The red light blinked on.
LIVE.
Liam inhaled—not deeply, not fully. Just enough to steady the tremor that came every time the clock crossed midnight.
Outside the studio window, the city lay awake in fragments: sleepless windows, wandering taxis, hearts pacing their rooms like prisoners counting steps. Inside, the room was dim, almost devotional. One mic. One chair. One voice pretending not to be lonely.
He leaned closer.
"Good evening," he said, softly.
A pause—measured, deliberate.
"This is LustBoy, and you're tuned to the frequency that doesn't ask why you're awake."
Silence followed. Not empty—listening.
Liam had learned this early: silence was not absence. It was an invitation.
The switchboard lit up almost immediately.
He smiled—not with his lips, but with his voice.
"Let's begin."
The first caller spoke fast, like someone afraid the line might disappear.
Caller 1: "I don't need advice."
Liam: "Good. I don't give any."
Caller 1 (laughs, then exhales): "Then… can I just talk?"
Liam: "That's what the night is for."
A confession followed—small, unfinished, human. When it ended, Liam didn't rush to fill the space.
"Thank you for trusting the dark," he said.
The line clicked off.
Another light blinked.
Caller 2: "Do you believe voices can save people?"
Liam (after a beat): "I believe they can stay. Sometimes, staying is enough."
The caller didn't reply. Just breathed. Then disconnected.
Liam removed his headphones for a moment.
He thought of his father's old radio at home—the one that hummed even when switched off. His mother used to say, "Some sounds don't need permission."
He put the headphones back on.
The third call came without introduction.
No greeting. No name.
Only a sob, muffled, like it had been crying for hours before finding courage.
Liam straightened.
"Hey," he said, gently. "You're on air. You don't have to speak."
The crying continued—ragged, uneven.
He lowered his voice, almost to a whisper.
"You can stay silent," he said. "Just… don't hang up."
The sound on the other end shook. Then stopped.
A woman's voice emerged—thin, careful.
Caller: "If I stop crying… will you still listen?"
Liam swallowed.
"Yes," he said. "Especially then."
Minutes passed. The city seemed to lean closer to the frequency.
The clock ticked.
The caller breathed.
The line stayed open.
When the hour ended, the producer gestured urgently—cut the call.
Liam didn't.
The red light dimmed.
OFF AIR.
Still, the call remained.
The studio smelled faintly of cold coffee and old vinyl—an aroma that clung to the corners like forgotten memories. Liam stared at the microphone, its silver frame reflecting the dim red glow of the "ON AIR" light. The caller's line was still open. The same quiet, steady hum that had become his anchor after midnight.
The silence between them was heavy—not empty—but waiting to be filled with something neither dared to name.
Caller: "You promised you'd stay…"
Liam (softly): "And I will. Always."
The voice trembled, delicate yet insistent, carrying the weight of countless nights spent wandering alone. It wasn't just loneliness—it was memory, regret, longing. Liam could sense it, like an echo bouncing in an empty courtyard.
"Who am I speaking to?" he asked, though part of him feared the answer.
Caller: "Names are a luxury. Not tonight."
The line went quiet again, leaving him with only the sound of his own heartbeat. He realized something then: this was not a simple call. It was a story reaching out through the night, and he had no choice but to listen.
He pulled his chair closer to the mic. The hum of the city outside the studio window reminded him of home—of the small house in a quiet town where the monsoon had once drummed on tin roofs with a rhythm that seemed to speak only to him.
Liam's childhood had been a series of half-remembered evenings: his father's old radio humming news and classical music, his mother reading poetry aloud, the ink from her fountain pen blotting words on the page like spilled dreams.
"Some sounds don't need permission," she had said once, her voice soft as a whisper.
He had understood only decades later that she was speaking of human hearts—voices that sought to be heard even when the world refused to listen.
