Later, when I counted my mistakes, there were seven. The first was answering my phone at 2:17 a.m.
College was boring.
That was the first lie they taught you.
Not directly, of course. No one ever stood at a podium and announced it. The lie seeped in quietly, disguised as routine. Lectures. Deadlines. Cafeteria food that tasted like compromise. Just enough stress to keep you moving, never enough to make you stop and ask whether any of it actually mattered.
Boring meant safe. Predictable. Contained.
College wasn't supposed to involve fear. Or police officers who spoke in careful pauses. Or phone calls that made your stomach tighten before you even answered them.
I was halfway through proving how boring college really was by sleeping through Criminal Psychology when something sharp knocked against my desk.
Not loud. Not violent. Just deliberate.
"Mr. Harith Athreya."
The room went quiet in that specific, uncomfortable way classrooms do when someone else is in trouble and everyone is silently relieved it isn't them.
I opened my eyes slowly. Too slowly. My neck ached from sleeping at a bad angle, and my vision swam for a second before settling on Professor Menon standing in front of me. His glasses rested precariously on the edge of his nose, his mouth drawn into a thin line that suggested disappointment had long ago stopped surprising him.
"Since you seem so comfortable," he said evenly, "perhaps you'd like to explain the difference between motive and intent."
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Behind me, someone snorted. I ignored it.
"Motive is why you commit a crime," I said after a moment, buying time. "Intent is whether you meant to commit it."
Professor Menon raised an eyebrow. "And which one applies to you, Mr. Athreya, for sleeping in my class?"
"Lack of motive," I replied.
A few scattered laughs escaped before he silenced them with a look that probably had a history of ending academic careers.
"Out," he said. "And if you're going to waste your talent, do it somewhere it doesn't insult the syllabus."
I gathered my bag and walked out, pretending I hadn't just been publicly executed at nine in the morning.
Outside, the campus was alive in the way it always was when you didn't want it to be. Students hurried between buildings, half-running, half-texting. Couples walked too close together, pretending they had nowhere else to be. First-years wandered around with maps and optimism, unaware that both would be useless soon enough.
I moved through it all without direction, letting time leak away.
College was supposed to be simple. Attend lectures. Keep your attendance above the danger line. Study just hard enough to pass. Build a future that looked neat on paper.
It sounded organized. Controlled.
Safe.
In reality, it felt like chasing something you didn't actually want, just because everyone else was running in the same direction. Sometimes I wondered if the real destination wasn't a degree, but exhaustion. Or worse—acceptance.
Our campus had everything. Engineering blocks that looked like concrete prisons. Management buildings with glass walls that reflected ambition back at you. Thousands of students, each convinced they knew where they were headed.
I wasn't convinced.
I didn't hate college.
I just didn't belong to it the way everyone else seemed to. While most students worried about attendance percentages and placement statistics, I worried about rent. About food. About whether my bank balance would survive the month.
Different priorities. Different problems.
That was why I solved cases.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing illegal. Just problems people didn't want official records for. Lost items. Stolen laptops. Anonymous blackmail threats. Quiet messes that lived in the cracks between authority and embarrassment.
I listened. I asked questions people didn't want to answer. I noticed things others ignored.
Sometimes I got paid.
Sometimes I didn't.
It was enough to survive.
By early afternoon, I found myself drifting toward the library. Not to study—let's not pretend either of us believes that—but to meet Aryan.
Aryan Dubey was a computer geek in the purest sense of the word. He lived on caffeine, survived on code, and treated sleep like an optional software update. If something needed to be traced, cracked, recovered, or pulled from places people pretended didn't exist, Aryan was my first call.
He sat exactly where I expected him to be—hood pulled up, headphones on, eyes glued to his laptop like it was a life-support system.
"Hey," I whispered loudly. "Aryan. You alive, or just pretending?"
He blinked slowly, like he'd forgotten other humans were a thing.
"You're loud," he said flatly. "Libraries hate you."
"You love me anyway."
"Barely. Why aren't you in class?"
"Kicked out."
That got his attention.
He pulled one side of his headphones off. "Again? What did you do this time?"
