The rain came softly that morning, a thin veil drifting over the courtyard of Nusantara High School. Each drop fell with the patience of a piano note, quieting the restless pulse of the world. On the window of Class 12 Social Studies Two, the droplets slid and merged, tracing uncertain paths toward the wooden sill below, like small lives trying to reach the same end.
Outside, drizzle met the tin roof of the canteen, mingling with laughter, gossip, and footsteps. To anyone else, it was ordinary noise. But for Sinta, it was music, the kind you could only hear when your heart was still.
She sat by the window, unmoving, her slender figure framed by the pale morning light. Her shoulder-length black hair fell over one side of her face, half hiding a cheek too fragile for the world. She wasn't the kind of girl who turned heads. Her name wasn't whispered in hallways. She existed in quiet corners, in the soft hum of pages turned and pens scratching against paper.
And that was enough for her.
In the clamor of youth, she found refuge in silence.
A notebook lay open before her, its pages freckled with raindrops from the wind that sneaked through the half-open window. Her pen didn't follow the lesson on the board. Instead, it moved with slow, uncertain grace across the blank paper.
"Rain always makes me feel alone. But I love this kind of loneliness."
Sinta paused, then smiled faintly. Writing was how she spoke to herself, how she breathed when the world felt too loud.
Since her first year of high school, she had carried the same small blue notebook, its corners soft with time, its cover faded like an old sky. In those pages she stored her hidden weather: words she could never say aloud, storms she could never share.
Then came the sound of footsteps in the corridor, steady, deliberate. A silence fell across the room. Even before he entered, everyone knew.
Mr. Armand.
"Good morning, class," his voice came, deep and even, like a baritone note that settled the air.
He stood at the front of the room, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a hint of rain on his shirt. His eyes, dark, thoughtful, seemed to carry the weight of both kindness and fatigue. He smiled, and in that moment, the classroom brightened by something other than sunlight.
"Good morning, Sir!" the students answered in unison.
Sinta's voice joined theirs, though barely. The warmth in her chest surprised her; it spread quietly, like ink through paper. There was something honest in his tone,something that didn't try to charm, yet did anyway.
On the board, he wrote in sharp, clean strokes: Narrative Text.
Sinta watched, though not the words, she watched the man behind them. The slow rhythm of his breath, the soft movements of his shoulder as he turned, the faint scent of soap and ink that drifted across the room. Every small, human imperfection drew her in deeper.
"All right," he said, capping the marker. "Who can give me an example of a narrative text?"
The class froze. A few students bent their heads, pretending to look for notes.
Sinta, usually one of them, felt her heart stir. Before she could stop herself, her hand lifted, hesitant but brave.
"Yes, Sinta?"
Two words. That was all. Yet her pulse thundered like rain on the tin roof.
"Uh… Cinderella, Sir." Her voice trembled.
Mr. Armand smiled, a real one, the kind that reached the eyes.
"Good. A classic. Thank you, Sinta."
Her cheeks burned. She ducked her head, scribbling nonsense on her page, but her hand shook slightly. For a moment, the whole classroom vanished; there was only him, and her, and the echo of his voice lingering like the aftertaste of sunlight.
The lesson went on. The rain outside thickened, steady and sure.
Sinta wrote, but her mind drifted. She watched him move between desks, leaning over students' work. There was something weary in his eyes that day, a shadow of lost sleep, of thoughts too heavy for words.
When someone asked if he was tired, he simply smiled.
"Just didn't sleep much last night," he said lightly.
Sinta's pen stopped mid-sentence.
For the first time, she saw him not as the calm, unshakable teacher, but as a man. A human being, quietly carrying his own rain inside.
And that was when something changed.
The bell rang. Students rushed for the door, their laughter spilling into the corridor. Sinta stayed behind, packing her books slowly, pretending to fix her pen, anything to stretch the moment a little longer.
"Good job today," his voice said, close now.
She looked up, startled. "Th-thank you, Sir."
His smile softened. "Your English is getting better. Keep writing. I read your last essay, you have something honest there. Don't lose it."
She wanted to speak, to say something clever or grateful, but words deserted her. She could only smile, a quiet, trembling smile that felt like a secret.
And then he was gone.
That night, the rain returned.
Sinta sat by her small window, the light dim and golden, her notebook open once more.
"He said I have talent. He smiled at me. Maybe he says that to everyone, but I want to believe it was meant for me."
She stared at the words for a long time.
Then, beneath them, she added: "Sometimes I think the rain doesn't fall from the sky, but from my own thoughts, too heavy to hold."
A single tear fell, and she didn't wipe it away.
Outside, the rain tapped gently, patient as grace.
Sinta closed her eyes and saw herself beneath an umbrella, walking beside Mr. Armand. In her mind they talked about books, shared stories, laughed softly at the same joke. No rules, no distance. Just two souls, side by side beneath the same sky.
But dawn would come, and with it, the truth.
She was the student.
He was the teacher.
And the line between them would hold.
Still, every time it rained, she felt the world blur for a heartbeat, the borders melting away. Love, she thought, was a house without a door. Yet somehow, she kept searching for a way in. And when January came again, the rain whispered its quiet promise:
"Someday, maybe not with him,
but you will walk beneath the same umbrella,
and you won't need to hide."