When Eva opened her eyes that morning, London's grey light filtered through the gap in the curtains. It was neither full day nor full night; it was the city's usual ambiguity. Before sitting up, she reached for her phone screen. No notifications. No messages, no calls. It was an unusually quiet start to her birthday.
She was turning twenty-three. That number felt neither too big nor too small to her. Just… suspended. Eva didn't see her age as a threshold; rather, a passage. A passage she didn't know which way it led.
She glanced at the desk in the corner of her bedroom. Her laptop was closed. The scratches on the lid showed the marks of having been hastily closed in the middle of the night. Eva ran her e-commerce business mostly from home; digital marketplaces, inventory tables, order emails… all within the same screen. Her life was organized enough to fit on that screen.
She got up and went into the kitchen. Turning on the kettle, she glanced at the calendar. She had planned a small celebration for the evening. Jenna was coming. Dora too. Clementin… wouldn't come. Hatoshi too.
Thinking about it made her feel a little nauseous, but it was a familiar feeling. People never fully entered her life; something always felt missing. These voids had become more apparent after her parents' deaths. Eva had learned to be energetic in the face of these absences. Appearing alive sometimes meant truly being alive.
Around eleven o'clock, Jenna called.
"Birthday girl," Jenna said, her voice as controlled and distant as ever. "Is the plan for the evening still valid?"
"Yes," Eva said. "No changes. Clementin is unwell again."
Jenna paused. "Again?"
"Yes. I didn't ask for details."
"It's ironic that he's a doctor and can't take care of himself," Jenna said, not judgmental but coldly.
Eva didn't elaborate on the comment. Jenna's arrogance and distance had become more predictable the more she got to know her. She was thirty, a historian, an editor. She read people like text, then jotted down notes.
"Hatoshi's gone too," Eva said. "He went to Japan. His uncle."
"A funeral," Jenna said. "I see."
After the phone call ended, Eva stood in the kitchen for a while. A message from Dora arrived a little later.
"I'll come in the evening, but I'll leave early. Don't let it get too crowded."
Eva smiled. Dora was her usual self: lazy but rule-abiding. She lived her life within the boundaries she set for herself.
When evening came, there were three people in the house. Candles were lit, a simple cake was cut. Laughter rose but didn't echo. The walls of the house couldn't hold the sound; it was as if everything disappeared where it was.
"Strange," Dora said at one point. "We're all like orphans."
Jenna raised her eyebrows. "Likely is an understatement."
Eva made a mental note of that sentence. Sometimes people could tell the truth so bluntly.
The night ended. The guests left. Eva turned on her computer. To check the orders.
The screen lit up. The inbox refreshed.
An email.
Sender: Unknown
Subject: Time is running out
Eva's fingers rested on the keyboard. She thought it was spam at first. She didn't open it. A few seconds later, a second email arrived.
Subject: Not reading won't save you
This time she opened it.
Eva.
You're late.
This is the first warning.
The text was short but harsh. No advertisement, no links. Just words. Cold and heavy.
Her heart raced, but she didn't panic. She closed the screen. "Nonsense," she muttered to herself.
The next day, a third email arrived. The day after that, a fourth.
You know the locations.
If you don't go, you'll be summoned.
Being summoned is more painful than going.
Eva knew now that this wasn't spam. Nor was he a hacker. The language…was different. It was threatening, but not showy. It was giving orders, not begging.
A week later, Eva was at the police station. The officer examined the screen, shrugged.
"The source is unclear," he said. "There's no concrete threat."
"There is," Eva said calmly but firmly. "You can't dismiss it just because it hasn't happened yet."
The officer shook his head. "There's nothing we can do right now."
It was raining in London when she left the police station. For the first time, Eva felt truly alone.
That evening, she gathered her friends. She told them everything. She showed them the emails.
Jenna was silent for a long time. Dora held her breath. Clementin grimaced. Hatoshi was watching via video link; from Japan.
"These aren't ordinary," Hatoshi said finally. His voice was calm. "But we won't act out of fear."
Clementin gritted his teeth. "Someone is watching us."
Eva looked up. "And they're calling us somewhere."
At that moment, Eva didn't know it, but that sentence was the last ordinary sentence in her life.
The universes she didn't know hadn't yet opened their doors. But the call had begun.
And calls never went unanswered.