He met her on a day like any other — a day he expected to pass without significance. She was sitting alone in a library corner, sunlight pooling around her like a quiet halo. He didn't know why he stopped. He wasn't drawn to beauty, not in the way others were. But something in her stillness called to him, and for the first time in his life, he wanted to understand why.
At first, it was confusion. When she smiled at him, he felt an unfamiliar warmth in his chest, light and fluttering. He placed his hand there once, thinking something was wrong. His pulse had quickened — without reason, without logic.
When she laughed, a strange pull rose inside him, something like joy but too wild to name. When she left, there was a hollow ache — not the usual emptiness, but something sharper, alive.
He started seeking her company without understanding why. Every time she was near, his thoughts scattered. He felt... anxious. When she was late, worried. When she touched his hand, electric. It terrified him — this invasion of feeling into a mind that had always been silent.
One evening, as they watched the rain through the café window, she said softly, "You seem so calm all the time. Don't you ever feel anything?"
He looked at her, his voice caught between truth and revelation.
"I didn't," he said. "Not until you."
Her eyes softened, but he wasn't sure what emotion she saw in his. All he knew was that when she smiled again, something inside him broke open — the walls he had lived behind all his life began to crumble. For the first time, he understood both the beauty and the pain of being human.
And it terrified him. Because the same heart that now bloomed with feeling could also break — and he knew that if she ever left, the emptiness that once defined him would not return as peace, but as grief.