When Aanya moved to Caligo City, she didn't tell anyone. She paid in cash, changed her name on the lease, and picked an apartment that felt like it existed between real and forgotten—top floor, end of the hall, with windows facing another building as derelict as the memories she’d buried.
Everything was quiet. Peaceful, even. No one asked questions. Her landlord didn’t care. The neighbors didn’t speak. And that was exactly how she wanted it.
Because Aanya wasn’t running from someone.
She was running from something she did.
On the surface, she lived cleanly—worked remotely, drank tea, read mystery novels. But underneath, she was a patchwork of guilt stitched tightly to a single night that never stopped playing in her head: rain, sirens, broken glass, and her voice screaming too late.
Then came the envelope.
No address. No stamp. Just slipped under her door like a secret the floorboards couldn’t hold anymore.
It read:
"Nice view. But the city watches, too."
She froze. Her apartment faced only one thing—a burnt-out complex across the street, long-abandoned after a fire gutted its top floors.
That night, she closed the curtains.
But at 3:07 AM, a light flicked on in the window directly across from hers.
A single bulb, swaying slightly.
A figure behind it.
She didn’t sleep.
In the morning, the light was gone. But a second envelope waited under her door:
"You said it was an accident. But accidents don't scream."
She dropped the letter. Her hands trembled the way they had when she scrubbed blood off her jacket, years ago.
No one was supposed to know. She had buried that version of herself like a corpse under concrete.
Another day passed.
Another night.
3:07 AM. The light came back. So did the silhouette.
And this time, it waved.
Aanya slammed the curtains shut. When she opened them again—only seconds later—the figure was gone. But taped to the outside of her window was a note, flapping in the wind:
“Why did you let me fall?”
The floor seemed to fall with her.
Her mind flashed back to the rooftop. Her sister. The argument. The slip. The scream.
And Aanya, paralyzed, did nothing.
No one had ever found the body. Just an empty alley, rain, and a note that read "I'm done."
But the guilt had always lived with her. She just didn't know it had followed her this far.
That night, she didn’t sleep. She stared at the building, every window dark except one. The fifth floor. The same level as hers.
She couldn’t take it.
She crossed the street.
The front door of the burnt building hung half off its hinge. The inside smelled of mildew and old memories. She climbed the stairs, each one groaning like it remembered every step of her life she tried to forget.
When she reached the fifth floor, the hallway was darker than it should’ve been.
But the door to the mirrored apartment was open.
Inside was only a single chair, facing the window. A note lay on the seat.
She picked it up.
“Guilt doesn’t fade. It just finds a window to stare through.”
Then she heard the voice.
Behind her.
“I watched you run,” it whispered. “I waited.”
Aanya turned.
Her sister stood there—soaked, pale, smiling with eyes full of everything Aanya had tried to erase.
“You didn’t push me,” she said. “But you didn’t catch me either.”
Aanya stepped back.
The apartment was gone.
She stood on a rooftop now, wind howling around her. The city far below. Her sister closer than ever.
“You want to forget,” the figure whispered, “but the past remembers perfectly.”
“Leave me alone,” Aanya begged.
“You came here,” it said. “And you brought me with you.”
Then, silence.
Aanya blinked.
She was back in her own apartment.
Morning sun poured in. Birds chirped like nothing had ever happened.
Maybe nothing had. Maybe it was just her mind unraveling, a breakdown years in the making.
She laughed, shakily.
Then she noticed it.
A dusty handprint on the inside of her window.
And written beneath it, in red:
“New city. Same fall.”
---
She didn’t leave her apartment that day. Or the next. Fear gripped her like frostbite—silent, spreading, deadly. When she finally opened the front door, she found not a note, but a box.
Inside was a key. Old. Rusted. With a tag that read:
“The roof remembers.”
The roof of her own building. She knew she shouldn't go. But obsession is louder than reason.
At 3:07 AM, she climbed the stairs, key clenched in her palm. The door to the rooftop clicked open as though it had been waiting.
The wind hit her first—cold, heavy with memory. The city stretched out like a graveyard of lights. In the middle of the rooftop, another envelope.
“Jump this time, and maybe it’ll end.”
Behind her, the voice came again—familiar, gentle, hollow.
"You stayed frozen. While I fell."
She turned. Her sister stood at the edge, in the exact spot it happened. The same clothes. Same rain-drenched hair. But her face...
It was alive now. No longer a ghost’s mask. It looked just like Aanya’s.
“Maybe,” the figure said, “we’re not separate anymore.”
Aanya staggered back.
“No. You’re not real.”
“But I am. I’m everything you buried. I’m what you see when you close your eyes. You didn't move on, Aanya. You moved in. With me.”
Then the figure stepped forward, smile widening.
And Aanya realized—with a chill that snapped her spine—this was no spirit.
It was her.
Herself.
The part of her that stood still while her sister died.
The part that never left the rooftop.
The part that had followed her across city lines and new identities.
“You think this apartment is real?” the doppelgänger whispered. “You think Caligo gave you a second chance?”
Aanya blinked. The wind stopped.
Silence fell.
She was back inside the burnt building. On the fifth floor. Her apartment gone. The city... dimmed, unreal. The walls around her cracked like paper, like memory breaking apart.
She wasn’t in a new life.
She was in a loop.
A haunted maze built by regret.
And there, behind her, a mirror. Cracked.
She approached it. Slowly.
Inside it, her reflection stared back—not how she was now, but how she looked that night.
Shaking. Wet. Blood on her hands. Eyes wide with a truth too sharp to name.
The reflection didn’t mimic her. It moved on its own.
It smiled.
And whispered:
“You never moved. You just fell slower.”
---
Moral:
You can start over. Move cities. Change names. But the past doesn't live in memory.
It lives in mirrors, rooftops, and windows.
It waits.
And it always knows the way home.
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