Chapter 2: The Watching

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.*

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