Cloud Atlas Café

Neha Banerjee

The Rooftop That Wasn’t There

Aarav didn’t mean to miss the last train. It just happened, like most of his mistakes—small, accidental, and irreversible. One late night line of code at work turned into another, and another, until he looked up at the time glowing on his cracked phone screen and realized the metro gates would already be shuttering. He left the office anyway, stepping out into a city that was still awake but somehow lonelier for it, the neon lights buzzing like a swarm of mechanical fireflies. The streets of New Delhi after midnight weren’t empty; they were heavy with that particular silence that comes when everything has slowed just enough for you to hear your own heartbeat. Aarav walked with no direction, his laptop bag pressing into his shoulder, his mind floating between exhaustion and a restless need to keep moving. The city was too bright and too dark at once, halogen lamps leaving strange pools of light on cracked sidewalks, a stray dog watching him pass with yellow eyes that seemed almost human.

It was only when he looked up that he noticed the rooftop. He had walked this road dozens of times, but the glowing sign had never been there before. Cloud Atlas Café. The letters shimmered in a pale blue glow, delicate like handwriting caught in a storm. He paused, certain his fatigue was making him hallucinate. But the sign stayed. There was no visible staircase, yet something pulled him toward the alley beside the building, and sure enough, a set of iron steps curled upward, narrow and old but solid beneath his shoes. He climbed, the sounds of the city dimming with every turn of the staircase, until he reached a door framed with warm yellow light. He opened it without thinking.

Inside, time shifted. The café wasn’t large—only a handful of tables, some scattered armchairs, and wide windows that revealed the city skyline. Except it wasn’t quite the skyline Aarav knew. The city stretched too far, lights twinkling in impossible constellations, buildings shimmering as though made of glass and smoke. The air carried the faint scent of coffee and rain, though outside it hadn’t rained in weeks. Soft jazz played from an unseen source, the kind of music that seemed tailored to the exact rhythm of his breathing. There were only two other people inside—a girl curled up with a sketchbook in the corner, and a man with a hat pulled low, asleep or pretending to be. Neither looked up.

Aarav slid into a booth by the window. Before he could even take off his bag, a steaming cup appeared before him. Black coffee, strong, exactly how he drank it. He hadn’t ordered. He hadn’t spoken to anyone. His pulse quickened as he reached for the cup, but the warmth of the porcelain in his hands calmed him in a way he couldn’t explain. He sipped, and the bitterness spread across his tongue like an old memory. He felt seen, in a way that was unsettling.

The waitress never came. In fact, as his eyes swept the room again, he realized there was no one behind the counter at all. The café seemed to be running itself, as though it existed purely to keep breathing with him, matching his solitude with its own. He watched the girl in the corner for a while—her pencil moved quickly, her dark hair falling over her face. She didn’t look at him, yet he had the strange sense she knew he was there. The man with the hat stirred once, adjusted his position, then stilled again, like an actor who had forgotten his lines.

Outside the window, the skyline pulsed faintly. He blinked, and for a moment he swore one of the buildings melted into a river. The lights bent into shapes, reorganizing like constellations shifting in real time. He closed his eyes, counted to three, opened them again—the city was normal, or as normal as a city could be when you weren’t sure which one you were looking at. He wondered if he had fallen asleep somewhere on the street, if this was a fever dream conjured by hunger and fatigue. But when he placed the cup back on the saucer, the sound was sharp, clear, undeniably real.

Time inside the café was strange. His phone lay flat on the table, black screen refusing to turn on. The clock on the wall had no hands. Yet he didn’t feel the usual pull of minutes slipping away. Instead, he felt suspended, as though the world outside had pressed pause just so he could rest here. And resting was something he hadn’t done in months—not really, not the kind that comes from more than sleep.

He thought about leaving, but something in the café seemed to lean toward him, holding him in place. The shadows bent gently around his table, the music rose faintly as though to soothe his restless thoughts. He finished the coffee, and the cup vanished when he wasn’t looking. In its place, a folded piece of paper appeared. His fingers trembled as he opened it.

The note had only three words: We’ve been waiting.

A chill ran through him. He looked around sharply, but the girl in the corner was still sketching, the man still motionless. No one had moved. He stood, heart pounding, but his legs felt heavy. The window caught his reflection, and for a moment he didn’t recognize his own face—the features blurred, as if he was dissolving into the glass. He staggered back, and the lights flickered once before steadying.

When he finally pushed open the door and stepped back onto the rooftop, the city roared back into being. Horns blared, a motorbike sped past below, the buzz of electricity tangled with the smell of dust. He glanced back, half-expecting the café to glow behind him. But the sign was gone. The rooftop was dark, just another building stacked with satellite dishes and water tanks. He climbed down the iron staircase, though now it looked rusted, like it hadn’t been used in years. By the time he reached the street, his hands were shaking.

