat leave a warm sensation on my it.

"And you know what the worst part is? He acts like—like I can't manage my own life. It's so damn annoying. I'm twenty-three, not twelve, urghh." 

Nyra huffs again, stirring her iced latte with a shit tonne of absolutely unnecessary force, as if it would help. 

"And the moment that I said I'd figure it out, he gave me that one look, you know? That... annoyingly scary one. The kind where he doesn't even have to say anything, and you just... comply."

I nod, even if it looks motionless. My brain feels like it's made of cotton.

Nyra keeps going on with her ranting session, words spilling out of her mouth like that of coins dropping into an endless slot machine. 

"...like, it's draining, Raya. He's everywhere. If I don't pick up, he calls again. And again. And then he'll call someone else to check where the fuck I am. Who even does that?"

Her voice keeps fading in and out. And It's not even her fault—I'm not really here. Not with her, at least.

Because all that I can hear is yesterday.

Dr. Sharanya Sharma, her calm smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
Her voice, careful, almost rehearsed: Tell me about the dreams, Raya.

I told her I didn't want to. She had pressed anyway.
Again, again, again.
Like a damn clock, if that even explains it.

That when all of it came crashing back in, like a sudden natural disaster.
Cannon, and disastrous.

My mother's face shot up in my brain—Bloody—still, lifeless on the bed.
And that boy with no face, sort of blurry at the edges, laughing like I'd just told him a huge hilarious secret.
The laughter that made my skin crawl every time.

"Raya, are you even listening?"

Nyra's words snap me back into focus, her brows drawn dangerously close together, straw still between her fingers.

"Yeah, of course" I murmur, though my throat feels dry as a desert. "I'm listening."

Absolutely not, Nyra. I'm not. Not really.

All I can think of is Sharanya's soft voice asking me to dig into it, to put it into words, to sit with it. I couldn't.
The pills helped, yes, they did. They always do.

But the laughter—it's still there, somewhere in the back of my head, in every fibre of my damned existence.

"You know, honestly, Nyra, maybe he's just... I don't know—overprotective?" 

I force the words out, quiet and low, like they'll do the job of shutting her rant down without making me sound like I wasn't listening to a word that came out of her mouth.

Nyra groans, overdramatic like always, like I'd just betrayed her totally. 

"Overprotective? Girl, cut it, this is like... surveillance-level shit. It's not cute anymore, never has been." She stabs at her ice with that same paper straw, the was clinking annoyingly loud enough to feel in my teeth. 

"No, I mean, seriously though. Imagine someone micromanaging every damn second of your life. You'd lose your mind."

I give her a plastic smile, a practiced, neutral one. The kind that doesn't invite any more questions. 

"Yeah. Sounds rough."

The words come out flatly. They leave no impression, not even in my own damn mouth.

I let Nyra continue after she translates my nod as encouragement. I let her fill the room with her voice and let her complaints to pile up like sheets of paper on a desk. Her noise is enough; I don't even need to know all of the details. Mine remains quieter.

Because everything seems chaotic underneath my quietness. Not only is yesterday lingering in the back of my mind, but it is dripping through.

My mind keeps drifting back to Dr. Sharanya's pen moving over the mini notepad, deliberate, steady, intentional. "Tell me about the boy. Tell me about the laughter."

I was afraid I would suffocate from the tightness in my throat. I had refused her. I had warned her to stop. Yet, she leaned in too gently, as if the edge of the blade of what she was asking me to recall could be deleted by such gentleness.

It wasn't a delicate crash. It was violent. The kind that causes internal burns to your skin. I recall the room suddenly spinning and sharpening, my chest narrowing and my nails drilling into my palm.

I wanted to tell her. I wanted to describe how the laugh sounds and how it lingers in my head like unchanging, but I was not able to do it. Instead, I had crumpled in on myself like a piece of burning paper.

Nyra laughed at something she just said; it was happy, careless, and unbothered, a luxury that I couldn't afford. I blink as I'm pulled back to the café by the sound of mugs clattering and the muted bass of someone's playlist coming from a speaker in the corner.

I curl my fingers tighter around the cup, grounding myself in the simple heat, painfully, the weight crushing me mentally.

"Anyway," 

Nyra sighs, shaking her head like she's drained herself with her own venting, something she had been doing for the past 39 minutes. 

"I swear to God, he's just impossible. Sometimes I wish I could just... you know... disappear for a while. You know? Like Just vanish into thin air."

I hum, a low voice in my throat, the sound barely there. My lips manage a polite, "Yeah, I do get that."

On the inside, however, vanishing sounds like a relief. Vanishing is a sound that means Silence. The only way to beat the laughter that won't stop bothering me seems to be to vanish.

I force myself to gulp my coffee after taking a sip, which tastes bitter and burning.

Before I can respond, Nyra shifts the subject to something lighter, and I let her. I smile appropriately and nod.
 I do my part.

In the meantime, I can feel the sharp, persistent edge of yesterday pushing against today. I feel like I'm always one breath away from breaking down in the middle of Raventon Café, no matter how hard I pretend.

