The Night It Became Real
The first night I slept in my college hostel, I realized something had changed.
The room was quiet, but the building wasn't.
Somewhere along the corridor, I could hear students talking and laughing. Doors opened and closed. Footsteps passed outside the room. Every now and then, a distant voice broke through the night before fading away again.
I lay on my bed, staring into the unfamiliar room.
Everything around me felt new—the walls, the bed, the sounds, even the feeling of knowing that I would wake up there the next morning.
At one point, I picked up my phone.
Its light briefly filled the darkness around me, illuminating the unfamiliar room before I turned the screen off again.
For a few seconds, I simply lay there holding the phone, listening to the hostel come alive around me.
That was the...