Missed Calls and the Weight of Charcoal

At seventeen minutes past two in the morning, I was still awake. The rain outside wasn't heavy, but persistent enough, like a rambling old woman, endlessly repeating some long-forgotten complaint. On the radio, Billie Holiday was singing a song about loss, her voice like frosted glass, rough, yet radiating a peculiar light. I was on the sofa, holding a glass of whiskey on the rocks that had long gone cold. The ice had completely melted, leaving only a thin, amber liquid that tasted like a metaphor for some kind of failed life.

It was then that an idea entered my mind without any warning: I needed charcoal. Not the fancy processed briquettes for barbecues, but the most common, most primitive black charcoal, carrying the silence of a tree's death and some kind of indescribable energy. Why did I need it? I didn't know. Like how sometimes you suddenly crave a specific food, or feel compelled to find an earring lost years ago, there was no logic to it.

I picked up my phone and expertly opened that blue delivery app. Options were few late at night, but luckily, a store marked "24-Hour Convenience" showed "Traditional Charcoal" in stock. I placed the order with almost no hesitation, the address being my apartment on the edge of the city, remarkable for nothing but its quietness. When the successful payment notification popped up, the screen's cold light reflected on my face. I must have looked like a spy who had just completed some secret transaction.

Then I fell asleep, right there on the sofa, accompanied by Billie Holiday's voice and the sound of the rain outside. No dreams, or rather, I remembered nothing upon waking.

I was awakened in the early morning by the stubborn vibration of my phone. Not an alarm, but a continuous buzz carrying a sense of anxiety. Sunlight squeezed through the gap in the heavy curtains, casting a narrow strip of light on the floor. Dust motes danced quietly in the beam.

I picked up the phone. The screen showed: 14 Missed Calls. All from the same unknown number, timestamped between 4:30 and 5:00 AM, arriving every few minutes, like signals from some tireless machine.

A peculiar sensation gripped me, not fear, but more a sense of being out of place. As if the world had quietly undergone some change while I slept, and these missed calls were the evidence. I rubbed my eyes and got up, heading to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. Coffee is essential, especially when facing the incomprehensible. The kettle hissed, the coffee grounds slowly bloomed in the filter paper, releasing a rich aroma. This familiar ritual slightly dispelled the lingering chill of the early hours.

It was then I noticed something by the door. A translucent plastic bag, resting quietly on the doormat. Inside were black, irregularly shaped pieces of charcoal. The delivery had arrived. I don't know when it was delivered; I hadn't heard any knock or phone ring at all – except for those 14 missed calls.

I carried the bag of charcoal inside. It was heavier than I'd expected, cold and hard, as if it had absorbed the entire night's dampness and silence. Each piece was angular, possessing a primitive, undeniable presence. I poured them into an unused iron bucket; the chunks collided with a dry, hollow echo. I stared at them, trying to understand the strange impulse from last night, and the possible connection between this heavy, silent object and those 14 missed calls.

Was it the delivery person calling? Why call so many times? Did something happen? Or was it just a system error, a series of automated dials?

Holding the scalding coffee, I returned to the sofa. I picked up the phone again, my fingertip hovering over the unknown number. Call back? It seemed the logical thing to do. But I hesitated. Like sometimes you know you should open a creaking door but choose to take a detour instead. Maybe there's nothing fearsome behind it, but the act of opening itself seems to imply shouldering some unknown responsibility.

I tried searching for the number online, with no results. It was like a sequence of digits that appeared out of nowhere, leaving a trace only in my call history.

The charcoal lay quietly in the iron bucket. Their rough surfaces reflected the faint light coming through the window, appearing unusually deep. I imagined them once being living trees, growing under the sun and rain, then felled, burned, and finally transformed into this hard, cold state. They stored energy, could burn to release warmth and light, but now, they just existed silently, like a huge question mark.

I took another sip of coffee. The city had fully awakened; the noise of traffic drifted from afar, and someone seemed to be arguing downstairs. But these sounds felt distant and blurred, insulated by the silence in this room and the unsolved mystery.

Perhaps I'll never know what those 14 missed calls meant, just as I can never fully comprehend my own late-night impulse to buy charcoal. Life is full of such small cracks and inexplicable fragments. We are like children collecting seashells, picking them up, putting them in our pockets, and continuing along the beach, pretending everything follows a pattern.

The radio had come back on at some point, this time playing jazz, some unknown saxophonist weaving a sad, winding melody. I shifted my gaze from the charcoal in the bucket to the window outside. The rain had stopped. The sky showed a washed-out, slightly weary blue.

The weight of that bag of charcoal, it seemed, wasn't just physical. It pressed heavily on my consciousness, together with those 14 missed calls, forming the beginning of an unspeakable story. Where would the story lead? I had no idea. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe this was just another insignificant episode drowned out by the city's noise.

I decided not to think about it for now. I still had coffee to drink, a long day to get through. It's just that when I picked up the coffee cup again, my fingers touching the warm ceramic, I seemed to feel the cold, hard texture of the charcoal. Some things, once they enter your life, can never be easily erased. They remain there, like fingerprints, like scars, like the final notes of a jazz piece, echoing long in the silence.