I was already wrapping up by the time Nyra finished her last diluted sip of her latte and hurried off to her class. I had smiled long enough. After listening to her critique for forty minutes, I had a sore throat from all the nice nods and hums.

I felt as though I had been lifted out from under an overly thick blanket when the café door closed behind her.

Students running late, cars screaming down the street, and a group of boys laughing too loudly at something one of them said were all part of the usual chaos that filled Raventon's campus outside. However, none of it registered in my mind. I just strolled.

The huge Arora mansion loomed by the time the daylight softened into a soft glow of pale gold, the kind that stretched shadows long across the driveway.

Inside, the familiar weight of silence met me at my "so-called" home's door. Not comforting silence. Heavy silence.

I kicked off my shoes carelessly and slipped past the echoing hallway. Riyaana wasn't home—out celebrating another courtroom victory, no doubt on that. She liked to dress her wins in chic sequins and expensive champagne, surrounded by friends who laughed just a little too hard at her jokes.

My dad's voice carried faintly from his study—low, firm, stern, the kind of tone that always meant he was negotiating something with Reyaan and Rivaan. Business. Money. Futures. and I don't know... Life?

Aarik, my younger brother, was asleep for once, surprisingly. I didn't hear the blaring of his gaming console, only the steady hum of air-conditioning behind his door. And somehow, that surprised me even more than the impact of my dad's second marriage.

It left the house in its most silent state, and me, in my own.

My room greeted me with its usual stillness, nothing new though. The net curtains swayed slightly, the faintest ray sneaking through the beautiful window frames. I didn't turn on the lights. 

Why would I?

I collapsed onto the bed, limbs spread for a second before curling in, one hand reaching automatically to the drawer of my nightstand, and head lolling deeper into the pillow. The pills rattled faintly in their plastic surroundings, loud in the silence. 

I tipped two into my palm and swallowed them dry, my throat scratching once before they slid down.

The headache would fade, of course. Slowly. Eventually.
Like my presence.

I lay back, eyes locked on the ceiling, refusing to let myself flinch when that weird feeling came over me again.

That one feeling.

Watched.

The air pressed way too close around me, thick in a way that had nothing to do with the weather, suffocating, if described in a word. The kind of closeness that only meant there was someone else in the room even if I knew, self-convincingly, there wasn't.

This time, though, I didn't move at all.

I didn't shut the curtains tighter. I didn't sit up, search, panic, or even look out.

I just... let it happen.

Let him watch. Whoever he was. Whatever he was.

I lay there with my chest slowly and steadily rising and falling under the burden of invisible eyes. By now, the sharp edges of my head were being relaxed by the pills, and the migraine was only a slight, bearable throb.

I didn't fight it for the first time in days or perhaps weeks.

I allowed the mansion to hum with its own silence while I gazed up at the ceiling. 

 Aarik was sleeping like a child who hadn't yet noticed what was rotting underneath everything, Reyaan and Rivaan's baritones were caught in low conversation, dad's voice was muffled in the distance, and the house seemed heavier without Riyaana.

I let myself breathe.
I let myself be seen.

And I wondered, in a sick, quiet corner of my brain—if maybe it was easier this way. To just let him. To not resist.

The mansion settled into its own at night rhythm as the night grew thicker around me. A door hinge creaked in protest as the wind caught it, pipes grumbled in the distance, and then everything settled into the soft silence that only large houses can withstand.

The ceiling progressively vanished into a white void, though I'm not sure how long I lay there. Refusing to close led my eyes to burn. 

 The faintest drag of breath that wasn't mine, the almost-imaginary weight of presence just out of reach, was something I swore I could hear every time my lashes brushed together.

I sat up half-way through midnight and then fell back to sleep, my head heavy from the pills and fatigue combining to form a thick, syrupy meaning. 

 The faintest hint of a figure formed out of shadow by the streetlight leaking through the curtains gave me the impression that I saw it—no, he—across the room.

But it vanished as soon as I blinked.

Sparks flashed behind my eyes as I pressed my palms into them. I felt as though my body wanted to panic but was too exhausted to fully commit, as my chest rose too abruptly.

Before I could determine whether I was safe, sleep pulled me under.

The dreams weren't kind when they arrived.

Once more, the boy. He was always him. Always blurred. Always a step too far from Clarity . The sharp, ruthless sound of his laughter curved into the air, and I could feel it, but this time it was layered over another sound, the slight creak of the floorboards in my bedroom.

I wanted to tell myself inside the dream, "That's not the dream." It's true. Get up.

However, I was unable to.

I felt like I had been screaming into my pillow when I jolted awake, my throat raw and my skin cold and wet. 

 My damp hairline was brushed by a breeze as the curtains moved. There was silence in the house. Too motionless.

I paid attention. Just one beat. Two, three.

Steps. Gentle. Down the corridor.

Not mine. Not Aarik's. Not Rivaan's dangerous stomping or my father's heavy stride. They were intentional. cautious. I heard them, even though it seemed like they didn't want to be heard.

I sat motionless, my tongue coated in the aftertaste of the pills, my heart pounding so rapidly that I thought the noise would reveal my identity.

Whose are those footsteps?

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