Chapter 4: A Name That Wasn't Mine

Somewhere in the city, every television was casting the same serious news — a government school teacher had been killed, brutally, his testicles burst out. Police had found a blowtorch near the body but couldn't trace any fingerprints. A constable was overheard telling another officer that the murder was so professional, so gruesome, it was hard to even imagine. The CCTV cameras had gone dead right at the moment the murder began, leaving the police confused — who, and why, had this man been killed?

The headmaster found a letter in his cabinet, like a suicide note. The teacher's parents confirmed it — the handwriting was their son's.

The reporter concluded the broadcast: police were still searching, and results were expected within the week.

Iqra didn't cry when she heard. That's what got to me. Everyone else was scared — her friends' mothers standing at the gate that evening, hands over their mouths, saying "hope they catch him soon" like saying it enough times would make it true. But my sister, she just went quiet. Not scared-quiet. Something else. That thought sat with me longer than I wanted it to. Why did she look almost relieved, hearing a man was dead? Two answers kept circling in my head, and I didn't like either of them.

Maybe he'd done something to her. Something she never said, something I never asked, because some doors you don't open unless you're ready for what's behind them.

Or maybe it was nothing like that at all — maybe it was just a school shut for a few days, no assignments, no PT drills in the heat, a child's small relief dressed up as something darker in my tired mind.

I didn't know which one was true. And that not-knowing sat heavier than either answer would have.

I could've asked her. Could've sat beside her, said her name soft, waited for whatever she needed to say. Instead I just walked away, the way I always do.

Robbery, chain snatching, now this — every week the news has a new way to scare a father into locking his daughter indoors. And I'm no father, just a brother working nights, coming home when the sun's already up and everyone else is leaving for the day. What protection is that? I can't even walk her to school myself.

People keep telling me, shift her to a private school, she's sharp, she deserves better. As if my salary changes because they wish it would. As if the price of oil and rice cares what school my sister goes to. Every election, someone promises the numbers will come down. Every year, they don't.

So she stays in that same school. The one every channel is saying on loop right now. And I go to work every night telling myself she'll be fine, because what else is there to tell myself?

Six months passed like a sunrise — quick, warm, gone before you noticed. Mosina and I became close, close enough that I got her a place in my company, working alongside me. Friendship turned into love over two years, but it was one-sided, and I carried two weights I couldn't put down.

One — my family's needs were mine to handle, alone, without ever making it look like a burden.

Two — I had love, but no way to say it. What if she hated me for it, misjudged me for it? So I stayed silent. I built distance where I should have built courage.

Years passed again, like a sunset this time — slower, heavier. I finally made myself strong enough to go and tell her. Too late. Kattapa, my inner voice, had already warned me — she's not yours to keep. But I said it anyway, over dinner, the words I'd swallowed for years.

She said she'd been waiting. Waiting for my answer. But she thought I felt nothing, so she waited instead for her college love to confirm his — and this year, he finally did. They were getting married.

I never complained. Never made a scene the way others might have. I just accepted it — the fate of it — and let the days pass. She married the man she wanted, happily, and I stood there and congratulated them like I meant it. Because some part of me did.

No more reaching out to anyone after that. Just my career now. My sister. My family. Making sure they're happy, even if I stopped keeping count of my own.

I was leaving for the office, keys in hand, when her voice stopped me on the stairs — not the words yet, just the tone. Low. Steady. Nothing like the sister I knew.

I stood still and listened.

"The way he used to look at me. The way he touched — too much, too wrong. He said he'd fail me if I told anyone. But Allah sent someone to end him. My prayer is answered. I thank Allah."

I didn't move. Couldn't.

Everything I'd told myself — a school holiday, a child's small relief — fell apart right there on the stairs. She hadn't been happy that a man was dead. She'd been carrying something for months, maybe longer, silent, alone, while I slept through my days and worked through my nights and never once asked her why she'd gone quiet.

She hadn't needed comfort. She'd needed someone to notice. And I hadn't.

