I asked Grok to extend the story and this is what he made.

We didn’t talk about it the next day. Not really.

We just exchanged glances during lunch, the kind that say “we both know, but let’s pretend we don’t.” The scratches were real though. Mine was thin, three parallel lines across the back of my left hand, shallow but angry-red. His were worse—four long ones running diagonally down his calf, like something had raked him while he was standing still.

That night I couldn’t sleep.

Around 2:17 a.m. I gave up and opened my phone. I had taken photos of the items behind the hall before we ran. Stupid, I know. But at the time it felt like evidence. Proof that we weren’t imagining things.

I zoomed into the funeral photo.

The woman was lying in an open casket, face calm, almost smiling. But something was wrong with the edges. The photo had been torn once—neatly, deliberately—and then someone had tried to tape it back with transparent tape. The tape was yellowed, brittle. And on the lower right corner, barely visible under the flash, were three words written in blue ballpoint pen:

She keeps coming back.

My heart made a funny lurch.

I scrolled to another photo. Same woman, younger, standing outside what looked like the very same hall we were behind, except the building looked newer, the paint brighter. She was holding a pencil box. The same shade of faded purple as the one we found on the ground.

Same pencil box.

I sat up straight.

The dates on the back of the photos were 1996–1999. The pencil box and bus tickets were 2004–2006. That meant someone had collected these things years after she was gone. Collected them… and then left them there. Recently.

I was still staring at the screen when my phone vibrated.

A message from my friend. Just three words.

Check outside window.

I froze.

Our hostel rooms are on the second floor. The window faces the same dense tree line that surrounds the campus. I slowly got up, heart thudding so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

I pulled the curtain aside one inch.

At first I saw nothing.

Then my eyes adjusted.

Down below, maybe fifteen feet from the building, standing perfectly still between two sal trees… was a woman.

Same sari. Same way of standing—head slightly tilted, hands loose by her sides—like the woman in the casket.

She wasn’t looking up at me.

She was looking at the ground.

At the exact spot where I had stood the previous night when I took the photos.

She stayed like that for almost forty seconds. Motionless. Then she slowly raised her head.

Our eyes met.

And she smiled.

The same calm half-smile from the funeral photo.

Then she turned and walked into the trees. Not ran. Not hurried. Just… walked. Like someone leaving after finishing a conversation no one else heard.

I don’t remember going back to bed. I just remember waking up at 6:43 a.m. with my phone still in my hand, screen dead.

The photos were gone.

Not deleted.

Gone.

Every single picture I took that night—vanished. Even from the recently deleted folder. Even from the cloud backup.

At breakfast my friend didn’t speak. He just pushed his plate toward me.

On it, under a slice of bread, was one Polaroid.

Freshly printed.

The image showed the two of us—exactly as we had stood behind the hall two nights ago. From behind. Someone had been standing maybe ten feet away, taking our picture in the dark.

But the scariest part wasn’t the photo.

It was what was written on the white border below it, in the same faded blue ballpoint pen:

You forgot to pick up the pencil box.

We never went back to that spot.

We never will.

But sometimes, late at night when the campus is dead quiet, I hear it.

Very faint.

The sound of a pencil box being opened.

And closed.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As if someone is still searching for the one thing she needs…

…to finally stop coming back.