Before The Bell Rings (Chapter 4 )

Adrielle POV

The café smelled faintly of roasted beans and worn leather chairs. I was seated in my usual corner, sketchbook balanced on my knee, pencil tracing lines over the table across from me. The way the morning sun hit the rim of her hair I swear, it made her glow in a quiet, careless way. She didn’t notice me, not yet.

But I did notice.

Lira.

She was seated at a window table, sketching something small and neat into a notebook. Her hair fell loosely around her face, but there was a weightlessness in the way she moved—like the world could tilt, and she wouldn’t notice, because she was fully inside herself. I didn’t usually linger on people long enough to capture them beyond the shape of their shoulders or the curve of their jaw, but something about her made me slow down. My pencil moved without thinking, and I realized I’d been staring at her hands for a solid five minutes.

And then she looked up.

I froze, pencil halfway through shading. And she smiled—softly, almost imperceptibly—but there was recognition there, like she’d found the missing piece of a puzzle she hadn’t realized she was looking for.

Lira POV

The moment I saw the sketch, I felt my chest tighten, not in embarrassment, but something gentler, more peculiar. The lines of the face weren’t just accurate they were aware. Someone had noticed the quietness of me, the way I let my hands wander over paper, the way I tilted my head when I thought no one was looking. And yet, it wasn’t invasive. It felt... careful.

I didn’t know the artist, but I wanted to. I wanted to understand what it felt like to see someone fully and not demand anything in return. I approached her table slowly, as if I were stepping into a fragile ecosystem I wasn’t sure I belonged in.

“Hi,” I said, voice lower than I expected.

And she looked up. For a moment, I thought she might retreat behind her sketchbook, but she didn’t.

“Hi,” she said, that one word holding the kind of calm I didn’t know how to respond to. I realized I wasn’t just curious—I was aware of every detail: the way her pencil twitched, the faint smudge on her thumb, the subtle tension in her shoulders that betrayed how casual she tried to seem.

I didn’t know it yet, but I wanted to be seen like that, too.

Adrielle POV

Her voice was quiet, and for some reason it made my chest feel crowded, like I’d swallowed too much air at once.

“I—I saw the sketch,” she said, holding my gaze without flinching. “It’s... me, isn’t it?”

I tried to laugh it off. “Uh, yeah. You’re hard to miss.”

She didn’t laugh. She just tilted her head, observing me like I was worth examining, and maybe I was. The café’s background noise the clatter of spoons, the hiss of the espresso machine melted into a soft blur around us.

And suddenly, I realized I was nervous. Not the usual flutter before deadlines or critiques this was different. Her eyes were calm, warm, not demanding, but they made me feel exposed anyway. I cleared my throat.

“So... you come here often?” I asked, too casually, and I hated the awkwardness in my own words.

She smiled then. A small, private smile. “Sometimes. I like the light in the mornings. It’s easy to think here.”

I nodded, sketchbook forgotten for a moment. Easy to think. That sounded like her, somehow liike she inhabited quiet spaces even when surrounded by noise. I wanted to be part of that quiet.

Lira POV

We talked in pauses, between sips of coffee and glances out the window. She didn’t fill the silence with words the way most people did. She let it linger, like she knew I needed it to settle, to catch up with myself.

I noticed the way her pencil rested against her sketchbook when she wasn’t drawing, the slight crease at the corner of her mouth when she smiled just a little too soon. And I realized that maybe I wanted to watch her—not because I needed to understand everything about her, but because I liked how she let herself exist.

She’s afraid of attachments, I thought, reading her in the spaces between sentences. But it doesn’t matter. Not yet.

I simply let her be.

Adrielle POV

When she finally stood to leave, I found my hand lingering on the edge of the table, as if I could hold the moment there. She didn’t rush away. She just gave me a look that said she knew this was only the beginning.

And for the first time, I didn’t feel the need to hide.

Maybe, I thought as she walked toward the door, I could let someone in after all.

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