The next day, I—Arya—found myself sinking deeper into the suffocating routine. The morning started with piles of tasks at the office, endless meetings, and pressure that seemed to get crazier each day. My head felt heavy, my body exhausted, but I had no choice but to push through. Every step seemed to carry a heavier burden.
That day, like all the others, I was forced to work overtime. My eyes were heavy, but the work seemed endless. Coming home late had become a new habit. On the way back, I stared blankly out the bus window, watching the streetlights reflect off the puddles, and it felt like the world was moving so far away from me. When I finally reached my small rented house, the rain began to fall heavily, as if accompanying the accumulated fatigue in my body.
That night, it had been so long since I last encountered the woman, but I was coming home later than usual. The time had already passed midnight. The streets were empty, only a few vehicles passed by. The sky was dark, with heavy rain pouring relentlessly. My body was drenched, but I was too tired to care.
As I walked past the railroad tracks I usually took, a train passed by with a deafening roar in the silence of the night. I stood at the edge of the tracks, waiting for the train to pass. The rain grew heavier, and the thunderous sound of the train made the atmosphere even more eerie. But suddenly, I saw her—something that made me stop, unable to move.
On the side of the tracks, just a few meters from me, there was a woman with a torn yellow umbrella. She stood still, her face calm, unaffected by the rain soaking her body. Her face was as calm as the night itself, just like when I first met her. My eyes froze. It was her!
Without thinking, I ran toward her, trying to get closer. My heart raced, and my steps grew faster, as if I needed to find the answers. But before I could take another step, suddenly the railroad guard appeared and stopped me forcefully.
"Are you trying to die?! The train's still passing!" he yelled, pulling my arm roughly.
I pointed towards the woman. "But… there's someone over there!" I shouted, panicking, trying to convince him.
However, when I looked back, the woman was gone. There was no one there. Only the empty railroad tracks, filled with rain and the eerie silence of the night.
The guard looked at me with a bewildered expression, as though I had lost my mind. "There's no one, man. In this kind of rain, just go home."
I nodded weakly, feeling confused. But my mind couldn't calm down. She was real. I was sure of it. There was something she wanted to tell me, and I couldn't just ignore it.
After that incident, curiosity consumed me. Who was she? Why was she there that night? And why did she say she had died three years ago? All those questions spun in my mind, pushing me to dig deeper.
I went to the small food stall where we first met. I asked the people around, hoping someone recognized her, but no one knew. Everyone there looked at me with confusion, as if I were making it up. I began to feel like I was trapped in a dream I couldn't understand.
The following days, the curiosity continued to gnaw at me. I began to dig deeper, searching for any news of an accident or strange events that might have occurred near the railroad or the place where we had met. My nights were filled with questions that never seemed to have answers. The woman's name remained a mystery, and although every step I took felt heavier, I felt like there was something I needed to know, something I had to uncover.
Every time the rain fell, the shadow of her face would appear in my mind. Her calm gaze, her warm smile, even her soft voice that still echoed in my ears. I felt trapped between reality and something much larger, something I couldn't explain. I had to find the answer. I needed to know why she appeared in my life. Perhaps, the answer was the key to understanding everything that had been disturbing my mind.