"You always smell like oud and jasmine... How did I get so blessed to wake up next to you every morning, Meilin?"
"Stop saying things like that! The girl will hear…"
Lin Yichen froze by the wooden doorframe, her fingers still brushing the smooth curve of the brass handle. The voice that floated to her were deep, hushed, and laced with affection that hadn't been meant for her ears. And yet it found its way in, curling like incense smoke through the crevices of her chest.
The warmth of her sister's laughter, barely louder than a breath, was like a key turning in an invisible lock.
She wasn't eavesdropping. Not deliberately.
In fact, she'd just finished tying the final knot of her white veil, adjusting the soft fall of it to frame her chin just so. Her overnight bag sat obediently by the hallway bench, its canvas body bulging slightly from a packed Qur'an, her journal,and the half-finished script she was revising for campus competition.
One slippered foot had just crossed the wooden floorboard when Chen Wang's voice reached her. Low. Reverent. Meant for one woman only.
"I don't care if she hears," he said with a quiet chuckle, the sound rich like honey warmed in the sun. "Let her know what halal love looks like. Let her know it's possible, even in this world."
Yichen's breath caught as if the words had touched her directly.
Her hand tightened around the leather strap of her bag; not from shame, but from a sudden, unnameable ache.
It wasn't the romantic intimacy that startled her. It was the kindness behind it.
The certainty.
The deep, rooted calm of a man who loved openly, without needing grand declarations.
The kind of love that didn't parade itself, but rather… prayed quietly beside its partner and filled the silence between breaths with sincerity.
In nineteen years of life, no man had ever spoken like that near her. Not in her presence. Not even on television dramas.
The male voices she was used to came from Friday khutbahs, stern lectures on discipline and character, or the constant drone of political debates on her father's radio.
But this?
This was not noise. This was intention.
This was dua wrapped in affection.
She turned away quietly before they noticed her. Her exit was silent, careful, almost rehearsed. Like she was used to slipping past moments not meant for her.
---
The morning train arrived earlier than expected, humming like a tired beast waiting to swallow its passengers. It was colder than she remembered; metallic, impersonal, and yet oddly comforting.
Wrapped in her navy blue abaya and a wide jilbab that brushed gently against her ankles, Lin Yichen sank into her assigned seat beside the window. She pressed her fingers to the frosted glass, letting the filtered light warm her knuckles.
Outside, the countryside rolled past—blurs of emerald rice fields, golden temple roofs in the far distance, and the occasional sight of a roadside mosque with green domes poking through bamboo groves. Familiar. But distant.
Inside her, something stirred.
"How did I get so blessed to wake up next to you?"
That sentence had taken root.
It bloomed again and again, no matter how many times she tried to focus on the Qur'an verses she had planned to revise during the trip.
What unsettled her wasn't the intimacy of the words. It was how Meilin had responded, even through the flustered reprimand. It was in the tone—the tenderness of a woman whose heart had been watered by patience and devotion. As if she carried that love beneath her skin, like a prayer always in sujood.
Yichen closed her eyes briefly.
She wasn't seeking love. Not now. Not when she had finally gotten into her second year at East Meridian Islamic University—a prestigious institution known not just for its academics, but for its Islamic character and multicultural harmony.
She had come to study Media and Arabic, to improve her tajweed, to finally memorize the surahs she'd been postponing for years.
She had even signed up for the Golden Crescent Writing Competition; the same one she had missed last session due to illness.
Love wasn't on the schedule.
But the echo of it lingered like the last note of a song she wasn't supposed to hear.
---
Her phone buzzed in her lap.
Aaliyah:"Yichen! Are you on the way yet? I'm saving your bed space, these girls are already acting like we're in a game show."
Yichen smiled, thumbs flying over the screen.
Me:"On the train. I'll be there before Zuhr, insha'Allah. Don't let anyone steal my pillow again."
She could almost hear Aaliyah's laugh.
---
By the time Yichen arrived at the campus gate, the sun had climbed high enough to bathe the archway in golden light.
The familiar university sign greeted her like a loyal friend:
East Meridian Islamic University
"Knowledge. Character. Light."
There it was. Her second home.
The scent of frangipani drifted from the manicured gardens. Students bustled across the walkways, adjusting their ID lanyards, laughing into their phones, or trading snacks between suitcases.
The campus was alive. And under it all, a subtle energy hummed…part ambition, part curiosity, and part anticipation of something just beginning.
She didn't know it yet, but it would soon become personal.
"Lin Yichen!"
A voice barreled through the crowd, followed by a flash of beige hijab and beautiful rimmed glasses.
Aaliyah.
Her best friend. Her chaos twin. Her people-watcher-in-chief.
They embraced briefly,no dramatic squeals, no bouncing. Just the solid, reassuring warmth of friendship that didn't need decoration.
"You look like a scholar's wife with this new bag," Aaliyah said, her eyes gleaming as she reached for Yichen's structured leather bag.
"Maybe I am," Yichen replied with a faint smile. "A scholar of linguistics and heartbreak."
Aaliyah cracked up, clutching her chest. "You've been watching too many K-Dramas again!"
"You know I don't watch those things ."
"And here I always thought you were on a romantic fast."
"I am. But heartbreak is not right even if it's non fictional."
They laughed, slipping back into the rhythm of shared sarcasm and inside jokes.
---
Later that evening, Yichen found herself in the common room lounge with a steaming cup of red date tea, eyes scanning the new semester's course outline. She curled her legs beneath her, balancing her borrowed tablet on one knee. The lounge buzzed with soft conversations and kettle whistles, but her attention was fixed.
One name kept appearing.
Dr. Jian Mazhir — Lecturer, Comparative Faith and Cultural Anthropology.
"I heard he's young," Aaliyah said casually, looking over her own copy. "Graduated from Ankara. Doesn't speak much. They say he grades like he's allergic to A's."
Yichen hummed, only half-listening.
She wasn't the kind to get starstruck by teachers. She respected them, certainly. But crushes? That was Aaliyah's department. Yichen found intellectuals intriguing, yes, but rarely charming.
"Apparently he's the nephew of the Vice Chancellor," Aaliyah added. "Handsome, if you like the distant-intellectual type."
Yichen chuckled. "Sounds like a character from a novel."
"Exactly!" Aaliyah grinned.
But something about the name clung to Yichen's thoughts longer than it should have.
---
That night, as she brushed her teeth by the dorm sink, her gaze lifted to the dorm window.
The moon hung full in the sky, and a lone bird crossed its face like a black calligraphy stroke on white canvas.
Her sister's voice returned…not in words now, but in feeling.
"Let her know what halal love looks like..."
Yichen didn't know what that would mean for her.
Not yet.
But she pulled her shawl tighter and whispered a quiet "Ameen" into the silence.
She wasn't seeking love.
But if it ever came, she hoped it would come softly.
Like moonlight.
And begin with reverence.
---
Chapter Two Teaser: "Eyes That Shouldn't Meet"
"You seem to attract powerful men, Yichen."
Her name lingered in the air..spoken not with admiration, but accusation.
Yichen turned slowly.
Chen Wei stood at the far end of the corridor, jaw set, eyes unreadable. His gaze shifted between her… and the professor who had just uttered her name like a promise.
Behind her, Dr. Jian Mazhir hadn't moved.
"You're in my class now, Lin Yichen," his voice was calm, smooth as polished stone.
"Try not to disappear so easily again."
Yichen felt something heavy coil in her chest.
In that instant, she realized:
She wasn't invisible anymore.
She was standing in the middle of a tension neither man had spoken of...yet.
And tension?
Tension didn't need words.
Just eyes.
And a girl standing between them, trying not to fall.