Chapter 9: The Name That Vanished

It started with a post-it note.

Just one.

> “Shimla �" Avalanche �" Sanya Kapoor �" 5 yrs ago �" missing?”

Ira stuck it on the wall above her desk, right between a quote by Sylvia Plath and a coffee-stained rejection letter she kept for humility.

But unlike the quote and the letter, this note grew.

Like rot behind wallpaper.

---

She hadn’t meant to go deeper.
But silence, when dressed in just the right number of half-truths, becomes an invitation.
And Aarav had left her plenty of silence.

So Ira did what she hadn’t even done for her own manuscripts lately.

She researched.

She called Shimla police. Said she was a journalist.
They asked for press credentials. She lied.
They gave her silence.

She dug into old archived articles again. The Shimla Times, the Indian Express, a few forgotten travel blogs.

There was the same short piece again:

> "Minor avalanche incident near Mall Road. No injuries. Search aided by tourists and local workers. All visitors accounted for."

Except now she noticed what wasn’t there.

Sanya Kapoor’s name had been removed.

In the original cache she’d saved weeks ago �" it was there. But the new version? Clean. Sanitized.

Her stomach twisted.

Why erase a name?

---

The next move was reckless.

Which meant she made it anyway.

She found a college friend on Instagram. A girl who’d been tagged with Sanya in 2018. Travel pics. No recent posts. Account private.

Ira messaged her.

> Hi. Sorry if this is strange. I'm researching an old avalanche incident from 5 years ago in Shimla. I came across the name Sanya Kapoor. Did you know her? Just trying to verify something. No press. Just... personal.

She didn’t expect a reply.

She got one.

One sentence.

> "Don’t ask questions about Sanya. It’s better that way."

---

The next day, Ira found herself looking over her shoulder on the Metro.

Ridiculous.

But the tension sat in her spine like static. Like her body knew something her brain didn’t want to admit yet.

At home, she pulled out the printed transcript again. Aarav’s words. His voice frozen in confession.

She hadn’t noticed this line before.

> “I told Rehm the truth in Session 9. He just didn’t want to hear it.”

Session 9?

This transcript was Session 12.

Why had he referred to it?

She checked her inbox again.

Still just one session.

Only one… that somehow made less sense the more she read it.

---

That night, she opened a private document titled:
THE BLUEPRINT OF A MAN WHO NEVER FINISHED BUILDING HIMSELF

She wrote:

> There’s something he isn’t telling me. Not just about Sanya. About himself. About what happened after the snow. His voice is honest, but his timeline isn’t. His truth comes too clean. Too packaged.

What if the avalanche wasn’t the end of their story? What if it was the cover for it?

She stared at the sentence.
And didn’t delete it.

---

The next morning, she got a message.

A number she didn’t recognize.

No name. Just one line.

> Stop digging. This isn’t your story.