The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the library, painting the dusty bookshelves in hues of gold. For Dakshin, this quiet corner was a sanctuary. But it wasn't the silence that brought him peace; it was the girl sitting across from him.
Anaya.
Her presence was a quiet counterpoint to the constant, grinding pressure in his life. While his engineering textbooks lay open like a fortress wall of formulas and responsibilities, she was sketching in the margins of her notebook—a fleeting moment of freedom he envied.
"Dakshin?"
Her voice was softer than usual, pulling him from his thoughts. He looked up and found her staring at him, a nervous intensity in her eyes that made his heart skip a beat.
"You know how our parents talk," she began, her fingers tracing the edge of her notebook. "My parents... they've started mentioning marriage. They said they would like a union with one of my cousins... and you are one of them."
She looked down, a faint blush coloring her cheeks, but then her gaze lifted to meet his again, brave and unwavering.
"And I... I also like you. I am sure one day they will ask me. And I think they have you in mind."
The world seemed to narrow to the space between them. The air hummed with the unspoken thing that had lived in his glances and her smiles for months, now given a name and a future. It was a path laid out before him, approved by both their families. A life with Anaya. A union that would make everyone happy. It was everything he had secretly wanted.
But the warmth of that vision was instantly doused by a cold, familiar wave of reality. His reality.
His father David's weary, retired face flashed before his eyes. His mother Clara's constant, quiet anxiety about money. The unspoken weight of being the only son, the sole future provider, settled on his shoulders like a physical yoke. How could he accept a wife when he couldn't yet secure his own family's future?
He looked at her, his expression pained but resolute. "I know, Anaya. My parents see you in a very good light. You are in their good books."
He took a slow breath, the words feeling both true and like a betrayal as he spoke them. "And I... I like you too."
He saw a flicker of hope in her eyes, and it almost broke him.
"But that is why I must do this correctly," he continued, his voice hardening with a resolve he didn't fully feel. "First, I have to secure a good job. A proper position. I think we will probably get married, certainly."
He was building a cage of his own making, and he could see her watching him construct it.
"But the permission for our marriage," he finished, the words tasting like ash, "will only come once I have proven I can be a true provider. Once I can stand in front of your father not just as a good boy, but as a man with a future. I have to do this the right way."
He saw it happen in slow motion. The light in her eyes, so bright and hopeful just moments ago, dimmed and then extinguished completely. He wasn't rejecting her; he was placing her on a shelf, making her a prize for a future achievement. He was choosing the burden of "becoming worthy" over the courage of accepting her love in the present.
Her face, once open and trusting, closed off. A new, cold pride straightened her spine, erecting a wall he could already feel would be permanent.
"I see," she said, her voice flat and distant, devoid of all its earlier warmth. "The right way. Then I suppose you should focus on your future."
She gathered her books with a quiet, deliberate finality.
"Don't let me distract you from your duty."
She stood up and walked away, leaving him alone with his textbooks and his rigid principles. The echo of her footsteps faded, and with it, the warmth in the sunlit library. He had chosen the path of the responsible heir, believing he was doing the noble thing.
He didn't realize that in his quest to become a man worthy of a wife, he had just failed his first true test of courage.