THE LEDGER
Chapter 2 — The Return
Even after Anna ended the call, Aravind remained seated for a long time.
Numbers continued to change across the bank's computer screen.
But he wasn't looking at them anymore.
There was only one face in his mind.
Anna.
“I need to talk to you.”
Her words kept echoing in his head.
Aravind picked up his phone.
He stared at her number.
Should he call?
Should he leave the past where it belonged?
Finally, he pressed the call button.
She answered on the second ring.
“Hello...”
Her voice sounded tired.
“Where are you?”
“Kerala.”
“How long?”
“Two days.”
There was silence.
Then she said,
“I need to see you.”
Aravind's heartbeat quickened.
“Why?”
“There are so many things I need to tell you.”
They met the next day.
For the first time in ten years.
Anna was sitting beside the window of a small café.
When Aravind walked in, she stood up.
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Time had changed both of them.
But to Aravind, she was still the same Anna.
The girl he had once loved.
Anna spoke softly.
“You've changed.”
Aravind smiled.
“So have you.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I'm not happy, Aravind.”
She began talking about her marriage.
The problems with her husband.
Life in the Gulf.
Loneliness.
Arguments.
Years of pain she had kept hidden.
Aravind listened quietly.
He couldn't bring himself to blame her.
Because he was beginning to understand something about himself.
He still loved her.
Anna sent several old photographs to his phone.
Photographs from their college days.
In one of them, they were both laughing.
Aravind stared at it.
His eyes filled with tears.
“Did you ever forget me?” Anna asked.
Aravind didn't answer.
His tears answered for him.
Over the following weeks, they grew close again.
Old memories.
Long conversations at night.
Old wounds.
New hopes.
Aravind slowly began trusting her again.
But there was one thing about his investigation that he never told her.
Her husband's bank account had appeared inside the mysterious financial network.
Anna seemed to know nothing about it.
Or perhaps...
she was simply a very good actress.
One night, Anna told him,
“I have to go back to the UK.”
Aravind said nothing.
“Will you come with me?”
He looked at her.
“Why?”
“I need you there.”
A small doubt appeared in his mind.
But he went with her anyway.
UK
The moment Aravind arrived in London, something felt wrong.
Anna was living in an extremely wealthy part of the city.
Luxury hotels.
Private clubs.
Expensive cars.
A world that seemed to remain awake even after midnight.
Her husband worked at a luxury hotel.
When Aravind met him for the first time, the man smiled.
“So you're Aravind.”
“Yes.”
He shook Aravind's hand firmly.
It didn't feel like a friendly handshake.
It felt like a warning.
Anna watched both men carefully.
During dinner, her husband asked,
“What do you do in Mumbai?”
Aravind smiled.
“Just a normal job.”
“What kind?”
“Data entry.”
The man stared at him for a few seconds.
“Interesting.”
There was something hidden inside that single word.
The next day, Aravind walked through the hotel.
Several things immediately caught his attention.
Large packages were being brought into one of the rooms.
They carried official labels.
But the weight written on the labels did not match their actual weight.
Aravind said nothing.
He simply watched.
A security guard moved one of the packages to another room without opening it.
Aravind noticed the number printed on the package.
47-B.
He memorised it.
That night, Anna and her husband had a serious argument.
He was furious.
“Why did you bring him here?”
“He's an old friend.”
“I don't like him.”
“That is your problem.”
Aravind was standing outside the room, listening.
Suddenly, the door opened.
Anna's husband stepped out.
His eyes were filled with anger.
“Come inside.”
Aravind entered.
The door closed behind him.
The next moment, someone attacked him from behind.
He fell to the floor.
His hands were tied.
Anna screamed.
“Let him go!”
Nobody listened.
At that moment, Aravind understood.
He had not come here because of love.
Someone had pulled him into something much bigger.
A black bag was placed on the table in front of him.
It was opened.
Inside were gold bars.
Aravind stared at them.
