The class had already moved halfway into its usual rhythm—pens scratching, pages turning, the professor's voice fading into the background like something that didn't fully belong to their attention span.
Sagnik sat still.
Not rigid.
Just still in the way people become when their mind is occupied elsewhere but their body refuses to show it.
Aanya shifted beside him once, adjusting her notebook.
Normal movement.
Nothing important.
He didn't look at her.
He should have.
But he didn't.
Instead, his eyes stayed on his page—words half-written, half-ignored.
Until—
She leaned forward slightly.
Elbow resting on the desk.
Her fingers curled loosely around her pen.
And then, without thinking, she tilted her head.
Just a little.
Not dramatically.
Not intentionally.
A small, absent-minded tilt as she listened to something the professor said, eyes narrowing slightly in mild concentration.
That was all.
Simple.
Natural.
Sagnik's hand paused.
The pen stopped moving.
For a second, the sound of the room dulled—not because it disappeared, but because something else became louder in his head.
That tilt.
That exact tilt.
It wasn't identical in detail.
But it matched something his mind recognized too quickly.
From nowhere.
From yesterday.
From graphite and silence and a room that didn't exist outside paper.
He looked at her properly now.
This time he didn't stop himself.
Aanya was still listening to the lecture, completely unaware.
One strand of hair had fallen near her cheek, and she absently pushed it back without looking away from the board.
Same posture.
Same angle of attention.
The sketch wasn't in his bag.
It wasn't in front of him.
But it was suddenly in his memory with uncomfortable clarity.
Not the drawing itself.
The moment it had come into being.
The way her presence had settled into lines without permission.
And now—
She was doing it again.
In real time.
Without knowing.
He blinked once.
Slow.
Then looked away.
Not abruptly.
Carefully.
Like looking too long might make something obvious that shouldn't be.
Aanya, still unaware, flipped a page in her notebook.
"Hey," she whispered without turning fully, voice low enough to not disturb the lecture. "Did you get that last point?"
He hesitated a fraction too long.
Then nodded.
"Yes."
She didn't question it.
Of course she didn't.
She just hummed softly and wrote something down.
And in that simple continuation of the class, something subtle shifted inside him.
Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Just a quiet recognition he didn't have language for yet:
The sketch hadn't been imagination pulling her into it.
It might have been the other way around.
And that thought—
he didn't finish it.
Instead, he turned back to his notebook.
But the page stayed blank longer than it should have.