He walked home quickly, trying not to think. But when he set his bag down in his apartment and pulled out his notebook, he froze. On the last page, in handwriting that wasn’t his, the same three words were scrawled: We’ve been waiting.

And somewhere in the back of his mind, the taste of bitter coffee lingered, sharper than any dream.

Sketches of a Vanishing City

Maya had always been good at vanishing. She slipped out of college lectures without anyone noticing, skipped critiques by simply disappearing into the city, left parties half-finished, conversations unfinished, friendships unfinished. She carried her sketchbook like a shield, its pages proof that even if she didn’t belong anywhere, she could at least capture places and pin them down before they dissolved. That morning she left her hostel with no plan, walking until the city opened into its softer corners—markets winding down, vendors pulling down shutters, the sky folding into the color of smoke. She took a turn she didn’t recognize and ended up facing a narrow staircase of iron, winding toward the roof of a building she had never looked at before. The sign glowed faintly: Cloud Atlas Café. She stood a long time staring at it, because the name felt less like a business and more like a line from a dream.

The stairs groaned under her weight as she climbed. When she pushed open the door, warm light washed over her like the sudden memory of safety. The café was quiet, but not empty—soft jazz hung in the air, the smell of brewed coffee and something sweet lingered. There was no one at the counter, yet on a table near the window, a steaming cup already waited for her. She set her sketchbook down cautiously, half-convinced she was trespassing in someone else’s memory.

She flipped to a fresh page and began to sketch the skyline outside. Her hand moved fast, her pencil shaping towers and antennas, the jagged rhythm of a restless city. But as she drew, she noticed the buildings she was sketching didn’t match the ones beyond the glass. In her drawing, the skyline stretched taller, denser, bending into shapes that weren’t real. A tower she had never seen before rose like a blade of light; a cluster of domes glimmered like temples, though no such structures stood in Delhi’s horizon. She frowned, rubbed her eyes, and looked back out the window. The city was as it always had been—concrete, glass, dust. She turned back to her page. The impossible skyline was still there.

When she looked up again, a boy sat at the next table. He had sharp shoulders, tired eyes, a laptop bag dropped carelessly at his feet. She was certain he hadn’t been there when she entered. He glanced her way, then quickly back at the window, as though embarrassed to be caught. There was something restless in the way he sat, like he was braced to run at any second but couldn’t remember which direction. She almost asked him if he’d been here before, but stopped herself. Instead, she sketched him quickly, her pencil outlining the slump of his back, the faint tension in his jaw. She realized she was sketching him the way she sketched skylines—as if he, too, might vanish if she didn’t pin him down.

The boy noticed. He smiled faintly, more nervous than amused, and for a moment their eyes met. It wasn’t recognition, but it wasn’t the emptiness of strangers either. It was something in between, that strange liminal sense that maybe you’ve shared a dream with someone but never spoken it aloud.

“You come here often?” he asked finally, his voice carrying that late-night hoarseness that comes from being awake too long.

“I didn’t even know this place existed until today,” she said, closing her sketchbook halfway like she’d been caught writing in a diary.

“Me neither,” he murmured, looking around as though searching for proof the café was real. “I found it last night. Thought maybe I hallucinated it. But it’s still here.”

They sat in silence after that, the kind of silence that feels less like absence and more like a fragile connection holding steady. The jazz shifted to a slow piano tune, and the boy tapped his fingers once against the table in rhythm. Maya returned to her drawing, but her pencil betrayed her—this time sketching the boy instead of the skyline. His outline blurred into the cityscape, his shoulders melting into towers, his hair into the sprawl of wires. She turned the page quickly, unsettled.

The lights flickered, just for a second. Neither of them moved, but the café seemed to exhale. When Maya looked out the window again, she swore the skyline had shifted closer, like the city itself was leaning in to watch them.

She whispered without meaning to, “It doesn’t feel like the city is outside. It feels like we’re inside it.”

The boy looked at her sharply, then nodded once, as if she had given voice to a thought he was afraid to say aloud. They didn’t speak again, but something had already passed between them—an understanding that this café wasn’t just a place. It was a mirror, a trap, or maybe a secret meant only for people who slipped through the cracks.

After a while, Maya closed her sketchbook and stood to leave. The boy didn’t stop her. As she pushed the door open, the music faded, replaced by the drone of traffic below. She descended the staircase, and by the time her feet touched the pavement, the café was gone. No glowing sign, no trace of the door she had walked through. She stood frozen, sketchbook pressed to her chest, heart pounding as though she had just escaped something she couldn’t name.

Back in her hostel, she opened the sketchbook to look again at the skyline she had drawn. The impossible buildings stared back at her, sharper than memory, darker than any dream. And on the margin of the page, in handwriting that wasn’t hers, a phrase had appeared: We’ve been waiting.

She slammed the book shut, but the words burned behind her eyes all night. By morning, she had almost convinced herself it was just her imagination. Almost. Until she saw a boy in the metro station the next day—tired eyes, laptop bag—and realized he was the same one from the café. He passed by without noticing her, but she knew. Their paths weren’t finished.

