The digital clock at the train station blinked in tired red numbers.
7;37AM
Every morning it was the same,and every morning he told himself it would be different. He would walk past the coffee vendor without stopping, he would sit in the same seat, he would bury himself in his phone, anything to avoid the pull. But it never worked
Because She was there,
She always was
Seated at the far end of the opposite seat to his directly beneath the old advertisement that had peeled into layers of faded blues and yellows, as if even time itself had tried to erase it. That was her place. It had become hers so completely that he could no longer remember what the space had looked like before she claimed it with her presence.
She had a book in her hand as always, each week a different cover, though he suspected she never read it, he had noticed how she rarely turned the pages. She would stare at the pages with eyes focused on the book, but heart and mind so lost.
He wondered where.
The station was filled with bodies brushing each other's shoulders, heels clicking on the hard floor and voices all at once barely audible but loud..
but he saw her, only her. She didnt move like others, never rushing, she stood still ; caught between presence and absence.
As if on cue, her gaze lifted. His heart stopped and the noise around blurred out.
Her eyes met his.
The first time it had happened, he'd been startled. Embarrassed even, jerking his head away like he'd been caught stealing. But the days kept coming, and so did that look, and now it was something else entirely. Not an accident. Not coincidence. Something that lasted too long to be ignored, something that pressed heat into his skin no matter how far away she was.
It wasn't just any look. It was recognition.
The train screamed into the station, metal grinding metal. The crowd surged forward like a tide. He lost sight of her for a heartbeat, and when the train doors hissed open, she slipped inside without hesitation, vanishing into the sea of strangers.
He boarded a different train, sat down, coffee cooling untouched in his hand. But the train could've carried him across the whole city and he wouldn't have noticed. All he saw, imprinted behind his eyelids, was her face in that moment before she turned away.
It had been weeks since he first noticed her. Weeks of the same ritual: 7:37, the platform, the glance. Weeks of silence that felt louder than the trains.
And every day, as the city blurred past the window, he wondered if she felt it too.