I've always liked quiet places.
Not because I dislike people—
just because silence is easier to understand.
Most days, the world moves too fast.
Students shouting, teachers lecturing, crowds shifting like restless waves.
I don't hate any of it.
I simply... watch from the side.
That morning, the sky was pale.
The kind of color that makes everything feel both distant and strangely close.
I took my usual route to school, book in hand, steps steady and unhurried.
Nothing special.
Nothing different.
Just another weekday.
Or so I thought.
I was used to walking alone.
Used to being unnoticed.
Used to blending into the tide of people flowing around me.
But at the school gate, when I lifted my eyes for a moment—
I saw her.
A girl with long black hair swaying softly behind her.
Her expression was calm, almost cold, yet her eyes held a quiet depth.
She didn't look at me.
She didn't need to.
Still... my steps stopped for a heartbeat.
I didn't know her name.
Didn't know who she was.
Didn't know that, someday, our paths would cross again—
in ways I never could have predicted.
Back then, she was just another student in the crowd.
And yet, for the first time in a long while,
something shifted inside the quiet morning.
A small ripple.
Barely there, easy to miss.
The kind of moment you only understand much later—
when you realize the exact point where your ordinary life began to change.
And mine, though I had no idea at the time,
had already started.