The pattern from the bank appeared in his mind again.
BANK → HAWALA → UAE → UK → GOLD
Anna's husband stepped closer.
“What are you investigating at the bank?”
Aravind remained silent.
The man asked again.
“Do you know who those accounts belong to?”
Slowly, Aravind looked toward Anna.
She was crying.
But there was something else in her eyes.
Fear.
For the first time, Aravind wondered—
Had Anna betrayed him?
Or...
was she trapped in the same network?
The gold bars lying in front of him were no longer the biggest mystery.
There was a much bigger question.
“Why did Anna come back into my life?”
Outside, the rain grew heavier.
Inside...
an old love story was turning into an international criminal investigation.
To be continued...
THE LEDGER
Chapter 3 — 47-B
Aravind jolted awake.
His chest rose and fell rapidly.
For a moment, he looked around.
The room was dark.
Only the city’s faint glow filtered in through the window.
He looked at his hands.
They weren’t tied.
There were no gold bars on the table.
Anna wasn’t there.
Neither was her husband.
Aravind slowly exhaled.
“Was it a dream?”
He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Everything that had happened in the previous chapter ran through his mind again.
Anna’s husband.
47-B.
L.G.C.
Anna’s fear.
Her words.
“I already belong to them.”
Aravind closed his eyes.
Everything he had seen had felt real.
But perhaps it had all been nothing more than a dream.
Or...
Had his mind been warning him?
He got out of bed.
He picked up the phone from the table.
He checked the time.
Six-thirty in the morning.
“Even dreams know how to wake me up this early,” he muttered to himself.
He walked to the bathroom.
When he opened the door, he saw his face in the mirror.
His hair was completely disheveled.
His eyes were red.
He stared at his reflection.
“I don’t know who L.G.C. is. But first, take a good look at who you are.”
He turned on the tap.
The cold water splashed across his face, washing away the last traces of sleep.
---
After his shower, Aravind began getting ready for work as usual.
He put on his shirt.
He tried to tie his tie.
On the first attempt, he turned it the wrong way.
On the second, the knot ended up below his neck.
On the third, he looked at himself in the mirror.
“Is this a tie, or a noose hanging around my neck?”
He untied it and tried again.
That was when someone knocked on the door.
“Aravind, are you alive in there?”
It was Ramesh’s voice from outside.
“Yes.”
“I started to wonder when I heard your voice.”
Aravind opened the door.
Ramesh stood outside.
He was Aravind’s neighbor.
The kind of man who was always looking for something.
“What is it?”
Ramesh looked at Aravind’s tie.
“Is that some new fashion?”
“What?”
“You look like your tie is trying to escape from your neck.”
Aravind adjusted the tie.
“I have to go to the office today.”
“I know that. Don’t you go to the office every day?”
“Then why did you ask?”
“To start a conversation.”
“Do you start conversations by asking if someone is alive?”
Ramesh nodded solemnly.
“In our country, that’s the safest question. If you ask, ‘How are you?’ people will spend half an hour explaining.”
Aravind laughed.
“Don’t you have work today?”
“I do. But I came to inspect your breakfast first.”
“My breakfast?”
“You live alone, don’t you? People who live alone do one of two things. Either they eat very healthily, or they open a packet of biscuits and call it breakfast.”
Aravind glanced at the packet of biscuits on the table.
Ramesh grinned like a man who had just won an argument.
“See?”
“This is for emergencies.”
“Your entire life seems to be an emergency.”
Aravind picked up his bag.
“I’m leaving.”
“Fine. But if someone says ‘Good morning’ to you at the office today, you should reply.”
“I do reply.”
“Yesterday, you said, ‘Why is the morning so long today?’”
Aravind tried to close the door.
Ramesh asked again:
“Did you sleep last night?”
Aravind fell silent for a moment.
“Yes.”
“Did you dream?”
Aravind looked at him.
“Why are you asking?”