The city carried on, noisy, indifferent, but Maya walked with the unsettling certainty that somewhere above her head, in some rooftop that shouldn’t exist, the café was still waiting.

The Guitar That Played Itself

Rehana carried her guitar like a wound. The wood was cracked, one string snapped, the case frayed where rain had eaten through. She had bought it second-hand in Karol Bagh three years ago with money saved from tutoring kids who never listened, and in that time it had survived crowded metro rides, damp hostel corners, and too many nights spent trying to play until her fingers went raw. She told herself the guitar had soul, but lately it felt more like a dead weight—a reminder of the auditions where they shook their heads before she finished, the cafés where no one listened, the faces that turned away as if music were nothing more than background noise.

That evening she had walked out of yet another rehearsal room, her name crossed off the list before she even reached the last verse. The sun had already sunk, leaving the city wrapped in a violet haze. She wandered, unsure where to go, until her feet carried her into a narrow lane she didn’t remember taking before. An iron staircase curled up the side of a building, glowing faintly beneath a sign that pulsed in the half-dark: Cloud Atlas Café.

She hesitated, because she had no money left in her pocket. But the sign’s glow felt like it was meant for her, and when you’re broke enough, you start listening to signs. She climbed.

The door opened into warmth and light. She blinked, startled by the sudden quiet, the soft piano music flowing like water. A girl sat near the corner with a sketchbook, her head bent over the page; a boy hunched at another table, his bag slouched against the chair. Neither looked at her. The café’s wide windows showed a skyline that made her dizzy—the city stretched wider, sharper, as if it had grown while she wasn’t watching.

She slid into a seat, set her guitar on her lap, and touched the broken string as if to remind herself it was real. A cup of tea appeared before her, steam curling upward, though she hadn’t spoken to anyone. She didn’t question it. Hunger was too heavy, and the tea tasted exactly like the ones her mother used to make, strong and sweet and faintly spiced with cardamom.

Her fingers itched. She pulled the guitar out, half-thinking the others would glare at her, but they didn’t look up. She strummed once. The sound should have been flat, broken. Instead, it filled the café with a trembling resonance, the note expanding until it wrapped around the room. She froze, certain she had imagined it. She strummed again, and this time the guitar answered in full—richer, fuller, as if the café itself had taken the broken sound and carried it further.

Her hands moved without permission. Chords tumbled out, the old song she had tried to play at her audition, but now it bloomed differently. Each note bent itself around the air, weaving with the piano from the unseen speakers until the two sounds became one. She sang softly, afraid her voice would break. Instead, it carried clear, as though the café had tuned her lungs along with her strings.

The boy looked up first. His tired eyes softened, surprise flickering like a match. The girl stopped sketching, her pencil hovering mid-air. They listened, and for the first time in months, Rehana felt the strange electricity of being truly heard. The song poured out of her like confession, filling the gaps in her chest she hadn’t known were hollow.

When the last note died, the café fell silent. Even the jazz had paused. Rehana’s breath shook. She looked down at her guitar—the crack was still there, the string still broken, but somehow it had given her more than it had in years.

“That was…” the boy started, but couldn’t finish. He just nodded, as if words weren’t enough.

The girl smiled faintly. “You play like the city itself is singing through you.”

Rehana swallowed hard, unsure what to say. The tea on her table had gone cold, but when she lifted the cup, it was still warm in her hands. The windows pulsed faintly with light, the skyline shifting as though listening too.

She wanted to ask them if they knew what this place was, why it gave her music she didn’t own, why it offered comfort without asking anything back. But the words stuck. Instead, she whispered, “It feels like I’ve been waiting for this place without knowing.”

The girl closed her sketchbook, pressing her palm to the cover as if to hold it shut. “We’ve all been waiting,” she said quietly.

The boy leaned forward, his voice low. “I came here once, thought it was a dream. Then I found a note in my notebook—‘We’ve been waiting.’ I didn’t write it.”

Rehana’s skin prickled. She opened her guitar case slowly, and there on the lining, written in pale chalk that hadn’t been there before, the same words glowed faintly: We’ve been waiting. She almost dropped the guitar. The others stared, and for a moment none of them breathed.

The café hummed, low and steady, as if approving. The lights flickered once, and when they steadied, the windows no longer showed Delhi’s skyline. Instead, a vast plain stretched outward, filled with unfamiliar stars.

Rehana’s throat tightened. “What is this place?”

No one answered. The boy stared at the horizon, the girl clutched her sketchbook, and Rehana held her broken guitar, which somehow wasn’t broken anymore—not here, not now. The music began again from the speakers, not jazz this time but something closer to her own song, echoed back to her as if to say: We’ve been waiting, and now you’ve arrived.

They sat together in silence, strangers bound by a place that shouldn’t exist, the weight of the city far below them and yet closer than ever. And though none of them said it aloud, each of them knew: they would return.