"Criminal Psychology," I said. "Apparently sleeping isn't considered active learning."
"What did you say to Menon sir?" he asked.
"I corrected him."
Aryan snorted. "That's not what you call that."
"He asked the difference between motive and intent."
"And?"
"I answered."
"And?"
"And then I applied it to myself."
Aryan leaned back in his chair, studying me. "One day you're going to learn the art of shutting up."
"One day I'll need to," I said, dropping into the chair opposite him.
He watched me for a moment longer. "So. Free, or free-free?"
"Depends," I said. "On how much trouble I'm in."
"That bad?"
"Rent-is-due bad."
That earned a nod.
"Anyone contacted you today?" he asked casually.
"Not yet."
"That's suspicious."
"Why?"
"Because you're usually drowning in nonsense by noon."
He wasn't wrong.
Word had spread around campus quietly. People didn't advertise it, but if you needed something solved without administration or police getting involved—
You came to me.
Before I could say anything else, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I frowned.
Aryan noticed instantly. "That's not normal."
"I'll be back," I muttered, standing.
"You won't be," he said.
He was right.
I slipped between the shelves and answered.
"Hello?"
"This is Sub-Inspector Rao," the voice said. "You don't know me, but I got your number from a colleague."
I stopped walking.
"That's never a good sentence to hear," I said.
He exhaled slowly. "I figured you'd say that."
"You want to tell me why a police officer has my number?"
"Because you helped us once," he replied.
"I've never helped the police."
"Not officially," he said. "But you solved that missing vehicle case near the bakery last year."
My grip tightened on the phone.
That case.
I hadn't known it was police-related. Just a desperate shop owner. Turned out the thief was family.
"The shop owner passed your findings to my colleague," Rao continued. "Never said where they came from. No credit. No questions."
I stayed silent.
"That made me remember you," he said.
I didn't like that.
"I gave your number to someone yesterday," he added.
"You what?"
"She needed help," he said. "Off the record. And I don't want my name anywhere near it."
"What kind of problem?"
A pause.
Not the normal kind.
"The kind I'm not touching."
The call ended.
I stood there for a long moment, phone still pressed to my ear, staring at nothing. The hum of the air conditioner felt too loud, like it was trying too hard to convince me nothing had changed.
When I returned to the table, Aryan took one look at my face and closed his laptop halfway.
"Yeah," he said. "That was bad."
"Police," I said.
"Actual police?"
I nodded.
"Why?"
"He remembered me," I said. "That's the problem."
Aryan frowned. "People remember results."
"They remember noise," I replied. "He remembered how quietly I worked."
That gave him pause.
"You taking it?" he asked.
"I don't know."
He leaned forward. "If this turns weird, you tell me first."
I didn't answer.
By night, the call had settled into the back of my mind like a splinter I kept pretending I'd remove later.
The hostel corridor buzzed with noise—laughter, doors slamming, life continuing. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling fan as it chopped the darkness into uneven shadows.
I told myself nothing had happened yet.
Nothing had.
At 2:17 a.m., my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I stared at it for a long time.
Every instinct told me not to answer.
I picked it up anyway.
That was Mistake #1.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Then breathing.
"Don't hang up," a woman whispered. "Please."
"Who is this?"
"My name doesn't matter. You solve cases, right?"
I sat up. "Sometimes."
"I shouldn't be calling you. Everyone told me not to."
"Then why are you?"
"Because it's started."
"What has?"
A shaky breath. "My grandfather's mantra book. He told me never to open it. I locked it in his cupboard after the funeral."
"And?"
"It moved."
Something cold slid down my spine.
"Why didn't you go to the police?"
"They came," she said. "They didn't enter the room."
Outside my window, the corridor light flickered.
Once.
Twice.
"I can hear chanting," she whispered. "Right outside my door."
The line went dead.
A message appeared.
If you take this case, don't touch anything marked in red.
A second message followed. A location pin.
I stared at the screen.
I should have blocked the number.
I should have gone back to sleep.
Instead, I checked my wallet, counted the money I didn't have, and reached for my jacket.
Normal, I realized, was overrated.