Rohan’s legs gave way. He crawled to her. "Amma. You’re not—this isn’t real."

He climbed the four flights of stairs. The rooftop door was always jammed, but tonight it swung open on its own.

"Define real," she smiled. "The app knows what you deleted. Not from your phone. From yourself."

The glow of the cracked smartphone screen was the only light in Rohan’s room. At 2:00 AM, the rest of the chawl was asleep—the neighbor’s coughing fit had subsided, the stray dogs had tired of their barking. But Rohan was wide awake, staring at a loading bar that refused to move.

Others. What others? His father’s face? The sound of his best friend’s laugh? The smell of first rain on dry earth? The app wouldn’t just give him his mother back. It would hollow him out to do it.

He had found it on a Telegram channel, buried between spam messages and pirated IPL streams. The icon was garish—a neon clapboard dripping with what looked like blood. He’d ignored the warnings. "This app can harm your device." Harm? His device was already a ruin. The screen was held together with packing tape, the battery swelled like a tumor. He had nothing left to lose.