Ratul didn't wake to the shrill scream of his alarm. Instead, his phone shattered the quiet of his room, ringing insistently. Groaning, he rolled over, squinting at the harsh glow. Whoever was calling clearly didn't care about the hour—or maybe they couldn't wait.
He answered, voice thick with sleep. On the other end, a breathless voice stumbled over words, urgent and panicked. Only fragments made sense. Then it hit him.
"Nina… has… died…"

Time froze. Ratul sat upright, heart thudding. Nina? The name summoned memories like lightning: the quiet confidence in her voice during interviews, her meticulous notes about Prime Minister Mehrin's school life, the small details she had shared that made the article go viral. She had been cautious, deliberate. She hadn't seemed the type to vanish into tragedy.
He remembered the day she had first reached out to him, hesitant yet firm, insisting on sharing what few knew. The afternoons spent discussing politics, her careful phrasing, the subtle unease behind her eyes whenever she hinted at something dangerous in the past. She had confided small fears, fleeting glances that suggested someone—something—was watching.
Ratul's fingers trembled slightly as he opened his laptop. The headline was almost buried in a corner:
"Woman Found Dead in Apartment – Suspected Suicide After Argument With Boyfriend"
The words blurred on the screen. They didn't add up. Nina had been precise, intelligent. No hint of despair, no warning signs he had noticed. And yet the report painted a neat, tragic picture.
He leaned back, eyes closing briefly. A memory surfaced: the quiet winter afternoon when she had called him last, hesitating before the line went cold, her voice almost a whisper: "There are things I cannot say, but I trust you'll understand if anything happens." Ratul had laughed it off at the time—warning, maybe, but now it echoed ominously.
The fragments of her words, the brief exchanges about politics and the people in Prime Minister Mehrin's inner circle—they now felt like a map. Pieces scattered, incomplete, and yet their pattern seemed urgent, dangerous. He remembered her hesitation, the way she had glanced over her shoulder when leaving the café, as if expecting someone to follow.
His thoughts drifted to others who had once been close to the Prime Minister, people who had spoken too freely or disappeared quietly. Whispers of accidents, sudden departures, mysterious absences—all labeled conveniently as life's unfortunate turns. Could Nina's death be the same?
Ratul pressed his palms to his temples. This was no ordinary news story. The neat words on the screen masked something raw, something deliberate. There was a pattern behind the curtains, threads woven carefully into a web that many had chosen to ignore.
And now Nina's death had tugged at one of those threads.
He exhaled slowly, staring at the glowing laptop. For the first time in months, he felt the familiar itch of a story that refused to be left alone. He didn't know what he would find if he pulled at it. He only knew that he had to.
Whatever explanation there was, it wouldn't be simple.
And something in him told him it might just lead to far more than he was prepared to face.