Echoes Between Strangers

They began returning without agreeing to. Aarav would wander the city after work, feet dragging until they found the familiar staircase that shouldn’t exist. Maya skipped class and somehow ended up there, sketchbook heavy in her hands. Rehana carried her guitar like an amulet, broken yet whole again whenever she crossed the café’s threshold. None of them spoke about meeting up, yet when one entered, the others were already there, waiting. It felt less like coincidence and more like gravity.

The café received them differently each time. Some nights the air smelled of rain on dry soil, though the sky outside was clear. Other evenings the windows glowed with impossible sunsets, orange bleeding into violet, even if it was midnight beyond the door. The menu was never fixed. Aarav once found a plate of parathas just like the ones his grandmother used to make, though he hadn’t tasted them in years. Maya sipped a drink that tasted like childhood summers, lime and salt and laughter. Rehana strummed her guitar and found unfamiliar chords spilling out, songs she had never written but recognized as her own. The café mirrored them, mood for mood, memory for memory.

Conversations grew deeper. At first they spoke like cautious strangers, testing the edges of each other’s lives. Aarav admitted he worked in code all day but felt more like a ghost than a person. Maya confessed she hated art school yet couldn’t stop drawing because her hands wouldn’t let her. Rehana told them about the auditions, the silence after rejections, the way music was both her cure and her wound. They laughed sometimes, but it was laughter heavy with release, as though the café wrung out their hidden aches.

They began to notice uncanny details. The girl sketched Aarav one night, and when she showed him, the drawing wasn’t just him—it captured the exact slump of his shoulders from that morning, in his office, when no one was watching. Rehana strummed chords that echoed like footsteps on staircases she had climbed as a child. Aarav typed a line of code into his notebook absentmindedly, and when he looked, it had rearranged itself into words: Don’t leave yet.

At first they joked about it, said the café was haunted, said maybe the city had finally driven them insane. But the silence after the jokes lingered, weighted with the knowledge that none of them truly wanted to leave.

One night, the café gave them all the same thing: a folded receipt with handwriting none of them recognized. The words were simple, three again, like the notes that had haunted Aarav’s notebook, Maya’s margins, Rehana’s guitar case: Stay or Leave.

They stared at the slips of paper, uneasy. Aarav shoved his into his pocket without reading it aloud, but Maya laid hers flat on the table, her fingers trembling. “What does it mean?” she whispered.

Rehana’s laugh was brittle. “It means the café is tired of us freeloading and wants rent.”

But her hands wouldn’t stop shaking either, and when she strummed her guitar absentmindedly, the sound that came out wasn’t hers. It was a voice, soft and low, murmuring the same words: Stay or leave, stay or leave.

They didn’t sleep well after that. Dreams overlapped. Aarav dreamed of sketching towers until his pencil broke, but when he woke, graphite stains darkened his fingers though he hadn’t drawn in years. Maya dreamed of playing a guitar, but her hands in the dream were not her own—they were larger, rougher, the calluses of another life. Rehana dreamed of typing at a desk, her hair tied back, endless screens glowing. When they compared dreams, they fell silent, unnerved. It was one thing to share a place. It was another to share each other’s nights.

The café itself seemed aware. The jazz grew louder when they hesitated, softer when they confessed. Lights dimmed when silence stretched too long, brightened when someone spoke truth. Once, when Aarav muttered that he felt invisible in the world, the café flickered until only his reflection glowed clear in the window, the skyline dissolving into darkness behind him. He stared at himself until the others pulled him back with words, their voices sharper than the music.

It wasn’t friendship, not yet. It was something stranger, like threads tying them together without consent. They resisted at first, tried to test the boundaries. Maya skipped a visit for two days, convinced she could shake the pull. On the third day she woke with “Cloud Atlas” written across her arm in pencil, though no one in her hostel had touched her. Aarav tried to avoid the café one evening, taking the bus in the opposite direction, but he fell asleep and woke to find the glowing sign outside the window. Rehana swore she’d give it a week, but her guitar strings snapped when she tried to play anywhere else.

So they kept coming back, night after night, strangers drawn into orbit. The café waited, patient, offering no answers but always more questions. The city outside seemed to blur the longer they stayed—street names forgotten, landmarks shifting, time becoming less measurable. Phones stopped working inside the café, but they didn’t miss them. The only world that mattered was here, where silence was safe and words had weight.

One night, the three sat together by the window. The skyline shimmered wrong again, bending into towers that shouldn’t exist. The stars above blinked faster than stars should. Aarav leaned forward, his face lit by the strange glow. “This place isn’t just waiting for us. It’s changing us.”

Maya closed her sketchbook carefully, her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes. “Or maybe we’ve already changed, and that’s why we found it.”

Rehana strummed a chord that hung in the air far longer than it should have, echoing like a bell across invisible distance. “What happens if we stay too long?” she asked softly.

