It was the last week before the winter vacation. The kind where classrooms thin out and whispers grow louder, when chalk dust floats through golden shafts of light and teachers don't bother checking homework anymore. Exams were far away, but the air already tasted like goodbye.
Aarav was getting better at being invisible. He'd learned that if you walked just behind a group of boys, teachers wouldn't call your name. If you laughed along at the right beat, you became the background. And most days, the background was safer than being noticed.
But Niya noticed him.
She wasn't loud about it. There were no grand gestures. Just little things. Like when she borrowed his pen even though hers worked perfectly fine. Or when she saved a seat for him by the window, the one where sunlight made the dust dance like fireflies. Or when she laughed at his dumbest jokes—not the rehearsed ones, the accidental ones. The ones he didn't mean to say.
That day, they sat on the school stairs after class. Bags heavy with textbooks and dreams not theirs.
"If you could live anywhere," she asked, "where would it be?"
Aarav blinked. "Anywhere as in real or made up?"
"Made up sounds better."
He thought for a second. "A bookstore with a bed in the corner. Somewhere it rains all day."
She grinned. "That's so specific."
"Isn't it the point?"
"What would you do there?"
He looked at her. "Write. Or sleep. Maybe both."
There was silence, but the kind that wrapped around you, not the kind that pushed you away.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook. Its cover was bent. A flower doodle in one corner. She flipped through pages and pointed.
"Here. You said you wrote something once. Read me this."
Aarav froze. "No way. That stuff's embarrassing."
"I won't laugh. I swear on your bookstore."
He took the book from her fingers, reluctant, his hands slightly trembling. The words on the page weren't perfect. They weren't even good. But they were his.
He began to read. She didn't interrupt. And when he finished, she didn't say anything for a while.
Then, softly, "Write more. Please."
---
That night, Aarav skipped dinner.
He sat in his room, lights off, only the blue glow of his phone screen guiding his pen.
Every time his parents knocked, he replied with the same line:
"I'm studying."
They didn't know the textbook in front of him was a decoy. Behind it, in a hidden spiral notebook, he was writing dialogue about imaginary cities and people who loved each other without fear.
His mother peeked in once. Said nothing. Left a bowl of rice on his table. Her silence said, as long as you're doing what you're supposed to.
He stared at the bowl long after it had gone cold.
---
The next morning, Yuvaan joined him on the cycle ride to school. They shared headphones. One ear each. Old Hindi songs his dad used to hum while fixing the scooter.
"You look less like a dying goat today," Yuvaan said.
"Thanks, I think?"
"Did Niya say something?"
Aarav didn't answer, but his smile gave him away.
Yuvaan grinned. "You're gone, bro. Fully vanished."
They reached the school gates just as the bell rang. A sea of uniforms shuffled inside. Niya was there already, her hair tied in that messy way that somehow suited her better than anything else.
She waved.
Aarav waved back.
The world, for a few seconds, felt like it made sense.
---
Lunchtime came fast. The class sat in lazy circles on the backfield. Someone played music from a cracked speaker. The scent of aloo paratha and orange peels filled the air.
Niya threw a grape at Aarav.
It hit his forehead.
"That was an act of war," he declared, holding the grape dramatically.
"Defend yourself then, soldier."
He tossed it back. Missed. Yuvaan caught it mid-air and ate it.
"These are the moments we'll miss," she said quietly.
"School?"
"This. The not-doing-anything part."
He nodded. "Yeah. Life gets loud later."
"What if it already is?"
That line stayed with him.
What if life was already loud, just in a frequency they hadn't learned to hear?
---
One evening, Aarav sat with his mother in the kitchen.
She was chopping onions. He was pretending to solve math problems.
"Did you talk to your father about Kota?" she asked.
He looked up. "Not yet."
"You should. He won't like delays."
"I don't want to go."
She paused. The knife hovering mid-air.
"No one wants to," she said softly. "But some things aren't about want."
"Then what are they about?"
"About being safe. About being practical."
He didn't say it out loud, but the words ran circles in his head: But what if I want to be foolish for once?
She added more salt than usual to the curry that night.
---
By Friday, the school corridors looked emptier. Holidays were coming. Students were leaving early.
Aarav and Niya sat by the basketball court. The sun was orange and tired.
"Will you write about me?" she asked.
He laughed. "Already have. You're the annoying protagonist who throws grapes."
"Then make sure she ends up happy."
"Even if the writer doesn't?"
She looked at him for a long time. "Especially then."
There was a pause.
Then he reached out, fingers brushing hers.
She didn't pull away.
---
At night, he stared at the blank page.
Wrote only four words:
The story begins here.
He didn't know it yet, but he was right.
The real chapters—the heartbreak, the silence, the loss, the strange peace that follows when you stop expecting things to return—
They were waiting.
Just around the corner.
But for now, the distance between them was small enough to ignore.
And in that space, something like love was growing quietly, like ink soaking through a page.
Aarav didn't have the words for it yet.
But he was learning.