Behind the Empty Hostel Room

By Prashant Mishra

Rizwan Mirza thought he had buried the past under lines of code and the structured silence of a Chandigarh sports academy. Then a childhood photograph surfaces in a stranger's missing-person appeal, and the careful distance he has kept from an old, broken friendship begins to collapse. As a gossip account run by someone who knows him too well starts feeding the public a version of the truth, Rizwan discovers that the person everyone mourned may have returned for reasons far more dangerous than anyone imagined. In a race against fandom, betrayal, and a neighbourhood about to be erased, he must decide whether the career he built is worth more than the people he failed to protect.