The café flickered, once, like a heartbeat.

And none of them could answer.

The Stranger at the Window**

The first time they saw him, he was already there. No door had opened, no footsteps had sounded on the stairs, no sound of movement disturbed the café’s low music. He was simply sitting by the largest window, his chair angled so that his body was in shadow and his face hidden beneath the brim of a wide, dark hat. He didn’t speak. He didn’t order. His hands rested flat on the table, fingers motionless, as though carved from stone. Outside the glass behind him, the skyline burned in orange hues that did not belong to Delhi, towers flickering like lanterns, the horizon pulsing as though alive.

At first, they ignored him. Aarav muttered about a new “extra” the café had conjured, like an NPC in a video game background. Maya tried to focus on her sketchbook, though her hand shook every time her pencil’s tip traced near his outline. Rehana strummed her guitar softly, but the notes bent strangely in the air, curling toward his shadow before fading into silence.

He never looked at them, never moved, just stared out at the skyline with the stillness of someone waiting for a train that would never arrive.

“Does anyone else see him?” Maya asked finally, her voice thin.

“Yeah,” Aarav said. “I wish I didn’t.”

They tried to act normal. They spoke about ordinary things—the weather outside, the way the café’s menu had shifted again, the oddity of being there night after night. But the words clattered uselessly against the silence that hung around the man. He was gravity, pulling the room toward him, distorting the atmosphere until every sound felt muffled. The café, usually so responsive, seemed hushed too, as though deferring to him. The lights dimmed near his corner. The music never touched him.

Maya sketched despite herself. She flipped to a blank page, her pencil trembling as she outlined his hat, his posture, the long stillness of his hands. But when she tried to draw his face, the lines blurred, her pencil refusing to settle. Each attempt collapsed into smudges, streaks of graphite like smoke. When she lifted the paper to the others, Rehana inhaled sharply.

“There’s nothing there,” she whispered.

The face on the page was not blank—it was an erasure, a hollow, the paper itself seeming eaten away by the absence of him.

That night, Maya tore the page out and folded it into her bag, too afraid to throw it away, too afraid to keep it close.

On the second night, he was there again, same seat, same posture. Aarav tested him, walking past casually toward the counter. He brushed close, enough to hear if the man breathed. There was nothing. No rise of chest, no exhale, no movement. He felt a strange chill settle into his bones, and when he sat back down with the others, his hands wouldn’t stop trembling.

“He’s not alive,” Aarav said hoarsely.

“Don’t say that,” Maya snapped, though she didn’t look at the man.

Rehana plucked at her guitar nervously, each string humming sharp, dissonant. “Then what is he?”

The café offered no answer.

On the third night, Rehana swore she saw him in a dream. He stood at the foot of her bed, still in shadow, still silent, his hat brim cutting across his face. She woke with her throat sore, as though she’d been screaming. In the morning her guitar case was open on the floor, strings humming faintly though no one had touched them.

Maya confessed she had dreamed too. She was sketching the skyline again, but every tower leaned toward the man at the window, their lights flickering like candles bowing before a shrine. And when she looked down at her paper, the smoke where his face should be spilled off the page, curling into her hands.

Aarav tried to dismiss it. “Dreams bleed into each other. That’s what this place does.” But his jaw tightened, and he didn’t say what he had seen—that in his dream, he had opened his notebook to find the man’s silhouette drawn on every page, hundreds of faceless outlines staring at him from the margins.

They began to argue. Maya insisted the café was changing, tilting toward something darker. Aarav wanted to push further, find answers, crack the logic of this strange loop. Rehana begged them to stop digging, to just enjoy the fragments of music and warmth the café still gave them. But their voices rose sharper each time, and always the man remained still, watching the horizon, as if their words meant nothing.

On the fourth night, the skyline beyond the window was gone. In its place stretched a flat, empty expanse—no towers, no lights, only a horizon that pulsed faintly like a dying heartbeat. The man did not move, did not flinch, but his shadow lengthened across the floor, creeping toward their table.

Maya dropped her pencil. “He’s waiting,” she whispered.

“For what?” Aarav asked.

Rehana’s hand tightened on her guitar. “For us.”

The café flickered then, violently, the lights shuddering, the music cutting out. For the first time since they had found it, the place felt unstable, trembling as though caught between collapse and rebirth. The man at the window did not move, but something in the room shifted toward him, as though even the air obeyed.

When the lights steadied again, their cups were gone, their plates vanished, even the tables around them stripped bare. Only their corner remained, and his. The words appeared on a scrap of paper between them, stark black against white.

Stay or Leave.

But this time, another line followed beneath, written in the same unseen hand.

He has already chosen.

They looked toward the window. The man still sat unmoving, his face hidden, his silence swallowing the room.

And for the first time, they wondered if he had once been like them—three souls stumbling into the café, waiting too long, unable to decide—until the café had chosen for him.

