It was always quiet in Room 37.
Not the kind of quiet that soothes — the kind that creeps.
A silence so deep, it didn't just fill the space — it weighed on it.
In that silence sat Aarav — sixteen, thoughtful, forgettable.
The kind of boy who never raised his hand in class, not because he didn't know the answers,
but because he questioned the questions themselves.
Since the fire drill last winter, no one used Room 37.
The floorboards were blackened at the edges, the walls stained with smoke like ghostly fingerprints.
Yet Aarav went there every lunch break, as if the ashes whispered something the living couldn't.
At first, he came for peace.
Then the peace began to whisper.
---
He heard it first during the third week. A soft hum behind the chalkboard. A name murmured.
Not his name.
When he tried to tell someone, they laughed.
When he stopped trying, the voice grew louder.
Sometimes it wept. Sometimes it begged.
Sometimes… it knew things he had never told anyone.
---
Aarav had always believed that guilt was just a feeling.
Something that came and went like hunger or sleep.
But guilt, he now understood, was alive.
It had a voice. It remembered.
And sometimes, when no one else does — it speaks.
---
To Be Continued...