Recognition
I very much believe it’s all in my head—
and yet, sometimes, something contradicts it.
I don’t know if it’s normal.
I only know it was too special for me.
Either way, it had an effect on me.
It’s a fading memory now,
but sometimes, when I see him in the hallway,
it becomes overwhelming.
And yet—even the gods won’t see me flinch.
I never look at him.
I never seem to notice him.
In fact, he’s the one who greets me.
But who would know
that it affects me the most?
I had known Arin’s name long before he knew mine.
Everyone did.
He joined the school in ninth grade and somehow claimed it before the year ended. New admission, already everywhere. A girl from his class proposed to him within weeks. They dated. People talked. It was all very loud, very visible—everything my life wasn’t.
To me, he was just information.
A name. A face I recognised in passing. A relationship that became gossip and then old news. Nothing that lingered. Nothing that followed me home.
Back then, I was barely there myself.
I existed quietly—present, but forgettable. The kind of person people didn’t notice until someone said my name out loud. I had friends, yes, but I wasn’t the one people remembered after the conversation ended. I didn’t draw attention; I waited for it. And when it didn’t come, I told myself I didn’t need it.
By eleventh grade, things had changed. Not dramatically—just enough.
I was still an introvert, but I didn’t feel like I was hiding behind glass anymore. I could talk without rehearsing every sentence. I could walk through school without feeling like I was apologising for taking up space.
Arin was friends with my best friend—they were in the same class, same stream. I was in a different one. Our friend group was scattered across sections, five of us holding on despite different timetables and new people. Arin hovered at the edges of that world, close enough to be familiar, distant enough to not matter.
Until one day, during recess, he stepped into it.
We were sitting together, teasing one of our external friends—someone who wasn’t part of our core group but floated in and out. It was harmless chaos, laughter overlapping, voices too loud for the corridor.
Arin joined in easily, like he belonged there.
At some point, someone joked, “Don’t say that, Aadhya will get angry.”
And then—
“Who’s Aadhya?”
It wasn’t dramatic.
Just a question. Casual curiosity.
But my name sounded different in his voice.
My friend pointed at me. “She.”
Arin looked at me for the first time.
I laughed along like nothing had happened. My expression didn’t change. I didn’t blush or freeze or look away. On the outside, I was normal—exactly as I had trained myself to be.
Inside, everything scrambled.
Not because it was him.
But because I had been noticed.
That was it. The moment passed. Someone else said something. Recess ended. We went back to our classes like nothing had shifted.
And maybe, for everyone else, nothing had.
That evening, I opened Instagram without thinking.
There was a follow request waiting for me.
His.
For a second, I just stared at the screen.
My username wasn’t my real name. My profile wasn’t public. There was no obvious way he could’ve found me unless he had tried.
I told myself it didn’t mean anything.
I accepted the request anyway.
I didn’t know then that this was the beginning of something I would never be able to name.
I didn’t know that this small, quiet effort—the search, the request, the recognition—would rearrange the way I understood attention, absence, and loss.
At the time, it felt like nothing.
I would spend months trying to figure out why nothing had affected me so deeply.