The City Below Disappears

The café began to rise. None of them felt the lift, but the city outside the wide glass no longer aligned with the streets they knew. One evening, the skyline shimmered too high, the streets below stretched into ribbons of blurred light, as if they were floating above the city instead of inside it. The next night, the ground was gone altogether—Delhi dissolved into a sheet of endless water, moonlight rippling across an ocean that could not possibly exist. By the third night, deserts spread outward instead, dunes shifting in slow waves, a horizon that burned with suns that did not belong to this world.

They pressed their faces to the glass in disbelief. The café stood still, yet everything around it transformed, landscapes swapping like slides in a carousel. Rehana whispered that maybe they weren’t moving at all, maybe the world itself was folding around them. Aarav clenched his fists, trying to convince himself there was a code, a logic, some hidden mechanism behind the madness. Maya sketched furiously, her pages filling with impossible geographies—oceans, deserts, mountains glowing faintly as if alive. But each time she looked back out the window, the drawing had already become real, her pencil a trigger she couldn’t control.

They tried to leave. That night they marched together toward the staircase that had always carried them back to the streets. But when they pushed open the café door, it only opened into itself. The same tables, the same soft lights, the same skyline stretching endlessly beyond. They tried again, bursting through with more force, but each time they landed back at the entrance, trapped in a loop. The café had sealed itself.

Phones refused to work now. The screens lit, but no networks, no signals, no time. Aarav’s watch stopped too, its second hand frozen mid-tick. Rehana realized she hadn’t spoken to anyone outside in days, hadn’t even thought to. Maya’s hostel felt like a memory she could no longer touch. The outside lives they had once returned to were dissolving, as if belonging only to a fading dream.

Still, the café cared for them. Food appeared when they were hungry, always matching their unspoken cravings. Drinks warmed or cooled depending on their mood. When Rehana’s hands shook from fear, her guitar hummed gently, strings tightening themselves into tune. When Aarav’s chest ached with anxiety, the music softened, piano notes unfolding into rhythms that matched his breathing. When Maya’s fingers cramped from drawing too much, the café lightened, shadows easing her eyes. They were trapped, but they were not neglected.

Yet unease gnawed at them. The man at the window still sat unmoving, his shadow longer each night, stretching toward their table like a tide. He had not chosen to leave, and the café had made him permanent. Was that the fate awaiting them? To dissolve into silhouettes, faceless, eternal, watching horizons that shifted without end?

One night, the windows flickered with overlapping landscapes. For a moment they saw the familiar city below—streets, cars, people moving. Then in an instant it blurred into forest, then into desert, then into sea. It was as if the café was cycling through worlds, showing them all the places it contained, testing which one would keep them. Maya gripped her sketchbook so tightly her knuckles turned white.

“We have to decide,” she said, her voice shaking. “Stay or leave. Before it decides for us.”

“Leave how?” Aarav snapped. “We’ve tried every exit. This place has no doors anymore.”

“Then maybe the exit isn’t a door,” Rehana said softly, her guitar across her lap. She strummed once, and the sound rippled against the glass like a pebble striking water. For a second, the skyline bent, revealing a glimpse of something else—a room with a bed, a desk, the faint outline of her real life. Then it vanished, swallowed by the café again.

Aarav leaned forward, desperate. “Do that again.”

She strummed, harder this time, and the note burst outward, bending the horizon once more. For an instant, Maya saw her hostel desk, her messy pile of paints and brushes. Aarav glimpsed his office, screens glowing, co-workers oblivious. But as quickly as it came, the vision snapped shut, and the café hummed in disapproval.

“It won’t let us go,” Rehana whispered.

Maya set down her pencil, staring at the man by the window. “Maybe he tried too. Maybe that’s why he’s stuck.”

Aarav slammed his fist on the table, frustration burning in his eyes. “We’re not going to end up like him.”

But even as he said it, he felt the edges of himself fraying. Days blurred. Sometimes he couldn’t remember if he’d eaten, or if he’d spoken aloud, or if the words in his notebook were his own. Maya drew towers that built themselves outside the window, then forgot she’d drawn them. Rehana sang songs she’d never written and woke with her throat sore, though she didn’t remember singing. Their lives beyond the café were thinning, thinning, until the only world they could hold onto was this one.

The café, alive and patient, seemed to pulse with quiet satisfaction. The windows glowed with a light that wasn’t sunlight, wasn’t moonlight, but something deeper—like the glow of memory itself.

One evening, they sat in silence, too tired for words. The café had given them tea, parathas, soft music. Outside, the skyline shifted into something entirely unfamiliar—a city of glass domes, its lights floating upward like fireflies. Aarav stared at it until his eyes watered, certain he’d never leave, certain the café had already won.

Then, without warning, the papers appeared again. Three slips, folded neatly on their table. They unfolded them together, breath held. The same words stared back.

Stay or Leave.

But now, another line beneath:

Choose before the city disappears.

