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Rina Arora had never been one for superstition. As a UX designer navigating long hours in Gurgaon’s rising app startups, she lived immersed in logic, design systems, and high-speed Wi-Fi. So when she finally moved into her own rental apartment in Sector 47—a newly refurbished building with a fancy lift and fingerprint access—she wasn’t expecting anything but convenience.
It was a studio on the 17th floor, high enough to mute the city’s chaos but close enough to office that she didn’t need her scooter. Sleek modular kitchen, a minimalist bath, floor-to-ceiling windows. She unpacked, pushed her IKEA bed against the southeast wall and placed her mirror near the balcony for natural light. Everything was just how she liked it—measured, symmetrical, secure.
On the second night, she noticed something strange.
When she came back from office, the mirror was leaned against the opposite wall.
She frowned, wondering if she had dreamt placing it near the balcony. But she wasn’t the forgetful type. Still, she moved it back and chalked it up to her fatigue.
The next morning, her toothbrush was on the kitchen platform.
It didn’t make sense—she hadn’t brushed there, let alone left it there. As she picked it up, her fingers trembled slightly. She paused, steadying her breath. There had to be a rational reason. Maybe she’d absentmindedly taken it while checking her phone in the morning. Maybe.
That evening, as she unwound after a late client call, she noticed the entire balcony door had shifted left by two feet. Not open—shifted. Embedded in the wall now, seamlessly plastered, as though constructed that way.
She stepped back.
The interior layout… had warped.
It wasn’t just misremembering. Portions of her room had reshaped. The kitchen counter curved now where it used to be straight. The fridge, which once stood flush with the sideboard, was farther, as if the space between had stretched.
Rina reached for her phone and took a few pictures. Then she drew a rough floor plan on her tablet—just to track changes. She marked all corners, dimensions, furniture positions.
Over the next week, the apartment kept changing slowly. Always subtle. But steady.
Bookcase now hugged a curved concave bend near the entrance that didn’t exist before.
The bathroom door swapped sides.
Once, she walked in and there were two windows instead of one.
And always—always—it happened when she wasn’t watching.
She turned to her CCTV camera. She had installed one mini cam on the top of her work desk facing the main area. Rina rewound the footage.
It showed no construction. No entry. Just… gaps. The footage would stutter for six or seven frames, as though buffering, then resume—showing a subtly altered space. A scratch mark on the ceiling. A lightbulb now slightly lower.
On Friday, she invited her colleague Saurabh to stay over. “Tell me I’m not losing it,” she said.
They played cards and ate chole bhature late into the night, laughing, teasing.
By 3:15 AM, they both dozed on opposite ends of the mattress.
When Rina woke up an hour later, she screamed.
There was a wall where the kitchen used to be.
An entire stretch of her apartment had been sealed off.
Saurabh stared, mouth open. “What the hell? There was a fridge here. Where—is this a prank?”
Rina was shaking. She went to open the main door but paused.
It wasn’t her door.
It was a brown wooden latch-door with horizontal slats. And it opened into stairs—not the building corridor. Stone stairs dusted with ash.
They left immediately.
Stayed at a hotel that night. Didn’t speak much.
The next day, when they returned, the apartment was entirely restored to its original layout. Mirror by balcony. Single window. Latch gone.
They found the CCTV cam half melted.
Rina moved out within two days. Left most of her stuff behind.
When she went to return the keys, the agent nodded casually. “Yeah, 1704. It always stays vacant for too long. Nobody sticks. Place tends to… shift energy, I guess.”
“What does that mean?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t an apartment before. That floor used to be an elevator shaft for an older plan. When they restructured the floors in 2009, they just recycled space. They say the original architecture still has… memory.”
Memory. Like it was trying to remember how it used to be.
Days later, just to prove to herself she wasn’t delusional, Rina opened her digital floor plan at home — the one she’d drawn. It was completely blank.
And in her phone gallery? The photos she’d taken inside the shifting apartment? Replaced.
Each file was now a slightly different version of her own face.
Eyes slightly apart. Nose sharp one day, round the next.
Smiling, yet… not.
Someone—or something—from inside that place had started editing her.
From the inside out.