I stood there long after her friend left, my hand still on the railing, my office bag still on my shoulder. Then I turned around and went back down, quiet, like I'd never left for work at all — carrying a guilt that wasn't going to leave with the sunrise. 

I went to office that day carrying that guilt like a stone in my chest. I couldn't pick her up, couldn't drop her, couldn't even walk her the short distance to that gate — my shift ate every hour I had. All I could do was hope, and hoping never felt like enough.

But somehow, someone had watched over her when I couldn't. My Allah had sent a guardian in the dark, in a way I still didn't understand, and kept her safe when I wasn't there to.

I sat at my desk that mid-night, work in front of me, my mind somewhere else entirely — on a terrace, on a voice I'd never really heard before, on a debt I didn't know how to repay.

3:30 in the morning, the shift finally behind me, my legs moving on habit more than will. The railway bridge always felt longer at that hour — no trains, no people, just the iron groaning faintly under its own weight and my footsteps filling in the silence.

That's when I heard it.

"Bilal."

A voice, clear as anything, calling out from somewhere close. Not shouted. Almost familiar, like it expected me to answer.

I stopped. Turned.

Nothing. Just the bridge stretching empty behind me, the tracks below catching the little light there was, and beyond that, the sleeping outline of the city I'd just left.

I told myself it was nothing — some worker on the tracks below, someone's voice carrying strange in the night air, echoes doing what echoes do on iron and stone. But my name isn't Bilal. And no one on that bridge had any business calling out a name that wasn't mine.

I walked the rest of the way faster than I meant to.

The voice came again, not from outside this time, but from somewhere inside my own skull, calm as a whisper meant only for me.

"Aslamu alaikum, Bilal. What you did to the teacher — that was good. Those female teachers, those students in that school — they're happy now. Because of you."

I sat up in the dark, heart going fast, breath caught somewhere in my throat. Who is Bilal? Why does this voice keep calling me that name — a name that isn't mine, wrapped around a sentence that made no sense, tied to a murder I only knew from the television?

I didn't answer. I didn't tell Ammi. I just went to my bed, silent, the question sitting heavier in my chest than any tiredness from the shift. Didn't even remember to switch on the fan — the tension from work, the voice, the name, all of it pressing down until sleep took me somewhere I didn't choose.

Who is Bilal?

That question followed me down into the dark.

Chapter 3: Oyster Eyes

 In most families, if a son works the night shift, everyone treats his daytime sleep like a national emergency. They tiptoe around the house, whisper instead of talking, and guard his bedroom door like it's holding a sleeping king.

My story, unfortunately, belongs to a different genre.

After dragging myself home from work, I still have to go for prayer. Only after that am I officially allowed to think about my bed. But wait — there's one final boss standing between me and sleep: Umaizha, my cat.

The second I step into my room, Umaizha demands a minimum two-hour playtime tax. Skip the session, and the tiny drama queen acts like I've personally ruined her entire life — sulking on the floor, ignoring her food, making sure I know exactly whose fault this is. Apparently, in this house, my sleep is optional, but my cat's emotional well-being is not.

After surviving all of that, I finally crawl into bed around 10:00 a.m., hoping to catch some real sleep. But just as I'm drifting off, my mom storms in.

"Wake up! Eat your breakfast first, then sleep!"

Seriously... what?

The second she wakes me, my sleep has already packed its bags and left the building. How am I supposed to fall back asleep right after eating? Somehow, after wrestling with my own brain, I manage to scrape together six to eight hours anyway. Calling it "sleep" is generous — it's more like negotiating a peace treaty with my own eyelids.

On the way to the office, I saw her again — the same girl, bargaining hard with some customer who clearly had no plans to pay her extra for the ride. Somewhere in my head, that voice — the one I'd started calling Kattapa — piped up: Why is it always her? Why does trouble follow this one girl around like a stray dog?

"Shut up," I told myself, before the thought could even finish. It was 5:55. I had four minutes to get to the office by six, and yet here I was, already walking toward her instead of away.

By the time I reached her, the customer had already spotted me coming and bolted — didn't even stick around to argue. Guess my face does the job even when I'm not trying: rugged, a little worn out, and a build that's less "muscle" and more "average guy who skipped the gym a few too many times." Whatever it was, it worked.

