“Good night, Pratap.”

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

She sent it. Two words. My name. Nothing more.

I played it once.

Then again.

Then again.

At first, it was just a voice note. A passing moment sealed in sound. But the mind twists things if you let it. If you listen long enough, a sentence stops being a sentence. The way a song, played on repeat, sheds its lyrics and becomes something else. Something private.

I wasn’t hearing Good night, Pratap anymore.

I was hearing what she meant.

The way she lingered on my name, like she wanted to hold it there for a second longer. The breath she drew before the last syllable. The softness in her voice.

Not Good night, Pratap.

I missed you, Pratap.

I froze.

The phone was still warm in my palm.

I played it again.

And this time, I heard it clearer.

“I missed you, Pratap.”

The words weren’t there, and yet they were.

I replayed it slower. Turned the volume up. Pressed the speaker to my ear.

Again.

Again.

Again.

The room had gone dark around me, lit only by the cold rectangle in my hand. My breathing had gone shallow.

What if she meant it?

What if she had hidden it there for me to find?

What if she missed me too?

I smiled. Then laughed at myself. Quietly. Because wasn’t this madness? To carve confessions out of static and silence?

Still, I kept listening.

The note crackled.

And then I heard it.

A laugh.

Soft. Faint. Barely there.

My stomach dropped.

I replayed it.

There it was again.

Laughter.

Mocking me.

Had she known what this would do to me? Had she sent it knowing I’d replay it until I found ghosts inside it?

I gripped the phone harder.

My chest tightened.

I played it again, desperate now.

The words kept shifting.

Good night.

I missed you.

I love you.

Laughter.

Nothing.

Everything.

I didn’t know what was real anymore.

And then—

Arms wrapped around me from behind.

Warm.

Real.

Solid.

The phone slipped from my hand onto the bed.

I turned so fast my breath caught.

Aaruhi stood there.

Hair slightly messy from travel, eyes heavy with exhaustion, the faintest smile on her lips.

She had come back that morning on the first night flight.

She hadn’t told me.

She wanted to surprise me.

For a second, I could only stare.

Then I pulled her into me.

Hard.

Like if I loosened my grip even slightly, she’d disappear again.

I held her with a desperation that made my arms ache. Buried my face into her shoulder. Breathed her in.

She laughed softly against my chest—the same laugh from the voice note.

“Missed me much?” she whispered.

I couldn’t answer.

Because my throat had closed up.

Because my hands were shaking.

Because for the last hour, I had been losing my mind over the sound of her voice while she had been standing outside my door, listening, smiling, waiting.

“You were listening to that voice note,” she said, pulling back just enough to look at me, amusement dancing in her eyes, “like you’d lost me.”

“Shh.”

The word broke out of me.

I cupped her face.

My eyes burned.

“Don’t ever say that.”

Her smile faded when she saw the tears gathering.

“Pratap—”

“The day I lose you…” My voice cracked. “I’ll tie a noose around my neck.”

She immediately pressed her fingers against my lips.

“Don’t.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Don’t say things like that.”

And before I could speak again, she kissed me.

Soft.

Firm.

Silencing.

Her hand slid into my hair, holding me there, grounding me back into myself.

When she pulled away, her forehead rested against mine.

“I’m here,” she whispered.

"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.