Riya Sharma woke to filtered light streaming through floral curtains, the scent of coffee and her mother's shouting mixing in the air. A perfectly normal morning—until she saw the blinking numbers on her wrist.
00:58
It wasn't her Apple Watch. It wasn't anything she owned. The numbers pulsed gently, like breath. Mechanical, cold, precise.
"Ugh, what the hell is this? Some glitchy fitness app?" she muttered, flipping her hair, checking Instagram reflexively. She looked flawless in the morning light, even if her face still held the sleep of dreams. She tapped open the app, pouted her lips, struck the practiced pose she'd rehearsed a hundred times, and posted:
"Morning mood 💋☀️ #WokeUpLikeThis #Blessed."
She watched the likes flicker in. Ten in seconds. Twenty. Thirty. The timer?
00:57… 00:56… 00:55
The glow dimmed like a heartbeat dying.
Her breath caught.
Then—
"RIYA! YOUR BROTHER'S EATING CHOCOLATE ON THE COUCH AGAIN!"
A blur of limbs crashed into her room. Her little brother, face smudged with Nutella, brandishing a Nerf gun, pounced.
"GRENADE INCOMING!" he shrieked.
Without hesitation, Riya shrieked back, tackled him, buried his face in a pillow, and laughed—loud and real and from her belly. No filter. No post.
The timer pulsed once.
00:53 → 01:00
She froze.
Not with fear.
But with something strange.
Truth.
---
Aman Verma's room was a shrine to gods with bats and gloves. Posters of Dhoni, Kohli, and Rohit watched him as he slept, curled around his cricket bat like a soldier with a weapon. The sun peeped in, catching the edge of something strange on his skin.
00:41
He sat up, blinking, groggy.
"What fresh nonsense is this now?" he muttered, scratching his stomach. He poked the glowing band, half-expecting it to be a prank. But it stayed. Steady. Counting down.
Then the voice came—his mother's, shrill and unrelenting.
"Aman! Tu phir se Hindi ki copy bhool gaya kya?! Class mein naak katwaayega!"
He winced.
He looked at the copy, untouched. The empty page stared back.
00:41… 00:38… 00:35
Each second a drop of acid on his nerves.
But then he picked up his bat.
Crack.
He swung through the air, that clean, swooshing sound that made his heart thump louder than any classroom scolding. The timer surged like it had taken a breath of fresh air.
00:35 → 01:00
He grinned.
Screw Hindi.
---
Priya Singh was dressed before the sun had finished waking. Her room gleamed like the inside of a magazine—books aligned, bed perfect, laptop already open to a page titled "Top Medical Colleges: Comparative Rankings."
She didn't see the timer at first. Not until she slipped her arm into her blazer. The soft, clinical numbers blinked.
00:59
She didn't panic. Priya didn't panic. She adjusted her collar and told herself it was probably some weird government health tracker. Everyone had weird things now—air quality bracelets, menstrual health rings. This was nothing.
Her mother entered with a stack of forms, face glowing with ambition and expectations.
"Beta, this college gives preference to Biology Olympiad winners. You must apply."
Priya smiled tightly, nodded, and took the forms. She felt her face harden like wet plaster.
00:58… 00:56… 00:53
Her fingers clenched.
She looked up. "Maybe I don't want to be a damn doctor."
The words came like an avalanche—quick, too honest, not even loud.
The timer pulsed back.
00:53 → 01:00
Priya exhaled.
Her mother stared.
So did she.
---
Rahul Yadav was already late. Again. He'd slept through four alarms and three missed calls from his best friend. When he finally rolled out of bed, the timer on his wrist blinked angrily.
00:16
He didn't notice.
He was focused on the smell of breakfast wafting from the kitchen. He nearly tripped over his shoelaces racing to grab two aloo parathas, still warm and crisp. As he chewed, the timer dropped.
00:16… 00:12… 00:08
His mother shouted something about forgetting his ID card. He ignored her. The bus was almost gone.
He sprinted out the door, saw a food cart near the school gate—and froze. Kachoris. Hot. Golden. Spicy. They whispered to him.
His timer blinked red.
00:05… 00:04…
He didn't hesitate. He vaulted the railing, nearly got hit by a scooter, snatched one, paid with a crumpled note, bit in.
Pure heaven.
00:01 → 01:00
He sighed, mouth full of chili.
Worth it.
---
Neha Patel stood in the center of chaos like a radio tower in a storm. Students screamed. Some cried. One girl fainted. Another boy had collapsed into hysterics when his timer hit 00:03 and no matter what he did, it didn't stop.
Then he vanished.
Right there. Mid-crowd. Gone.
Not a flash. Not a sound.
One second present, the next—air.
And no one screamed.
No one even blinked.
Neha had been looking at him. She knew his name. What was it? Was it...? No. Nothing. No image came. No voice. He was a sentence she could no longer finish.
She turned to the crowd.
"Can everyone just calm the hell down?" she shouted, arms wide, voice booming.
They looked. They listened.
"Maybe instead of losing our minds, we should figure out what this is. What sets it off. How to stop it."
Someone near her—their timer was ticking. Another girl gasped—hers was stuck at 00:02.
"Quick!" someone shouted. "Say something real!"
The girl blurted, "I think I cheated on the physics test!"
00:02 → 01:00
The air shifted. People stared.
And Neha, ever the firecracker, snorted.
"Guess honesty really is the best policy. Or at least better than evaporating into nothing."
Her own timer buzzed gently. She'd laughed.
It climbed.
00:53 → 01:00
---
At Vishwakarma High School, under the unforgiving sun, a new rule had dawned without warning, without announcement, without mercy.
A rule written not in ink, but in time.
A rule that punished pretense and rewarded truth.
Be real, or be gone.
No one could explain it. Teachers didn't have the timers. Adults walked by, completely unaware. It was the students—only them—trapped under this ticking eye.
Already, some had vanished.
And no one remembered.
Not friends. Not siblings. Not teachers. They were not mourned, because they left no memory behind.
Just empty space.
And silence where their names used to be.
---
Riya clutched her phone, suddenly aware of every lie she'd posted in the last year. Aman gripped his bat like it was the only part of him that was true. Priya sat quietly, mind racing through a thousand things she'd pretended to be. Rahul wiped kachori oil off his mouth, wondering if hunger was all he'd ever be. And Neha? Neha was still laughing—because that was her instinct. Her weapon. Her shield.
But even she couldn't laugh away the question clawing its way into their thoughts:
What happens when you don't know who you are at all?
They would have to find out.
Together.
Before the clock ran out.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until only the truth remained.
Or no one did.