I walked up and asked straight out: "It's you, right? From that night. Why'd you run off? You just left the letter behind."

She said nothing. Just stood there. So I let it go too, and kept quiet myself.

That night, I'd never actually seen her face — not even her eyes clearly. But today, with the hijab framing them, her eyes looked guarded, careful, like a pearl still shut tight inside its oyster.

She started introducing herself, apologizing for what happened the night before. Her name was Mosina. I told her mine — Vidar Ahmed.

No time to think twice, I booked a bike taxi on the spot and got dropped at the office at exactly 6:00 PM. On the ride, she asked about the two men from that night — were they dead? Right around the same moment, the office TV was running the news: one man found dead, the other unconscious. Police had already closed it as a drunken fight between the two. The reporter said the dead man was a young drug dealer, wanted for years.

After the news ended, she looked at me and smiled — and something about it felt off, strange, like it didn't quite belong on her face. But all she said was that we'd personally taken down society's most wanted termite. I let it go, still talking to her, when Kumar, one of the day-shift guys from my office, walked up. "Bro, today's Saturday," he said.

Saturday. My off day. I'd completely forgotten.

That's the thing about night shifts — they don't just wreck your sleep, they wreck your sense of time itself. Days blur into each other until even something as basic as "what day is it" needs someone else to remind you.

Mosina laughed, just slightly. And that's when it hit me — it wasn't only her look that carried weight. Her voice had the same boldness in it. Not loud, not showy, just certain of itself. I was impressed, and I didn't try too hard to hide it.

Chapter 2: The Weight of Average

 

Hello. My name is Vidar.

My father named me after the Norse god, the Silent One, inspired by the old myths he'd loved since he first played God of War as a kid. A god who barely spoke, and still tore a wolf apart with his bare hands. Fitting, maybe, more than he knew.

I was quiet. Ambivert, if you want the word for it. Talk to me and I'll talk back. Leave me alone and I'll stay gone. But underneath the quiet was something else, something I didn't have a name for until much later. Whenever I saw someone innocent get hurt, get bullied, get cornered, something in me lit up that I couldn't explain and couldn't control.

Tenth Standard
That's where it started.

I was thin, painfully thin, and my classmates called me "skeleton." Said flatly, like it was just a fact about me. I wasn't the topper. Wasn't anyone's idea of promising. Average. Forgettable. Mostly I slept through class.

Every school has a Dinesh, some kid who treats the weaker ones as entertainment. One day he flicked a chalk piece at a girl in front of me. It hit her back. She turned, saw me, and told the teacher I'd thrown it.

I hadn't. Nobody believed me. Straight to the principal's office.

Our principal, a devout Jain, apologized to the teacher on my behalf, gave me a short lecture on patience, and sent me back to class like the matter was closed.

Not a free period that time. I sat down. The girl was laughing, openly, making sure I saw it.

I don't know where it came from. One second I was absorbing it like I always did. The next, I'd flipped the steel table with both hands.

The sound swallowed the corridor. One flat bang. Every classroom on that floor went silent. It usually took three people to move that table.

My classmates panicked before I did. By the time a teacher arrived, they'd already agreed the bench had slipped while they were moving it. Nobody mentioned me.

The Job

Like every middle-class parent, mine had a plan for me. Someone told my father that a psychology degree could lead to counselling, steady, respectable work. So I did a B.Sc in Psychology. My own dream had been automobile engineering. I let it go for his advice. He passed away not long after. I tried for an MBA afterward, but time and circumstance closed that door too. Now I hold a degree that has nothing to do with the job I actually do, at a US-based company, doing work that doesn't match either my training or my interest.

Three years. Same salary. Circumstances I can't fully control keep me pinned in place. The money lands in your account like lightning, brilliant for a second, then gone before you've even understood you had it.

I thought the anger from school had burned out somewhere along the way. It hadn't. Two years into becoming "senior," it started coming back, randomly, without warning. I learned to manage it with music, headphones in, world shut out. But sometimes it still erupts, like a volcano that doesn't check the calendar.

