Rahim did not sleep.
He just lay there on his mat, eyes wide open, listening to the house breathe around him. He could hear his mother in the next room. Her chest rising and falling, steady and soft. From the docks, he could hear the distant creaking of wood from the docks. Somewhere far away, a chain rattled once and then fell silent.
It was all so familiar, yet it gave him the shivers.
Whenever he closed his eyes, it wasn't Kamal's body or the blood that haunted him. It was that page in the inspector's notebook where a word was so neatly as if it answered everything.
Resolved.
By dawn, he had given up on sleep entirely. He saw the light leak in through the cracks of the window which made the flying dust turn into gold. He listened as the city woke early, listened the first cries of the vendors, the deafening sound of carts, the chirping of the birds.
Vendors set up their stalls with brisk efficiency. Nobody was fighting in the street. The wheel of a cart that used to stuck on a rock managed to roll past the same spot without any difficulty.
Nothing was unusual. That was what he found most disturbing. As if the city had decided to forget everything about yesterday and wants to keep moving.
Back at Warehouse No. 3, nothing had changed. Not a thing.
It was unchanged.
In fact, it was probably too unchanged.
He slowed down as he got nearer, scanning the scene as if he might see something difference. The salt crates were stacked just like the day before. The ropes lay just as before. Even those dark spots on the planks still stained dark from where Kamal's blood had soaked in, just sitting there like nothing had happened. No one had bothered to clean it up. It seemed like no one even noticed, or maybe, they were just pretending not to.
Weren't they supposed to clean that up?
Why hadn't anyone wiped it away?
"Rahim."
He turned.
Amina stood near the entrance, her hands hanging down loosely. Her face was calm, but her eyes had that raw, sleepless look he felt in his own body. She looked smaller than usual as if the night had pressed her down.
"You are here quite early," she said.
"Couldn't stay home," he answered then added with a frown, "Anyway, it's my shift."
She watched him for a second. "You didn't sleep."
Neither did you, he wanted to say.
Instead, he asked, "Do you remember yesterday?"
Amina hesitated. "I remember I was standing here," she said after a period of thinking. "I remember that the water was far away." She stopped again. "I see, I remember, it was so nice."
"That's not what I asked."
She looked right at him. "No. I don't remember it happening. But I know something ended."
Rahim nodded. That matched his own sense exactly.
A shout came from the far end of the dock.
Rahim didn't run.
Amina didn't either.
They walked together.
There was a crowd, but smaller this time. People gathered. But this time they are less curious, almost bored. As if they have accepted that death was a part of the daily routine.
This time the body lay near the warehouse wall. It was a young man whom Rahim didn't recognize. Blood pooled beneath him, already going dark.
The inspector was nearby, crouched down and in low voice.
"Knife," he stated. "Clean cut. Probably an argument or a fight."
Rahim swallowed. He felt a lump in his throat.
"This is different," he whispered to himself.
Amina tilted her head. "Really?"
"Look at the place," he said. "Yesterday it was at the salt crates."
Her eyes sharpened. "You remember that."
"So do you," he realized.
They stared at each other. Not long. Just enough to feel the danger of knowing something you're not supposed to.
They were close enough to feel it, that little pause, that silent dependence. Both of them stepped back at the exact same time. Not because they were scared of each other but because being too close with each other would disrupt everything. Rahim suddenly felt like standing next to her was like standing on the edge of a crack in the ground. As long as they remain close, none of them move, they will be safe.
The inspector noticed them.
"You again," he said to Rahim. "What a busy week for you"
Rahim forced himself to speak. "Sir… uh… may I ask something?"
The inspector straightened. "Since when do clerks ask questions?"
"Yesterday's case," Rahim said. "Kamal. Was his body moved before you arrived?"
"No, it wasn't."
"Are you certain? Can you swear to that?"
"I wrote the report myself."
Amina spoke softly, but clearly. "Then why does the stain on the wood look older than it should?"
The inspector's fall towards the wooden plank.
For a second, he looked uncertain.
"It was cleaned," he mumbled, almost to himself. "Poorly."
"By whom?" Rahim asked.
The inspector did not answer, ignored his question and waved his assistant instead. "Finish up."
As they walked away, his eyes a glimpse of the assistant's notebook.
It was already thick with pages. Far more than there should have been for just two deaths.
That made no sense.
That night, Rahim did something he had never done before.
He stole a piece of paper.
Not from the ledger, where it would be caught, but from the bin near the foreman's table. A tiny part thrown out as worthless.
At home, he hid it beneath his sleeping mat.
He started writing without being aware of the reason.
Day uncertain.
Two deaths. Different men. Same calmness afterward.
Tide pulled back early again.
The words felt thin, incomplete. They were like the half-written ones.
He added another line.
Amina remembers too.
That one hit hardest. He had written her name without thinking, as if it belonged there.
Next morning, the paper was still there.
The words hadn't faded.
Rahim was sitting very quietly, and his heart was beating fast.
At dock Amina was looking for him.
"I dreamed of water," she said. voice barely above a whisper. "Again."
"In my dream," Rahim answered, "the tide never came back."
Her breath was interrupted. "You wrote this."
"Yes."
"And it stayed."
They stared at it together.
This was a sign that something was not right even if they did not know what the problem was.
"Not everything resets," Amina whispered.
"No," Rahim said. "Almost everything, but not everything."
That night, when the tide went out again, he added another line to the paper, his hand shaking uncontrollably.
This has happened before.