01

The morning sunlight slanted through the lace curtains, catching dust motes that swirled like tiny ghosts in my small rented room. The world outside was already alive the milkman shouting, the sound of temple bells, and someone downstairs arguing with their landlord about the unpaid light bill. Delhi never slept. It only shifted moods.

I stretched, my body aching from another night spent bent over books Laxmikanth open like a promise I hadn’t yet learned to keep. My exam planner stared at me from the wall, scribbled with ink and anxiety. Ethics – 7 a.m. to 9. Polity – 10 to 12. Somewhere between those blocks of time, I was supposed to eat, breathe, and remember that I was human.

But being human was a distraction when you were trying to become something larger something that didn’t crack easily.

The kettle whistled, startling me. I poured myself a cup of tea, too sweet but warm enough to wake my senses. I didn’t notice when my hands began to tremble again. They always did when I thought too much about the future, or sometimes… about things I couldn’t name.

Memory had strange edges soft in some places, sharp enough to bleed in others. There were gaps in mine, small and inconvenient. My therapist had called it stress-induced forgetting. But sometimes, when the city fell silent at night, I could feel those gaps watching me back.

“Morning,” said Meera, my flatmate, poking her head in through the door. Her hair was a wild halo, her eyes still heavy with sleep. “You’re up early again. You’re going to burn out before prelims.”

“I already did,” I smiled faintly, flipping through my notes. “This is just the afterglow.”

She groaned. “You and your poetic burnout.”

I laughed softly, but her words lingered longer than I wanted them to. Burnout wasn’t the right word. It was something else a constant hum inside me, like a song I couldn’t turn off.

By nine, I was seated in my coaching center classroom, surrounded by faces that all carried the same kind of desperation. The UPSC didn’t just test knowledge; it tested patience, identity, and the ability to not fall apart.

Our lecturer droned about Indian polity, but my gaze drifted to the window. Across the street, a man stood beside a black car, half-hidden in the morning haze. He wasn’t doing anything unusual just scrolling through his phone, wearing dark sunglasses. Yet something in his stillness unsettled me. He looked… familiar.

I blinked and looked away, telling myself it was nothing. The mind plays tricks when it’s tired. When I looked again, he was gone.

During the lunch break, I sat under the neem tree outside, the same spot where I always studied. My phone buzzed with a new message.

Unknown number: “You forgot to eat breakfast again.”

My heart skipped. I looked around instinctively. The message had no name, no photo. Just that sentence. My thumb hovered over the screen.

Who is this? I typed, but didn’t send it. I deleted the message instead, convincing myself it was Meera playing a prank.

Still, for the rest of the day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been watching me too closely someone who knew me better than I knew myself.

By evening, Delhi was painted in gold and noise. I walked home through narrow lanes lined with bookstores and tea stalls. The smell of paper and rain mingled in the air. I loved this hour when the world blurred enough to feel like a dream.

That’s when I heard it a voice, deep and calm, from behind.

“You dropped this.”

I turned. A man stood there, holding my pen the one I’d been using since my first mock test, the one I never lent to anyone. He was tall, dressed in a dark shirt that fit too perfectly, his eyes unreadable even in the fading light.

“Thank you,” I murmured, reaching for it.

His fingers brushed mine. Cold. Controlled. “You should be careful,” he said quietly. “Delhi forgets nothing.”

Before I could respond, he was already walking away disappearing into the crowd as though he’d never been there.

That night, as I tried to study, the words from my notes began to blur into something else entirely:

Law. Justice. Crime. Memory.

I closed the book and pressed my palms to my eyes. For a moment, I thought I saw blood not real, but remembered. Faint, like a scene from a dream.

Outside, thunder rolled. My phone buzzed again.

Unknown number: “You looked beautiful today, Arvisha.”

My chest tightened. I blocked the number immediately. But even as I did, a strange calm spread through me as if I had known this was coming all along.

Because deep down, beneath the years of forgetting, a whisper stirred:

He found me again.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Hey, my little sinners and saints 🖤~welcome to His Silence, Her Sin.

You’ve just stepped into Arvisha’s world soft tea mornings, sleepless nights, and a calm that’s about to crack. Don’t get too comfortable; the storm wears a suit and knows her name.

Stay curious, stay dangerous —

With love and chaos,

Little Wolf 🐺💋