Session 5:

"Good night, Pratap."

I asked her for a good night voice note. Just her voice—soft, unthinking, unburdened.

She sent it. "Good night, Pratap."

Two words. My name. Nothing more.

I played it once. Then again. Then again.

The first few times, it was just a voice note. A passing moment sealed in sound. But the mind—it twists things if you let it. If you listen long enough, a sentence is no longer just a sentence. The way a song, played on repeat, stops being lyrics and turns into something else—something personal.

I wasn’t hearing "Good night, Pratap." anymore. I was hearing what she meant.

The way she lingered on Pratap—like she didn’t want to say it fast, like she wanted to hold my name in her mouth for just a second longer. The way her breath caught before the last syllable.

The way her voice dipped at the end.

Not "Good night, Pratap."

"I love you, Pratap."

I froze. The phone still warm in my palm.

Did she just—?

I played it again. The same words, but now, they weren’t the same.

"Good night, Pratap."

Her voice curled around my name, soft, lingering, like a confession disguised as a farewell.

I laughed. A sharp, quiet thing. Wasn’t this madness? To hear things that weren’t there?

But what if I wasn’t wrong?

What if, deep inside, buried under whatever restraint she lived with, she loved me? What if she wasn’t ready to say it yet, so it slipped through in small ways, in ways she thought I wouldn’t notice?

She wanted me to find it.

She wanted me to listen.

I sat up, my breathing too fast. The walls of my room felt closer than before. The light from my phone screen cut through the darkness, bright and unnatural. I stared at it, at her name on the screen. My fingers hovered over the call button.

I should ask her. I should tell her I heard it. That I knew.

But what if she denied it? What if she said I was wrong?

No. I wouldn’t ask. I would wait. I would listen again.

I pressed play.

"Good night, Pratap."

Her voice swam through my head, looping, changing. I pressed the speaker to my ear, letting the warmth seep into my skin.

It wasn’t just words anymore. It was a doorway. A secret she had left for me to find.

I needed to go deeper.

I replayed it at half speed.

Slower, softer. Her voice stretched, vowels curling around each other, the spaces between her words opening wide. And in those spaces, something else was hiding.

I turned the volume up.

Louder. Letting it fill the air, soak into the walls.

The room wasn’t empty anymore.

I whispered along with it.

"Good night, Pratap."

"I love you, Pratap."

It was real. I was sure now.

But then—something else. A sound. A shuffle. A faint breath before she stopped recording. Had I missed it before? Was there something in the silence?

I clenched the phone. Replayed the last second over and over. A soft exhale, a hesitation.

Was she waiting for me to reply?

Did she want me to say it back?

A slow, creeping panic crawled into my chest. My fingers clenched, nails digging into my palm.

I should have replied. I should have told her I knew. What if she was waiting for me, right now, staring at her screen, hoping I would understand?

I opened our chat.

Typing… Deleting… Typing…

No, not yet. I needed to be sure. I needed to listen again.

Play.

The voice note crackled through the speaker, and this time—this time, I heard something else.

Laughter.

Faint. Distant. But it was there.

I shot up from the bed. My heartbeat pounded in my ears.

She was laughing. At me.

Not love. Not confession.

Mockery.

I grabbed my phone, shaking, replaying it over and over. The laughter was there, wasn’t it? She had tricked me. She had let me believe—let me fall—

I staggered back, hitting the wall. My breath came in short gasps.

No. No, no, no. That wasn’t possible.

I pressed play. Again. And again.

"Good night, Pratap."

I gripped my hair. It was shifting. The voice note was changing. Or had it always been like this? Had I just convinced myself of something that was never there?

I pressed the phone to my ear, listening so hard my head throbbed.

Nothing made sense anymore.

I started laughing. Because what else was left? What else was there to do when the mind unravels, when love turns into a voice in the dark, whispering truths only you can hear?

I laughed and played it again.

And again.

And again.

---

"Do you still have that voice note?"

She didn’t look up when she asked. Didn’t flinch at the way my breath shook, at the way my hands twitched against the hospital sheet. Just kept scribbling in that small yellow notebook, her fingers curled around a pencil with bite marks along its body.

I watched the eraser brush against the page. Why a pencil? Why not a pen? A grown woman, afraid of making mistakes.

"Yes," I murmured. "I remember making a tattoo of the message frequency."

I pushed back the loose sleeve of these hospital clothes, revealing my left forearm. The ink stood out against my skin—sharp, precise lines tracing the rise and fall of her voice.

She reached out, pressing her fingertips to the tattoo, light enough that I barely felt it. "So you loved her."

I turned my head, my jaw tightening. "Don’t disrespect my love for her, Doctor. I still love her. Present tense."

A pause. A shift in the air.

"That’s another breakthrough, Mr. Pratap." Her voice was steady, unaffected. "Now we know we have to find the answer somewhere between when you started loving her and before your accident."

"Good luck with that, Doc," a voice said from the door. "She started loving him in class 6th."

I turned too fast. The light from the corridor burned my vision, a silhouette standing against it. A woman. Mid-forties, maybe. The voice was too soft, too careful. A voice wrapped in warmth.

My throat dried. My fingers curled into the bedsheet.

"Radha?" The name slipped out before I could stop it. My breath shook. "It can't be."

The silhouette shifted.

"I am Aruhi, Pratap."

The words landed like a stone dropped into still water. Slow, heavy ripples spreading outward.

"Mam, I told you not to talk to the patient without my approval," the doctor said. There was something in her voice—urgency, but not anger. Like she understood something I didn’t.

Like she knew what was breaking inside Aruhi’s chest.

The chair scraped against the floor as the doctor stood. "We’ll continue day after tomorrow."

She left. The door clicked shut.

The room was still.

I swallowed.

"Aruhi."

The name felt familiar in my mouth. I let it sit there, rolling against my tongue.

I think I know her.