Nara didn't sleep that night. Her phone lay on the floor a few inches from her feet, its screen still lit. The photo was still there—the house where her grandmother lived, at night, an upstairs window, and a little girl standing behind the glass in yellow pajamas, with shoulder-length hair and an indistinct face.
Nara zoomed in on the photo again and again, but nothing changed. The face remained blurry and impossible to identify. Strangely, the longer she looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.
Nara closed her eyes, and an image appeared: a hallway, cream-colored walls, a blue door, a little girl running.
Then a voice: “Sis, wait!”
Nara opened her eyes. Her chest was heaving, her breath coming fast.
“Who are you?”
There was no answer, of course.
Only the sound of the air conditioner. Then Nara laughed at herself.
“Great. Now I'm talking to hallucinations.” She picked up her phone. The number was still there.
The last message:
“She still remembers you.”
Nara typed: “Who is Naya?”
She waited, but there was no answer. Five, ten, fifteen minutes. No reply.
Finally, Nara turned off her phone and tried to sleep. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw the blue door. And every time she saw that door, something inside her said: Don't open it.
The next morning, Nara called her mother, but there was no answer. She furrowed her brow, puzzled because her mother almost always answered the phone in the morning. So she typed a message:
“Mom, I want to ask you something about Grandma's house.”
A few minutes later, the message was read.
There was no reply. Nara typed again:
“Was there a room upstairs in Grandma's house?”
This time, the reply came: “There was. Why?”
Nara stared at the screen, her heart beating a little faster.
“The room with the blue door?”
For a long time, there was no answer. Then a message came in:
“Nara, don't talk about that right now.”
Nara froze, but she kept typing: “Why?”
There was no reply. Then suddenly, her mother called.
Nara answered immediately. “Mom?”
“Who did you get a message from?” Her mother's voice sounded quieter than usual.
“Mom, who is Naya?”
A long silence stretched between them.
Then her mother said, “Do you remember Naya?”
“So she really existed?” Nara swallowed. Her mother didn't answer the question.
“Nara, where are you?”
“At home.”
“Don't go to Grandma's house.”
“Why?”
“Just don't.”
“Mom...”
“Promise me.”
“Why can't I go there?”
“There are some things you're better off not remembering.” Her mother's voice trembled. The call ended, and Nara fell silent.
That sentence should have made her stop, but instead, she picked up her car keys.
Her grandmother's house was two hours from the city. During the drive, Nara kept trying to remember Naya. That name—had she ever heard it before? She searched through her childhood memories: school, friends, birthdays, holidays, her grandmother, her father, her mother. Still, she couldn't find Naya.
But every time she told herself that Naya had never existed, her head began to hurt, as if something were knocking from inside.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Stop!” She didn't know whether she was speaking to her own thoughts or something else.
The house still looked the same: the old fence, the mango tree on the left, the wooden windows, the fading paint on the walls. Nara stood in the yard, her eyes tracing every inch of what stood plainly before her. Strangely, she felt as if she'd stood in that exact spot just yesterday. Even though the last time she'd come here had been years ago.
Gathering her courage, she looked for the key Grandma used to keep beneath the flowerpot in the corner of the porch (all of Grandma's children and grandchildren knew about this secret), and there it was! Nara slid it into the lock and slowly opened the door. Dust immediately filled her lungs.
The living room was empty, but the old sofa was still there. The wall clock appeared to have stopped ticking. Slowly, Nara made her way past the kitchen, her grandmother's bedroom, and the stairs. She stopped for a moment. The stairs leading upstairs.
Her heart began to beat faster.
One step. Two. Three. Until finally, she reached the hallway.
There were two doors, one on the left and one on the right. Nara stared at the blank wall at the end of the hallway.
There was no blue door.
“But...” Nara furrowed her brow.
She opened her phone gallery again. In the photo from her childhood, the blue door was there. Clear as day! She looked back at the blank wall. Then Nara took a picture of it and opened the photo she'd just taken. Blank! There was no door.
She looked back and forth between the screen and the wall. Screen-wall. Wall-screen.
“That’s impossible!” She touched the surface of the wall. It was solid—no gap, no doorknob, no trace of a door.
Nara stepped back. Maybe she remembered wrong. Maybe the photo had been taken somewhere else. Maybe...
Crash! Suddenly, something fell from the top of the cabinet.
Nara flinched. A wooden box had fallen to the floor. She crouched down to examine the old object. Dust clung to its lid, and written across the top were the words: NARA — 2009
Nara froze. She opened the box and found photographs, drawings by a child, a bracelet, papers, and an old videotape inside.
Nara picked up the tape. Its label read: JUNE 14, 2009.
The same date as the mysterious photo. Her hands trembled.
She carried the tape into the living room.
The old television was still there, and after checking it, she found that it still worked. Strangely, the tape player was still connected too. Curious, Nara inserted the tape and pressed ‘play.’