“Your face gave me the impression. As if someone chased you through a dream.”
Aravind smiled faintly.
“Yes. But I escaped in the end.”
Ramesh nodded in relief.
“Good. Next time, call a taxi in the dream itself. Running is healthy, but it only looks good in movies.”
---
By the time Aravind reached the office, fragments of the dream still lingered in his mind.
But the moment he stepped through the office doors, another world was waiting for him.
The new girl at reception looked at him.
“Sir, you’re Aravind, right?”
“Yes.”
“You look more serious in person than you do in your photograph.”
“Where did you see my photograph?”
“In the employee database.”
“Isn’t that for official purposes?”
“Yes. But I’m new here. I’m studying everyone’s photographs to figure out who is easy to talk to and who is difficult.”
“Which category did you put me in?”
She studied him for a moment.
“You’re easy to talk to. But after talking to you, it’s difficult to understand what you said.”
Aravind walked on without replying.
A young man was sitting beside his desk.
“Hi, I’m Nikhil.”
“Aravind.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Your name is written on your chair.”
Aravind looked at the chair.
In large letters, it said:
ARAVIND — DO NOT MOVE
“Who wrote that?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I sat here yesterday. Everyone made me get up. So today I took precautions.”
“That’s my chair.”
“That’s why I wrote your name on it. To prove that it’s yours.”
“But you’re sitting on it.”
Nikhil said solemnly:
“I’m not using the chair. I’m temporarily supporting it.”
Aravind stared at him.
“Which department are you in?”
“Data Entry.”
“Then enter some data.”
“Responsibility on the very first day?”
“That’s your job.”
“Yes. But first I need to understand the office atmosphere.”
“How do you understand the atmosphere?”
“I ask everyone. So far, three people have said working here is easy. Four have said it’s difficult. One person said it’s good only on payday.”
“Who was that?”
“Sunil from Accounts.”
“That’s true,” Aravind said.
Just then, Sunil walked over.
“What’s true?”
Nikhil immediately replied:
“That it’s good only on payday.”
Sunil looked at him.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you understood the truth this quickly?”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“That’s good. But don’t become someone who tells the truth only on payday.”
Aravind laughed.
Sunil placed a file on his desk.
“Take a look at this.”
Aravind opened the file.
Inside were bank transaction details.
For a moment, the papers from his dream flashed through his mind.
47-B.
L.G.C.
He quickly looked away.
Nikhil noticed.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Is there something frightening in the file?”
“No.”
“Then why are you looking at the file like that? It feels as if the file is looking back at you.”
Sunil intervened.
“Nikhil, focus on your own work.”
“I am, sir. But I also need to look at the file. It’s important to understand who is looking at whom in this office.”
Sunil held his head.
“Who hired this man?”
The new girl at reception called out:
“Not me, sir!”
Nikhil immediately replied:
“HR hired me. But they’re on leave now.”
Aravind closed the file.
Even if it had only been a dream, certain things from it remained stuck in his mind.
He told himself:
“It was just a dream.”
Nikhil heard him.
“What was a dream?”
“Nothing.”
“Did someone chase you in the dream?”
Aravind looked at him.
“Why is everyone asking me the same question today?”
Nikhil smiled.
“Because your face says, ‘I saw a secret last night.’”
Sunil pointed at the file.
“We’ll look into secrets later. First, check these entries.”
Aravind opened the file again.
Outside, the people in the office continued talking, laughing, and working as usual.
Ramesh’s jokes.
The receptionist’s observations.
Nikhil’s strange questions.
Everything was normal.
But one thing in Aravind’s mind was not normal at all.
The 47-B from his dream.
Had it really been just a dream?
Or was it a small warning of the reality that was about to come?
He looked at the numbers in the file.
His fingers slowly came to rest over one particular number.
47-B.
The smile disappeared from Aravind’s face.
Some dreams do not end in sleep.
They begin only after you wake up.
To be continued...
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