Dikshant Sharma was a thirty-year-old bachelor living alone in the silence of his one-bedroom apartment at the 24th floor of a high rise in Gurugram. He had dishevelled hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a permanent frown that made him look like he was always mid-thought. Dikshant was a man of habits and outlines, loved routine and the echoing sound of letters typing on his keyboard in the silence of his apartment. He loved to have his coffee strong and his manuscripts neatly stacked, each with a story of their own. Dikshant wasn't always this silent or alone, but since he had built a modest fanbase and fame in the world of writing for himself, he had started living a more detached life from the world. His novels often toyed with the edges of sanity, where logic ended, and something more primal began. But nothing he had written so far prepared him for the story he was about to begin.

Dikshant felt the loneliness creep up to him at times but it was his shell now. He wished to go back to his olden times sometimes, where he used to party in college, had a bunch of memories from every night and had a particularly large group of friends. His mindset shifted with his writing, like his books, he too became serious and intense. However, this novel was different particularly because for one, he had always written with an intense male protagonist but this time he chose a fun loving, cheerful female protagonist. He was trying to experiment with newer plots, different projections and writing styles. He was trying to make a shift to alter his own behaviours and mind. He wanted to be known for something else other than his intense writing.

The story began as usual, the name of the protagonist in capital letters, as imagined by Dikshant typed out on a fresh blank document on his laptop SHRIYA RASTOGI.
This story was a challenge for Dikshant, particularly because he was neither a female nor fun loving. It took him time to set himself in the mind frame but he started with the plot. He started with describing Shriya as his mind built her, "A brilliant, cheerful girl in her early twenties, ready to take the world by a storm. She was spontaneous and adventurous. A literature student with a quick thinking and a heart that refused to be satisfied." He imagined her with thick, unkempt curls always tied up in a messy bun lying low towards the end of her head, eyes sharp with kohl under her eyes, a radiant glow on her skin except for a few outbreaks that were the only touch of reality on her otherwise unreal beauty.

He wrote about her mornings first. He imagined her tangled in her sheets as the sunlight shone on her face through the gaps in her window curtains. Shriya stretched, then rubbed her eyes before she reached out for her phone while simultaneously getting up from the bed. It took her a minute to realise that she was late for work and this was a routine. She would trip over unkept slippers, rush to the washroom, take a quick shower, rummage through her wardrobe to find the perfect oversized tshirt and jeans, and hop out while still tying her laces. She was different. Way more different than a normal human that Dikshant could understand yet, he liked her.

There was something liberating about writing about her. She wasn't like the usual sulking, unpleasant men that Dikshant usually wrote about. Men like himself. She laughed, she lived and she didn't fear judgement. She took autorickshaws to work, giggled with the chai wala outside her office building, greeted the watchman of the building, danced and sang old Bollywood songs off-key while she tried out new recipes to cook. One thing common with Dikshant was that she wrote. However, she didn't confine herself to her room. She took inspiration from the world around her. She wrote in open places, parks, metros, pavements and balconies.

Day by day, Dikshant's manuscript filled up with Shriya's exciting new life. The lines between creator and creation blurred a little more every time he typed her name. The concept had haunted Dikshant for weeks before he had finally decided to write. He had thought it would be fun to explore a newer plot, different than usual and his thoughts and Shriya's character became more and more vivid with each day that he wrote. But, it was on a particularly stormy night that something strange happened. Dikshant was half-asleep on his couch, his laptop screen still aglow, the latest paragraph blinking at the end of the sentence:
Shriya stood on the terrace, her hair wild in the wind, looking up at the clouds as if daring the sky to rain harder. “Come on,” she whispered, “I’m not afraid of you.”

He stared at the screen, confused. Maybe he had—maybe it had come to him in a daze. He blamed it on the fatigue from the long day of writing so he just saved the document, and went to bed. The next morning, he opened his document to find an entire page added.

Shriya was talking directly to him. “You really think you’re writing me, don’t you? You think I don’t know who you are. But I’ve seen you, Dikshant. I’ve watched you watching me. You drink your coffee too bitter, and you stare at the walls too long. I know your stories before you even type them. What is behind that intense look you keep? I think you should know that you don’t scare me. I’m not your puppet.”

Dikshant sat frozen. He read it thrice, still confused about the possibility of this happening and then with trembling fingers but certainty in his mind, he deleted the page. The only light lit in his lobby flickered lowly over his head and the quiet of the apartment felt a little too quiet today. Almost suffocating. Dikshant got up and went out for a walk, something he hadn’t done in weeks. He needed the sound of traffic, the crowd, anything real to drag him out of the strange grip his own story had on him.

That night, he dreamt of her exactly as he’d described her. Shriya stood barefoot on his apartment balcony, drenched in rain, smiling with mischief. The city behind her was a blur of headlights and thunder. She leaned in close.

“You’re trying to change yourself through me, but I like the old you better”, she said as she reached out to run her hand through Dikshant's hair and then she kissed him.
And everything in the dream stilled, like time held its breath.