Growing up, he had always felt slightly out of step. At school, at home, in the crowded streets of his town—he was the boy who listened more than he spoke. He noticed small things: the quiet sigh of a neighbor in the evening, the soft scraping of a broom against the floor at dawn, the laughter of children carried across the wind like music he could never catch.
Radio had given him purpose. Not fame. Not power. But a chance to become a vessel, a conduit for voices too fragile or weary to be carried elsewhere.
Liam leaned back, closing his eyes. The studio became a garden in his mind. A garden where the wind whispered secrets through the leaves and shadows danced in the corner of every memory. He thought of the city outside, a thousand lights like fireflies, each apartment a story, each heart a song waiting to be sung.
In the night, every whisper is sacred.
In the dark, every story deserves a listener.
He whispered this to himself, almost as a prayer. The caller's voice, still soft and trembling, answered without words. And in that moment, Liam understood why he had been chosen—not by fate, perhaps, but by circumstance. The lonely, the lost, the forgotten—they always found him.
Caller: "I watch… from the streets. Sometimes I hear you even before I call."
Liam: "You're near, then. Not just a voice in the dark."
Caller: "The night is full of echoes. Some belong to me, some to you."
A shiver ran down Liam's spine. How could someone know so much? Not just about his voice, but about the spaces in his heart that even he had not explored? He felt simultaneously unsettled and intrigued.
Caller: "I have always sought someone who listens. Not to answer, not to fix… just to stay."
Liam (after a pause): "Then we understand each other. This… is our shared hour."
For a moment, the city outside seemed to hold its breath. The hum of traffic, the distant barking of dogs, the occasional siren—all faded into a single rhythm, as if the night itself had leaned closer to the studio window to listen.
This was the connection Liam had always craved, though he had never named it. Not romance, not friendship, not longing—but something older, deeper, almost sacred. The kind that thrived in silence and soft-spoken truths, in whispered confessions and the spaces between breaths.
Caller: "Do you ever wonder… if voices can remember each other?"
Liam (with a quiet smile): "Yes. And sometimes I believe they do."
The caller did not reply. Instead, the line was filled with soft, irregular breathing. Liam understood then that the person on the other end had been carrying nights like rivers, always searching for a shore.
He closed his eyes, letting the voice fill the studio like incense smoke, curling through every corner, seeping into the cracks of his memory.
The night is a mirror. Every whisper reflects a soul. Every sigh tells a story. And some stories… are too fragile to be touched by light.
Liam thought of the river near his childhood home. It had whispered to him then, as this voice whispered now:
"Stay. Listen. Do not turn away."
And he did not.
The caller finally spoke again, voice trembling, barely audible:
Caller: "Sometimes I follow. Sometimes I wait. But you… you hear me when no one else can."
Liam's brow furrowed. Follow? Wait? There was something more here, something unspoken, a shadow behind the voice. A mystery he could feel stretching across the city, like a thin silver thread he could not yet trace.
Liam: "Why now? Why me?"
Caller: "Because the city hums for those who listen… and because the night has chosen you."
The line fell silent again. But this silence was different—charged, alive, like a seed planted in the darkness. Liam knew the caller would return. Had to return.
The clock struck 1:00 a.m. Liam checked the red light. He was no longer alone. He was part of something fragile, luminous, and electric. The city slept, but two souls, connected by frequency and faith, had begun a journey neither fully understood.
And the caller… the caller had a secret, a story hidden in shadows, waiting to unfold.
Caller (softly, almost a whisper of wind): "Next time… I'll tell you who I really am."
Liam's heart skipped.
Next time.
The promise was dangerous and beautiful.
The studio door clicked shut. Liam leaned back in the chair, eyes closed. His hand hovered over the "end call" button, trembling with both fear and anticipation.
The red light blinked once. Twice.
Then, the voice returned, even clearer this time:
Caller: "Don't hang up. Not ever. And don't ask why I watch from the shadows… yet."
Somewhere in the city, the wind carried the echo of that voice, and Liam knew: this was only the beginning.
The night was no longer just his—it belonged to them both now.