They turned toward the window. The skyline pulsed once, twice, then began to fade—buildings dissolving like chalk in water, streets unraveling into blankness.

The city was vanishing. And if they didn’t choose soon, perhaps they would vanish with it.

The Choice

The café had always been patient, but now it pressed in on them like a clock without hands that still ticked. The windows no longer showed steady landscapes; they flickered, unraveling, each world dissolving faster than the last. One moment an ocean, the next a desert, then a burning city of glass before it all bled into blankness, as if the café itself were running out of faces to wear. The slips of paper lay on the table, the black ink stark. Stay or Leave. Choose before the city disappears.

None of them spoke at first. Their eyes flicked from the window to each other, then back to the silent man in the corner, whose shadow had now grown across half the floor, fingers of darkness stretching toward them like roots. He hadn’t moved in all these nights, but now his presence felt louder, like the consequence of choosing nothing.

Aarav broke first. His voice was hoarse, his fists trembling against the table. “I’m leaving. I don’t care how. I won’t let this place swallow me.” He looked at them, eyes wild. “You’ve seen him. That’s what happens if we don’t choose. He waited too long.”

Maya shook her head. “And go where? Back to the world that never saw us? The world where we’re invisible, unfinished, rejected? This place… it knows us. It gives us what we need.” Her sketchbook was open before her, filled with impossible skylines, faces half-drawn, towers that reached beyond the page. “Maybe this is the only place we’ve ever really belonged.”

Rehana’s fingers trembled on her guitar strings. The sound that came out was faint, hesitant, as though the café itself were listening to her decision. She whispered, “I don’t know. Out there, music never held. Here, it sings through me. But what if staying means I’m nothing more than a song on repeat, played forever but never alive?”

The café flickered once, as if impatient. The horizon beyond the glass blurred into white, a blank canvas swallowing the shapes of worlds. The man at the window sat unmoving, but his shadow stretched further, almost reaching their table.

Aarav stood. “I’m leaving. Even if it kills me, at least it’s my choice.” He strode toward the door, hands shaking, heart slamming against his ribs. When he pushed it open, for a moment he saw only the café again, its loop mocking him. But he screamed, forced his weight forward, and this time the door buckled. Beyond it, a corridor of light split open, tearing into the blankness like a wound. Aarav stumbled through, his figure dissolving into the brightness until he was gone.

The café shuddered. The man’s shadow twitched, recoiling slightly. The window flared, then steadied. Aarav had broken free, but at what cost, none of them knew.

Maya watched, tears burning her eyes. “He’ll forget us,” she said, her voice trembling. “He’ll wake up somewhere and this place will be nothing but a dream he won’t admit to himself. He’ll go back to his office, his trains, his ghost of a life. I can’t do that. I won’t.” She clutched her sketchbook, hugging it to her chest. “Here, I create and the world listens. Out there, my drawings rot in the dark. I’d rather be part of the café than erased by the city.”

She walked to the window, opened her sketchbook to a blank page, and pressed it against the glass. The skyline bent, melted into her paper. Her figure wavered, her outline blurring, until she, too, became lines on the page. The sketchbook slipped from her hands onto the floor, and when Rehana picked it up, Maya was gone. On the last page, a drawing stared back—a girl sitting at a café table, her face clear for the first time, eyes gazing outward with calm.

Rehana wept softly, strumming her guitar. The café hummed low, expectant. She looked at the silent man, at his endless shadow. “What happens if I do nothing?” she asked. The café answered with silence. The man did not turn, but his stillness was enough. She saw her future in him—frozen, faceless, unchosen.

Her hand tightened on the guitar. She thought of every audition, every rejection, every time her music drowned beneath the noise of a world that didn’t care. And she thought of the café, how it lifted her voice, made it resonate, gave it weight. But if she stayed, she would vanish like Maya, dissolve into art without flesh.

She stood, guitar in hand, heart splitting in two. She could leave like Aarav, fight against the pull and maybe wake in the broken world outside. Or she could stay, surrender, become song itself.

The café flickered, impatient. Stay or Leave.

Rehana strummed one final chord. The sound bloomed, filled the café, echoed against the glass, the tables, the walls, until the room itself vibrated. She sang once, her voice breaking and whole all at once. “I will not vanish.”

And with those words, her song lifted from her chest, rising into the air, the guitar glowing faintly. The notes twisted, folded, spun into threads of light that wound around her until her body shimmered, transparent, dissolving into the music. Her last smile lingered a second longer, then she was gone, her song echoing, filling the café long after.

The café steadied. The window cleared. Outside stretched only white blankness now, no city, no desert, no sea. The man at the window sat alone. The sketchbook lay on the floor. The guitar hummed faintly on the table.

The café had its answers. One had left, one had stayed, one had chosen the in-between—voice without body, eternal but fleeting.

The slips of paper vanished, their ink absorbed into the table like spilled water.

And the café waited again, patient, eternal, ready for the next lost soul to stumble through its impossible door.

