RUST STREET, the letters stamped into an iron plate that had lived up to its location. They turned onto it and Aarav slowed his pace, reading the building numbers in the lamplight as they passed.
Seventeen. Nineteen.
Aarav stopped in front of the building.
It was narrow, four stories, pressed between its neighbours on both sides. The brick facade had darkened over the years — soot and rain doing what they do without being asked. Tall windows lined each floor at even intervals, several cracked, the shutters mismatched in colour and material. Stone trim along the top hinted at a design that had once intended to look refined. The central doorway still had its shape, but the paint had peeled back in long strips, the wood beneath greyed. Iron railings on the small balconies sagged at slight angles. Where ornament might once have been, laundry hung instead.
It still held the shape of something built with care. Just worn thin by everything that had come after.
"The building looks very old," Aarav said, with the calm of a man adjusting his expectations in real time. "But what can we expect from 2 Venn. At least we get to live somewhere." He turned toward the entrance. "Let's go. 21C, second floor, corner end."
They climbed the stairs. The interior was dim, the staircase narrow, the walls carrying the smell of old plaster and damp wood. Their footsteps reached the second floor landing. Aarav moved to the end of the corridor.
21C.
He pulled the key from his pocket, fitted it into the lock, and turned it.
The door swung open.
"What the hell?"
---
Aarav reached into his bag and found the matchbox by feel. He struck one and touched it to the wick of a candle. The light caught and held — thin, amber, pushing the darkness back just enough.
He stepped inside.
The apartment was empty. Not empty in the way of a room recently vacated. Empty in the absolute sense.
A single bedroom apartment — modest even by modest standards. The walls were bare plaster, their original colour lost beneath years of accumulated grime, darkened in long patches near the ceiling where damp had made itself comfortable. The floorboards were old — warped in places, gaps between some boards wide enough to collect dust and not much else. A single window sat in the far wall, its glass so thoroughly coated in grime that the street outside was nothing more than a smear of distant lamplight. A door on the left led to the bedroom. At the far end, two more doors stood side by side — kitchen on one side, washroom on the other.
No furniture. No bedding. No lamp. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the floor except dust, settled thick and undisturbed.
"Wow," Veer said, looking around with the expression of someone who had been expecting something and received the precise opposite. "There are a lot of things in the apartment."
Aarav looked at the bare walls. Then the bare floor. Then the bare ceiling.
"We three," he said, with the flat composure of a man who had arrived somewhere in the vicinity of acceptance, "four walls, and a ceiling."
He said it without particular emphasis. It didn't need any.
"Close the door," he said, already moving further inside.
Rajan closed it behind them. The sounds of the corridor disappeared. The candle flame steadied in the still air.
Aarav reached into his bag and produced two more candles. He lit both from his own, handed one to Rajan and one to Veer, and straightened up.
"Survey the entire apartment. Tell me if you find anything useful. Anything at all."
Veer moved toward the bedroom. Rajan took the far end. Aarav pushed open the washroom door.
The smell reached him before the candlelight did — damp stone, old pipes, the particular staleness of a small enclosed space that had not had fresh air in some time. A ceramic basin against one wall, a cast iron tub beside it — both coated in dust so thick it had changed colour. He reached out and turned the tap.
A sputter. A groan from inside the wall. Then water — brownish at first, then clearing after a few seconds.
Functional. He turned it off and went back.
Rajan and Veer were already there.
"The bedroom," Veer began carefully. "There is nothing inside — no bed." A pause. "Except for a single bedding. The kind you see from medieval times. Made from hay."
A brief silence.
"I went to the kitchen," Rajan said, moving on with the composure of someone who had decided not to comment on the hay bedding. "Empty shelves and a basin. Water is coming through the tap."
"I went to the washroom," Aarav said. "Water is there. Taps are working. Too much dust."
He looked at both of them.
One hay mattress. Three people. A kitchen with empty shelves. A washroom that works if you let the rust clear first.
Jamie Faulkner, he thought, without particular anger, you are a very interesting man.
---
"With this much dust we can't even use the apartment properly," Aarav said. "So before eating — let's clean. At least enough for tonight's use."
Rajan and Veer nodded. No argument.
"But how would we clean it?" Veer asked. "We have no cleaning tools whatsoever."
"I have a gamcha and some polythene bags in my bag." Aarav was already crouching down, pulling his bag open. He produced a thin worn cotton cloth and two polythene bags. "Bring water in the polythene bag. Use the gamcha to clean the floor first. Start from the bedroom and work toward the door."
He handed the bags to Veer, who headed to the kitchen without further questions.
"Veer," Aarav called after him, "can we use the mattress for sleeping?"
Veer reappeared in the doorway. "I don't think so. Too much dust on the surface. I don't even want to touch it."
Aarav looked at the floorboards beneath his feet.
"Okay," he said. "Tonight we sleep on the floor."
He said it with the same tone he might use to announce rain — factual, unenthusiastic, already past it.
Rajan said nothing. He took the gamcha, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.
