A drop of sweat rolled down his neck, cold as the fog outside. He realized the song wasn't meant to hype you up at this speed. It was meant to wake you up. It was the sound of the morning after the party, when the music is still playing but the lights are on, and everything looks ugly.

The words unspooled like thick honey. Arjun closed his eyes. In the normal version of this song, Aujla was cocky, swaggering, a lion pacing a cage. But here, in the slowed reverb , he sounded ancient. He sounded like a god who had lost a war.

"Wavy," the chorus finally slurred, dragged through a river of molasses. But he didn't feel wavy. He felt heavy. He felt like a stone sinking into a black ocean. The "wavy" lifestyle, the Punjabi swagger, the bottles, the bills—it all sounded like a suicide note played at half speed.

"Sade te vi reham kar.."

Arjun looked at his reflection in the black mirror of his phone screen. The cocky kid was gone. The ghost was gone. There was just a man sitting in the silence after the echo.

He sat alone in the corner booth. Not the young, brash kid who had landed here five years ago with a passport and a dream, but a ghost of him. His name was Arjun.