I was going to Physique class.

That's the only reason I was in that hallway at all. Tuesday , 10:15 AM. The same walk I'd done a dozen times before. Nothing special about the light. Nothing special about the air. Just the usual crowd of students shuffling between buildings, heads down, late for something.

I wasn't looking for him. I wasn't looking for anyone.

And then — suddenly — my eyes fell on him.

I don't know how to explain it. It wasn't like I scanned the hallway and chose him out of a crowd. It was more like… my gaze *stopped*. Like my eyes had found something they'd been searching for without telling me.

He was standing by the window, surrounded by friends. Three of them, maybe four. They were laughing about something — I couldn't hear what, and honestly, I wouldn't have been able to tell you even if someone put a gun to my head. Because I wasn't looking at his friends.

I was looking at his smile.

Not a polite smile. Not a smirk. A real one — the kind that starts somewhere deep and reaches his eyes before his mouth even moves. His head was tilted back slightly, just a little, like the laugh had surprised him. His teeth were white. His cheeks had the faintest crease on one side.

And my heart — my stupid, traitorous, never-done-this-before heart — slammed against my ribs so hard I felt it in my throat.

I stopped walking.

Someone bumped into me from behind. Muttered "sorry." I didn't move. Didn't blink. Didn't breathe.

He turned to say something to his friend. The smile didn't fade. It just… shifted. Became softer. Private. Like I was watching something I wasn't supposed to see.

*What is happening to me?*

I'd seen cute boys before. I'd thought, "Oh, he's handsome," and kept walking. This wasn't that.

This was my chest caving in. This was my palms going damp. This was the hallway tilting sideways and my feet refusing to take another step toward Physique class because how could I sit in a lecture hall and think about *forces and motion* when that smile existed in the world?

He and his friends started walking. Toward me. Past me.

He didn't look at me. Of course he didn't. Why would he? I was just a girl in a hallway, frozen like an idiot, clutching my notebook like it could save me.

But as he passed — three feet away, maybe less — I caught the edge of that smile one more time. A dying ember of it. And I knew.

I knew I was in trouble.

I didn't know his name. Didn't know if he was kind or cruel, smart or average, single or taken. Didn't know anything except the shape of his mouth when he was happy.

And I didn't care.

I watched him disappear around the corner. The hallway went back to normal. Students shuffled past. Somewhere, a door slammed.

I stood there for a long time. My heart was still pounding.

Then I whispered it to myself — not out loud, but in my head, like a secret I was finally admitting:

*This is my first love.*

After that first morning, I thought about him for three days straight.

Not in a dramatic way. Not like the movies where the girl writes his name in hearts on her notebook. I didn't even *have* a name to write. He was just… there. Behind my eyelids when I closed them. In the corner of my vision when I walked to class. In the quiet moments before I fell asleep, when my brain had nothing else to do.

*Who was he?*

I didn't go looking for him. That's what I told myself, anyway. I just… walked a little slower past the window where I'd first seen him. Took the long way to the cafeteria. Sat facing the door in every lecture hall, just in case.

And then, five days later, I found him again.

Or maybe he found me. That's not right either. He didn't *find* me — he never even glanced my way. I just… spotted him. Across the quad. Sitting on a low wall, eating an apple, scrolling through his phone with one thumb.

No friends this time. No laughing. Just him, ordinary and quiet and so beautiful it made my stomach hurt.

My heart slammed. Same as before. That hard, stupid, uncontrollable pound against my ribs.

I stopped walking again. Stood there like an idiot, clutching my backpack straps, while students flowed around me like water around a stone.

He bit into the apple. Chewed. Scrolled. A tiny crease appeared between his eyebrows, like he was reading something annoying.

*Even his annoyed face is perfect,* I thought. And then I wanted to laugh at myself. Or cry. I wasn't sure which.

I didn't approach him. Of course I didn't. What would I even say? *"Hi, I've been thinking about your smile for five days. I don't know your name. I don't know anything about you. But my heart stops every time I see you."*

No. I just watched.

From across the quad, I watched him finish the apple. Watched him toss the core into a bin ten feet away — he missed, then got up and picked it up and put it in properly. Watched him sling his backpack over one shoulder and walk toward the science building.

*He picks up his own trash,* I noted. Like that meant something. Like that was a sign.

It wasn't a sign. It was just a boy being decent. But to me, in that moment, it was everything.

---

The weeks that followed were a blur of heartbeats and hallway corners.

I learned things about him. Small things. Stolen things.

I learned that he always walked on the left side of the hallway, even when it was crowded. I learned that he bit his lower lip when he was thinking. I learned that he had a favorite gray hoodie with a frayed cuff on the right sleeve. I learned that his laugh — his real laugh, not the polite one — was loud and sudden and made people around him smile whether they meant to or not.

I learned all of this without ever getting closer than twenty feet.

Someone told me his name eventually. I don't even remember who. A girl in my English class, maybe. I'd described him once — badly, clumsily, trying not to sound insane — and she'd said, *"Oh, you mean Arakh?"*

Arakh.

I turned the name over in my mouth like a secret. *Arakh.* It sounded foreign. Sharp. Beautiful. Like him.

After that, I had a name to whisper to myself at night. *Arakh.* It didn't change anything. He still didn't know I existed. But somehow, having a name made it worse. Made it *real*.

This wasn't a crush on a stranger anymore. This was Arakh. The boy with the smile. The boy I'd never spoken to. The boy who owned my heartbeat without ever asking for it.

I was falling. Quietly. Deeply. From a distance so far away, I wasn't even a shadow in his world.

And still, every time I saw him — across the cafeteria, down the hall, three rows ahead in a lecture I'd started attending just to be near him — my heart pounded.

*Thump. Thump. Thump.*

*You don't even know my name,* I thought once, watching him laugh with his friends.

*But I know yours,* I answered myself. *And that's the problem.*