He woke up gasping for air. He looked at the clock on the wall in front him, it was still ticking. He breathed, relieved that time was not still, it was still moving forward. His gaze moved towards the balcony door. It was open and the faint sound of the rain dripping on his floor was audible. His laptop screen was on and as his gaze shifted towards the screen, a new line blinked: “Next time, I won’t let you wake up alone.”

Over the next few days, Dikshant tried to move on to another project. He began outlining a detective novel. He even opened an old manuscript, tried editing a horror story he’d left unfinished two years ago. But every time he opened his laptop; Shriya’s story would be waiting for him in each document that he opened. Sometimes, it was just her name at the top of a blank page. Sometimes, a new paragraph and once, horrifyingly, a video file appeared in his documents titled: “SHRIYA.mp4”

He clicked it. It was his apartment hallway, filmed from behind him. The timestamp matched that very evening. He started hearing her. In the kitchen, humming while he made his coffee. In the mirror, whispering as he brushed his teeth.

“You made me, Dikshant,” she’d murmur. “And now you’re mine.” He stopped writing. He shut his laptop, packed it away in a drawer, and began sleeping with the lights on. But one morning, he woke up to the smell of jasmine and ink. His desk was littered with handwritten pages. An unknown yet a very familiar handwriting. It was a lightly pressed nib in a neat straight line yet the words mixed within each other, chaotic yet beautiful, just like he imagined Shriya. Her voice, her rhythm, her rage.

The words said, “Why won’t you talk to me? You brought me alive and now you want to forget me? I love you, Dikshant. I’ve loved you from the second you described my soul. Isn’t that what you wanted? Someone who gets you?”

The last line was underlined. “Let me out.”

Terrified, he called an old college friend, Laksh, the only one he still spoke to—and even that, only when the silence got too loud. “Bro, are you okay?” Laksh's voice crackled through the speaker, laced with casual concern that quickly turned serious. “You sound… off.”

“I haven’t slept properly in days,” Dikshant confessed, voice dry. “It’s not just the dreams. She’s... writing back.”

“She?”

“Shriya, the protagonist from the new book that I have been writing lately”

Laksh paused. “You mean a character from your book is writing back to you?”

“She’s not just a character anymore.” Dikshant's fingers trembled as he gripped the phone tighter. “I think she’s real. It’s either that or I think I’m losing my mind.”
Laksh sighed. “Dikshant, listen to me. This isn’t new for people like us. Writers, creators—we live in our heads too long and things start to blur. You’re probably dissociating. It happens. Lock yourself in with a story for weeks and your brain doesn’t know what’s real anymore.”

Dikshant was quiet.

“Just shut the laptop,” Laksh continued. “Come stay with me for a few days. We’ll grab a drink, meet people, reset your brain. You need air, not more words.”

“I can’t,” Dikshant whispered.

“Why not?”

“She won’t let me.”

There was a pause. Even the static on the call seemed to lean in. “You mean... the character?” Dikshant swallowed hard, his voice dropping to something between awe and fear.
“No, Laksh. I mean... I think she loves me.”

Two nights later, a sudden blackout swept through Gurugram.

Streetlights blinked off. Elevators froze mid-floor. In most of the apartments, mobile flashlights flicked on, and ceiling fans slowed to silence. But on the 24th floor, something was off.

Dikshant’s apartment glowed. Not electronically.

Through the cracks in his curtains, a soft, golden flicker pulsed like a heartbeat. Candles. Dozens of them.

Inside, shadows waltzed across the walls as if the room itself were alive. A typewriter clacked steadily, though Dikshant hadn’t owned one in year and his Alexa responded to someone, “Okay, now playing Abhi na jao chhod kar on YouTube Music” before the sound of the tune playing low and slow, warped with static, filled the room.

Neighbours would later say they heard faint laughter through the walls. Giggles, soft and feminine. Barefoot footsteps across a wooden floor. Some even swore they heard humming in perfect tune, coming from the air vent. But Dikshant remembered none of it.

He woke up sprawled across his living room floor, shirt damp with sweat, a strange floral scent clinging to the air—jasmine, sweet and dizzying. His laptop was closed.
The balcony door was ajar and scrawled across the inside of his window, in what looked suspiciously like red lipstick, were seven haunting words:
“Our first date was perfect. Let’s write more together.”

It wasn’t the horror of her being real that paralyzed him. It was the horrifying realization that deep down—he wanted her to be. Shriya was everything he had locked away in himself: joy, unpredictability, wild love, fearless expression. She didn’t just exist on the page anymore. She existed in the gaps of his loneliness, in the sighs between sentences, in the heartbeat he thought he had silenced. She was the only one who had truly spoken to him in months and he had fallen for her. So, he agreed with her and returned to the manuscript- to write more with her.

But this time, it wasn’t fiction. It was a confession. “Dear Shriya,” he typed. “I’m scared of you. But I think I miss you. What does that say about me?”

For a moment, the cursor blinked in silence. Then the keys began to move. One by one. As if she were sitting beside him. “It means you’re finally mine.”