The Café Remains

Morning came, though not inside the café. Its light never shifted; its hours were not hours but a soft, endless twilight. Outside, there was nothing left—no skyline, no streets, not even the shifting oceans or deserts. Just white, a vast blankness, as if the café now floated in the unfinished space between worlds. The silent man by the window remained, brim low, his shadow long across the floor. The guitar hummed faintly where Rehana had vanished, strings vibrating with the ghost of her final song. Maya’s sketchbook rested on the floor, its last page holding her steady figure, frozen in graphite but more alive than absence. Aarav was gone, his chair empty, the memory of his stubborn defiance lingering like heat after fire.

The café did not mourn. It was not built for grief. It was built for waiting.

Hours—or days, or lifetimes—passed in silence. The café breathed, subtle and patient, the air carrying the faint scent of cardamom and rain. Its tables were clean again, cups polished, chairs aligned as though preparing for guests who had not yet arrived. The lights flickered once, steadying into their usual golden haze. The man at the window sat motionless, not quite alive, not quite gone, his presence a reminder of choices unmade.

And then the café opened its door.

The stairwell outside shimmered back into being, an iron spiral curling down into the city below. For the first time in what might have been weeks or centuries, the café looked outward again, seeking. The white blankness dissolved, and Delhi’s streets returned—narrow alleys humming with rickshaws, neon boards buzzing, the faint roar of traffic folding into the night. Life carried on below, unaware.

The sign glowed above the rooftop: Cloud Atlas Café.

And so it began again.

A young woman stumbled up the stairs, her eyes red from crying, clutching her phone in one hand as though the call she had just ended still echoed in her ear. She had been walking aimlessly for hours, her feet carrying her toward a staircase she swore she had never seen before. But the glow had pulled her. The glow always pulled the ones who needed it. She pushed open the door, and the café welcomed her with warmth. A cup of tea already waited at her table. She sat, bewildered, the tears easing from her chest without her understanding why.

Not long after, a man in a crumpled shirt entered, his office bag dragging behind him. He had missed his last train, and his head was pounding with the kind of exhaustion that no amount of sleep could cure. The café greeted him with coffee, strong and black, the steam curling into his tired lungs. He exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for years.

Soon another figure came, carrying a violin case, its latch broken, strings fraying inside. She had failed her audition that morning, humiliated, yet here her fingers trembled with the strange certainty that her music would matter again. She sat, ordered nothing, but found her bow repaired, her strings whole, the café humming in readiness.

The café gathered them slowly, weaving them together with silence and warmth. They looked at one another cautiously, unsure whether to speak. Yet even without words, threads already stretched between them, invisible but unbreakable.

Outside the window, the skyline flickered strangely. Buildings leaned too tall, constellations bent in wrong directions, the city humming with impossible light. Maya’s sketchbook still lay on the floor by the corner table. Rehana’s guitar strummed faintly though no one touched it. The man at the window sat unmoving, shadow stretching across the floor like a warning no one could read.

On the table before the newcomers, folded slips of paper appeared. They opened them hesitantly.

We’ve been waiting.

The woman frowned, the man shivered, the violinist looked around nervously. But they stayed. They always stayed at least once.

The café glowed softly, content. It did not rush. It knew the rhythm of the lost. It knew their questions, their hunger, their ache to belong. It gave them what they needed—a cup of tea, a plate of food, the warmth of unseen music. And slowly, inevitably, it would give them the question too. Stay or Leave.

Outside, the city below carried on, unaware of the rooftop that wasn’t there. Cars honked, trains rumbled, people rushed through their lives, never glancing upward. For most, the café would never exist. For a few, it always would.

Inside, the violinist lifted her bow. The man sipped his coffee. The young woman scribbled something on a napkin, her tears drying. None of them noticed the shadow by the window shifting faintly, or the way the skyline pressed closer to the glass, bending toward them as though eager to listen.

The café was eternal, not because it lived forever but because it repeated. It reset, rebuilt, pulled new souls into orbit. Aarav’s stubbornness, Maya’s surrender, Rehana’s song—all of it was folded into its memory now, stitched into its walls, its lights, its silence. And soon, these new ones would add their echoes too.

The café did not end. It remained.

And somewhere, out in the real city, Aarav woke in his bed, heart pounding, the taste of bitter coffee sharp on his tongue, unable to explain why his notebook pages were blank but smelled faintly of rain. Maya’s sketchbook sat forgotten in an art supply shop window, but passersby swore the last page shifted when no one looked. Rehana’s final song played faintly in the ears of strangers who could not place its source, a melody caught in the cracks of memory. They were gone, but the café carried them still.

Above the city, unseen, unnoticed, the sign glowed once more.

Cloud Atlas Café.

And when the next wanderer lifted their head from loneliness, when their feet found the wrong street, when they needed something they could not name, the café would open its door again, patient as ever.

Waiting.

END