Chapter 1
Back then, I was the definition of a good girl. Not the fake kind — I mean genuinely the “quiet, does-her-homework, never gets caught talking in class” type. My biggest rebellion was doodling in the last page of my notebook.
I had friends, sure, but I wasn’t loud like them. I didn’t chase attention. And when it came to boys? Yeah… no. They didn’t talk to me, I didn’t talk to them. Easy.
Until that one afternoon.
I was walking back from the canteen, still chewing on a biscuit, when I saw him. Actually — no. I didn’t “see” him. I looked up and suddenly… he was there.
Tall. Lean. Glasses catching the sunlight. Hair smooth enough to run your hands through (not that I was thinking about that yet… maybe).
And he was smiling at me.
He stopped right in front of me, like he’d been waiting. “Hey,” he said, voice warm, casual — the kind of casual that still feels deliberate. “Do you know what time it is?”
My brain short-circuited. First: nobody ever just came up to me like this. Second: I didn’t even have a watch — everyone knew that.
“I… don’t,” I replied, forcing my voice to sound normal even though my pulse was in my throat.
“Oh.” That smile again — a little curve of his lips, like he knew something I didn’t. Then he walked off, slow and unhurried, hands sliding into his pockets.
I stood there for a second, staring after him. It was just a question. Just a few seconds. But the way he looked at me — like he was actually seeing me, not just another girl in uniform — it stuck.
The next day, I caught myself glancing at him in the corridor. Then again during assembly. And again in the library, where he sat by the window, tapping his pen, looking like something out of a teen drama scene.
By the third day, my friends had noticed. “Is he your crush?” one of them whispered when he passed by. I shrugged, pretending my heart hadn’t just skipped. “What! no bro.” i said with an awkward smile
Yeah. No. But apparently, he was now everywhere.