You do the work. All of it, correctly. One small mistake, the kind Ctrl+Z would fix in half a second, and your manager talks like you deleted the entire sheet. You ask for leave, and suddenly you're "the best, we need you here." You ask for a raise, and suddenly the question is: what exactly have you done?

The anger built like something psychotic, honestly. But you adjust. You have to. You were born middle class. There's rent, there's your parents' tablets, there's the EMI, there's always something eating the next paycheck before it arrives.

One day it was a minor issue. Nothing, really. But my manager tore into me like I was born specifically to be scolded by him. I walked back to my desk, picked up a screwdriver, and started toward his desk to put it in his neck. My mother called at exactly that moment. That call is the only reason I'm not in a cell right now, or worse.

I don't talk to my colleagues much. In an office, you never know who's a snake, who's a fox, and who's actually decent. So I keep my mouth shut and let them think whatever they want. Mostly they think I'm the guy with the anger problem. Something to be entertained by.

Present

A girl came into the office. I took her to the guest room, told her to rest. She wasn't fragile about it. She told me straight: don't show me pity. If you hadn't shown up, I would have killed them myself. I told her I wasn't doing her any favors. That I saw her like a sister, that I have a little sister of my own.

My shift ended at 7 AM. She was gone by then, no goodbye. Just a note left behind: whatever. Thanks..

 

Chapter 1: The Middle Class Kratos

It was midnight, around 12:30 AM. I was walking down a street for a tea break, since I was working night shift. My colleagues always chose the main road or the highway to get to the tea shop, but I wasn’t really interested in following them that day. I liked walking through the more horrifying, dreadful street (the one most people avoided at night, thanks to the high number of drug users and suicide cases reported there). Because I didn’t believe in ghosts, and I wasn’t afraid of death.

Further down the road, I saw two guys, fully drunk, shouting and howling like dogs. Then I noticed a light coming from a scooter — it looked like a girl, someone who seemed new to my hometown. She wore a helmet, dressed like a bike-taxi rider. The two guys stopped her and started bullying and harassing her. She cursed back at them, scolding them with bad words, but somehow, they touched her inappropriately.

As a middle-class guy, I understood the weight behind her situation the pain her family probably carried, and why she was risking her safety just to do her job.

I don’t know where the anger came from — it hit me like Kratos. I took off my ID card, tied a handkerchief over my face, and pulled my hoodie up over my head. I took out a ballpoint pen, walked straight toward the guy who had touched her, flicked the cap onto the ground, and stabbed the pen into his neck, his hand, his chest again and again, like something feeding on rage. His blood spilled out, plop, plop, splattering onto my face. The other guy was too drunk to even stand straight, swaying and howling like a dog, barely conscious. I spotted a soft wire lying nearby — something used to tie things and grabbed it. I drove it through one cheek, pulling it through to the other side, then tied the wire tight around his mouth, sealing it shut.

Both of them screamed in pain. Then, one by one, they went unconscious.

I thought she was completely shaken, so I took her scooter and set it on its side stand. She was clearly broken and fearful, but I have to say — she was bold and clever. She broke his fingers, snapping them like mutton chukka, and threw them toward the dogs nearby.

I told her, “Please come and rest in my office. If anyone asks you about tonight, just tell them I’m your cousin brother.” She said okay.

But before that, my mind was already flickering with a plan — we needed to frame this so it looked like both guys had simply fought each other and passed out.

My inner voice — I call him Kattapa — kicked in, like I was playing one of those forensic games, something like Murder Cleaner. Kattapa told me to frame it properly. There was some dirty water nearby, so I washed the pen. I took it and pressed it into the hand of the guy whose mouth I’d tied shut, then removed the wire from his mouth and placed it near the other guy — the one I’d stabbed with the pen. I was certain neither of them was dead, just unconscious. Given how much they’d been drinking and how many drugs they’d clearly taken, they likely wouldn’t remember any of it until someone told them. I staged it to look like they’d fought each other while drunk — so the police wouldn’t suspect a third person was involved.