Chapter Three: The Weight of Staying
Arjun didn't reply.
Not because he had nothing to say, but because every response felt like stepping onto thin ice. Words had power, and tonight, he wasn't sure which ones might break him.
He placed the phone face down and leaned back against the wall. The room felt smaller than usual, as if the conversation had taken up space. He closed his eyes and breathed—slowly at first, then shakily. Staying, he realized, had a weight to it. Leaving felt imagined and light. Staying was real.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours.
When he finally picked up the phone, there was no new message. The silence this time felt different—not empty, but watchful. As if something was waiting to see what he would do next.
Arjun stood and opened the cupboard. Inside were old notebooks, their pages yellowed, corners bent from being carried and forgotten. He pulled one out at random. It fell open to a page filled with uneven handwriting.
I want to be someone who feels less.
He didn't remember writing it, but he remembered the feeling. The desperation of wanting numbness more than happiness. Wanting peace at any cost.
He flipped pages—unfinished poems, crossed-out plans, questions with no answers. Proof that he had tried, in his own quiet way, to understand himself. Proof that he had once believed understanding might save him.
The phone buzzed again.
Unknown Number: Staying feels heavier than leaving, doesn't it?
Arjun exhaled sharply. This person—whoever they were—wasn't guessing. They knew.
Arjun: If you know this feeling, then you know why people say death gives peace.
The reply came slower this time.
Unknown Number: Yes. And I also know why that peace is a lie we tell ourselves when we feel unheard.
Arjun frowned.
Arjun: Then what's the truth?
The typing dots blinked for a long time, like a hesitant heartbeat.
Unknown Number: That pain wants witnesses. Not solutions. Not advice. Just someone who stays long enough to see it.
Arjun stared at the words. Witnesses. No one had ever stayed that way—not fully. People listened to respond, to fix, to move on. No one listened just to understand.
Outside, rain began to fall. Soft at first, then steady. The sound wrapped around the room, filling the cracks silence couldn't reach.
Arjun: And if no one stays?
The reply came almost immediately.
Unknown Number: Then you learn to stay for yourself. That's the hardest part.
Arjun felt something shift—not relief, not hope—but resistance. A quiet refusal to disappear. It scared him more than despair ever had.
He closed the notebook and placed it back carefully, as if returning a fragile truth to its place. When he lay down, the fan still hummed, the ceiling still waited—but the room no longer felt empty.
Death, he thought, promised peace because it asked nothing.
Life asked everything.
And for the first time, Arjun wondered if answering that demand—even imperfectly—might be its own kind of peace.