Aryan's POV
It was 1:12 a.m.
The corridor outside my room was silent, save for the occasional creak of someone shifting in bed.
My desk lamp cast a soft glow across the pages I hadn't touched in an hour.
I wasn't studying.
I was thinking.
About her.
Isha.
She'd mentioned something in class earlier—
To the professor, not to me.
A prep strategy for the mock psych paper.
Something about emotional mapping and case studies, her voice calm but certain.
I'd pretended not to listen too closely.
But I had.
Of course I had.
Now her name sat at the top of my chat list.
Untouched.
Unsent.
I typed:
Hey.
About the mock prep you mentioned in class—
The emotional mapping thing.
Could you explain it a bit?
I think I missed the structure.
Then stared at it.
It wasn't clever.
Wasn't charming.
Just honest.
I hovered over send.
Thumb trembling slightly—not from fear, but from the weight of what it meant.
Because this wasn't just about the mock.
It was about letting her know I'd been listening.
That I remembered.
That I wanted to hear her explain it again, not because I couldn't understand it,
But because I wanted to understand her.
I thought about deleting it.
About rewriting it to sound more casual, more detached.
But I didn't.
I hit send.
Then turned off my phone.
Not because I didn't want to see her reply.
But because I needed to breathe first.
In the quiet that followed, I imagined her reading it.
Tilting her head.
That slight crease between her brows when she's thinking.
Maybe a smile.
Maybe not.
And for the first time in weeks,
I didn't feel like I was waiting to be chosen.
I felt like I'd chosen to speak.
Even if she didn't reply.
Even if it stayed unread.
I'd said something real.
And that was enough—for now.