---
Thirty minutes later, Aarav straightened up and looked at the living room.
The floor was clean — not spotless, but clean enough. The thick layer of dust was gone. The floorboards showed their actual colour for the first time in what was probably a long while. The washroom had been scrubbed down as well, the basin and taps wiped, the floor cleared.
"Finally," Aarav said, with genuine satisfaction, "the apartment looks like someone can actually live here."
He looked down at the gamcha in his hand. It had started the evening as a pale cotton cloth. It was now entirely brown — stiff in places, heavy with dust, unrecognisable as the thing it had been an hour ago.
Sorry, my dear gamcha, he thought, holding it at a slight distance. But you did a great service today. You will be remembered.
He set it aside carefully.
"Okay," he said. "Get fresh in the washroom. Hands, face, legs. After that we eat."
Rajan went first — in, out, efficient, no commentary. Then Veer, who spent slightly longer and came back looking meaningfully more human. Then Aarav, who stood at the basin, ran cold water over his hands and face, and looked at himself briefly in the small mirror above it.
He looked tired.
Accurate, he thought, and went back to the living room.
---
Veer was already sitting cross-legged on the clean floor, looking at the wrapped food with the focused anticipation of someone who had been waiting for this moment since approximately lunchtime.
"Finally," he announced, to no one in particular, "we get something to eat. I am so hungry."
They unwrapped the food and the smell hit the room immediately.
The bread came out first — wrapped in paper, simple and practical, still faintly warm. Then Rajan produced a small box, cheap and light.
Aarav picked it up and turned it over. "Is this a plastic box?"
"No," Rajan said. "It's made from thin wood. They use some kind of hydrophobic leaf to make it waterproof." He paused. "It cost us 6 Drel."
Aarav's lips twitched. He set the box down without comment.
6 Drel for a box. He opened the lid. The vegetable stew inside smelled considerably better than 6 Drel had any right to smell. Fine. It's fine.
"We got bread and vegetable stew," Rajan continued. "And a sweet — for tonight's party. We thought if we spent too much, you would probably scold us."
"That's great," Aarav said. "And yes, you did the correct thing."
Rajan looked at him. "So you would have scolded us?"
"I wouldn't say no."
"We also got extra bread," Veer added, with mild pride.
Aarav looked at the food laid out on the floor of their empty, candlelit, freshly cleaned apartment. He closed his eyes briefly, said a quiet word of thanks, and picked up a piece of bread.
He dipped it in the stew and took a bite.
It was simple food. Nothing that would have merited a second glance anywhere else, under any other circumstances.
It tasted extraordinary.
All three of them ate with the unhurried focus of people for whom this was genuinely the best meal of the day. The stew was warm. The bread was soft. The sweet was eaten last, slowly, in the manner of something being savoured rather than consumed.
When it was done, they washed their hands at the kitchen basin one after the other, in comfortable silence.
---
"You guys sleeping now?" Aarav asked.
"I know it's a bit early," Rajan said, settling back onto the floor, using his bag as a pillow. "But we are tired. It's probably around 9pm." He looked at Aarav. "You're not sleeping?"
"No. I'll go to the washroom first. Then sleep."
---
Aarav went to the washroom and closed the door behind him. He set the candle on the edge of the basin, where it threw a small unsteady circle of light across the ceiling. He sat down on the toilet.
Now let's think everything that has happened from the very beginning till now.
He started from the stone.
The thing that brought us here is probably that stone. But how did that happen? I have to find out later. We appeared in a cave far from the actual border, so we skipped the border checking, got our ID pass and came to the city. Then we got our actual ID cards. We met good strangers and ate lunch. Now we found a house. Isn't this coincidentally too good? Or was it arranged by someone? There are a lot of things that don't make sense.
He stared at the opposite wall.
This world is strangely familiar — architecture, behaviour, culture. And there was that old lady in the market...
"Frantic old woman," Aarav said quietly, to no one.
Tomorrow I will go to the nearby church and join the night classes. I have to find answers and find the way back. Life here is difficult but it's not impossible.
He flushed, washed his hands, pulled up his pants, and stepped out of the washroom.
---
The living room was dark.
Rajan and Veer had already extinguished their candle. They were on the floor, using their bags as pillows, breathing in the slow even rhythm of people who had been tired for hours and had finally been given permission to stop. Only the faint orange glow of the street lamps came through the window, lying in long pale strips across the floorboards.
Aarav extinguished his own candle and set it down.
He moved to the window and looked out.
The street below had quieted. The vendors were gone, the foot traffic reduced to occasional figures moving through the lamplight. Across the road, old buildings rose against the night sky — brick and stone, windows dark, rooflines uneven against the low clouds. Beyond them, more buildings. The city folding into itself for the night, becoming something quieter and more honest than it was during the day.
There was an unspoken calmness in the air.
Aarav stood at the window for a moment longer.
"Tomorrow begins a new day," he said quietly. "A new day, a new life."
He turned from the window, lay down on the floor beside his bag, and closed his eyes.