Chapter:69
"Burning Rays of Love"
The first rays of morning sunlight slipped through the clouds and streamed into the storage room through its small window, casting pale golden streaks across the dim interior.
In the quiet corner of the room, Sana was fast asleep with her head resting gently against Afra's shoulder. Afra herself had fallen asleep in a chair, her head tilted forward against its back. The room was unusually peaceful, the kind of silence that felt almost unreal after everything they had been through.
But the soft sunlight was beginning to disturb Sana's sleep.
Hasnain had noticed it almost immediately.
He had been awake for the past ten minutes, quietly watching Sana as she slept beside Afra. His gaze lingered on her face with an affection he had carried silently for years—a deep, one-sided love Sana had never truly known about.
A few loose strands of Sana's beautiful hair had escaped from her ponytail and fallen delicately across her face. The sunlight touched them, making them glow faintly.
The brightness seemed to bother her.
Even in her sleep, Sana's eyelids fluttered lightly as she tried to escape the sunlight. For a moment, her peaceful expression tightened with discomfort.
Then, just as suddenly, she relaxed again.
Her eyelids stopped moving, and she sank back into a deeper, more comfortable sleep.
She had no idea that someone was watching her.
Someone who looked at her as though she were the most precious thing in the world.
Hasnain quietly stood up.
Without making a sound, he walked toward the window and positioned himself directly in front of it. His body blocked the sunlight from reaching Sana, turning the harsh morning glare into a soft shadow.
Only then did he sit on the edge of the window.
From there, he looked back at her.
A faint, almost invisible smile touched his lips.
For a few moments, Hasnain simply watched her sleep.
And somehow, that quiet moment carried him back three years—to the day he had first seen Sana.
{Three Years Earlier}
It had been an ordinary school morning.
Hasnain, his friends, and the other students in the classroom were around fourteen years old. The room was filled with childish laughter and playful noise as the students joked around and moved between their desks.
Then the classroom door opened.
Their class teacher stepped inside.
"Everyone, take your seats."
The students gradually settled down.
The teacher walked toward the front of the classroom and glanced toward the doorway.
"Come in."
And then Sana entered.
The moment Hasnain saw her, something inside him changed.
It was as though time itself had stopped.
His friends were still laughing around him. Students were still talking. The teacher was still preparing for the lesson.
But Hasnain heard none of it.
His eyes remained fixed on the girl standing near the classroom door.
He forgot where he was.
He forgot who was sitting beside him.
For a moment, he even forgot to blink.
That was the beginning of Hasnain's silent love story.
From that day onward, he began loving Sana from a distance, keeping his feelings hidden while she remained completely unaware.
But Sana never particularly liked Hasnain.
There was a reason for that.
An incident that happened years later changed the way she saw him forever.
{Class Eight}
Until eighth grade, Sana barely knew Hasnain.
To her, he was simply another boy from her class—someone she rarely spoke to and had no particular reason to notice.
Then one day, everything changed.
A senior student secretly took photographs of Sana without her knowledge.
Unfortunately, this was not something he did only once.
The boy had been secretly taking pictures of younger female students and manipulating those photographs before using them to blackmail the girls. It had become a way for him to make money.
No one knew what he was doing.
Until Hasnain caught him.
The moment Hasnain realized what the boy was doing, his anger exploded.
He confronted him in the school grounds.
The confrontation quickly became violent.
Students gathered around them, shocked by the sight.
Some even began recording the incident on their phones.
Hasnain's rage was frightening. He refused to back down, especially after discovering that the senior student had been targeting innocent girls.
Eventually, the school administration intervened.
Hasnain was suspended for a week.
But he did not let the matter end there.
Months later, when the senior student had recovered and was able to face legal proceedings, Hasnain's father—who was a lawyer—helped ensure that the boy was reported to the police for blackmail and cyber harassment.
Yet the incident had already changed Hasnain's reputation.
Students began looking at him differently.
They were afraid of him.
Then, three weeks after the incident, the most beautiful and wealthy girl in the school publicly confessed her feelings for Hasnain.
Hasnain rejected her without hesitation.
Humiliated and furious, the girl decided to get revenge.
She took the videos of Hasnain fighting the senior student and combined them with several other recordings—including footage of an earlier confrontation Hasnain had been involved in with some school bullies.
She edited the clips in a way that completely changed the context.
The result made Hasnain appear like a violent troublemaker.
The video spread across the internet.
Although Hasnain's father, using his legal knowledge, managed to have the videos removed, the damage had already been done.
Hundreds of students had seen them.
Soon, Hasnain became known as a dangerous bully—not only in his own school, but among students from other schools as well.
People avoided him.
They whispered about him.
And Sana was no different.
She believed the rumors.
To her, Hasnain was simply a troublesome, reckless boy who was best kept at a distance.
That belief only grew stronger during ninth grade.
The Warehouse Incident
One afternoon, Sana was returning home from school when she passed an abandoned warehouse a short distance from her house.
The place looked deserted.
Its rusted metal walls were stained with age, and the broken windows were covered in dust. The surrounding area was unusually quiet.
Then she heard something.
Voices.
A struggle.
Someone was shouting.
Then came the unmistakable sounds of a fight.
Sana immediately took out her phone and contacted the police.
When the officers arrived, they found Hasnain on his knees on the ground, badly beaten and struggling to remain conscious.
William and Jack stood behind him.
Jason was holding a metal rod, apparently about to strike again.
The police arrived just in time.
All of them were taken into custody.
William, Jack, and Jason were later arrested.
Hasnain, however, was initially mistaken for William and released.
When Sana eventually learned what had happened, something inside her still refused to accept that Hasnain had been completely innocent.
Perhaps, she thought, he had somehow caused the entire situation.
Perhaps he had even pretended to be the victim when the police arrived.
And so, instead of bringing Sana closer to him, the incident only strengthened the distance between them.
She continued avoiding him.
Until the day she finally spoke to him.
{The First Words}
It happened when Hasnain was overwhelmed by grief after Barak's death.
He had lost control of his emotions and blamed Jason for refusing to open the terrace door when Barak needed help.
Consumed by anger and sorrow, Hasnain confronted Jason.
Sana witnessed the scene.
For the first time, she saw something beyond the frightening image everyone had created of Hasnain.
She saw grief.
She saw pain.
She saw someone who had lost a person he cared about.
And she stepped forward.
"Hasnain, stop."
Those were the first words Sana had ever spoken directly to him.
For Hasnain, however, they meant far more than she could ever have imagined.
Present
And now, years after the day he first saw her, Hasnain was sitting beside the window once again.
Only this time, Sana was sleeping peacefully a few feet away.
The morning sunlight continued pouring through the glass, illuminating the floating dust particles in the air.
Hasnain remained seated against the window, his back blocking the sunlight from reaching her.
He looked at Sana quietly.
There was no confession.
No dramatic words.
No expectation that she would ever understand what he felt.
He simply wanted her to sleep comfortably.
For someone who had loved her silently for years, protecting her from a few rays of sunlight felt strangely precious.
His gaze softened.
A quiet smile appeared on his face.
And as the golden morning light surrounded the room, Hasnain continued watching the girl who had unknowingly occupied his heart for so many years.