The first thing Aarav learned about time was that it does not tick.
It breathes.
He realized this on a Tuesday evening, standing alone at Platform No. 4, when the station clock stopped at 6:17 PM—yet the world continued moving.
People walked. Trains arrived. Children cried.But the clock… did not move.
No one noticed.
Except Aarav.
He pressed his fingers against his chest and felt something strange—two heartbeats.
One was his.
The other… wasn't.
Aarav Malhotra lived a life so ordinary that even destiny forgot him.Twenty-four years old. Data entry job. One-room rented house. No friends he could call at midnight. No dreams loud enough to disturb his sleep.
His father had died silently.His mother lived silently.And Aarav… existed silently.
Silence had become his language.
That day, when the clock froze, he thought he was hallucinating. Doctors had warned him—stress, anxiety, dissociation. Big words for a small life.
Yet that night, while lying on his bed, he heard it again.
Tick.Tick.
Not from a clock.
From inside his body.