Chapter 2–Lighthearted Messages

His name was Adam.

Léa had crossed paths with him several times in the university hallways without really noticing him. He belonged to that human scenery we pass through every day without stopping — a familiar face without a story attached, a name heard in a conversation that did not concern you, a silhouette among many in the crowd of hurried students.

That day, after sports class, he was simply there. Leaning against the hallway wall, earbuds around his neck, looking at his phone with the air of someone waiting without truly waiting. And he was the one who spoke first.

— Did you watch the game last night?

Léa looked up. She did not watch basketball. She did not know the game. She had no reason to stop.

She stopped anyway.

She did not know why, that day.

Maybe because she was tired of walking straight ahead without ever deviating. Maybe because his voice had something natural about it, something uncalculated, that contrasted with the constant tension she had been carrying for weeks. Or maybe, simply, because that day she needed someone to talk to her. Truly talk to her. Without hidden intentions, without silent reproach, without the weight that every exchange with Karim carried behind it like a suitcase too heavy to ever truly put down.

So she stopped.

— No, I missed it. How was it?

The conversation lasted seven minutes.

She knew because she had checked the time when she arrived and when she left, automatically, by student habit. Seven minutes about a basketball game she did not know, with a boy she barely knew anything about.

He spoke well. Not in a brilliant or calculated way — just fluidly, naturally, like someone who was not afraid of silence but did not seek it either. He laughed twice. A real laugh, not the polite sound people produce out of social courtesy. And when she said something — a light remark, almost nothing — he looked at her as if what she said deserved to be heard.

It was nothing extraordinary.

But it had been a long time since someone had looked at her like that. Truly looked at her. Not through her, not beyond her — her. Léa. The person standing in that hallway at that exact moment.

She had forgotten what that felt like.

Before leaving, he took out his phone.

— I’ll send you the game video if you want. It was really good.

She gave him her number without thinking. The way you give directions to someone on the street. A simple, practical gesture, without particular weight.

He sent the video that same evening. With a short message:

The last minute is worth it. Good evening.

She watched the final minute of the game sitting in the bathroom while Karim watched television in the living room. The door closed. The small screen in her hands. And that strange feeling of being inside a bubble — separated from the rest of the apartment, from the rest of her life, by a few centimeters of wood.

She smiled.

A real smile. Small, discreet, almost surprised by itself.

In the days that followed, the messages continued. Gently. Without pressure. Without imposed rhythm. It was not a conversation that demanded constant attention — it was something that existed outside of time, appearing when one of them had something to say and disappearing without drama when they had nothing.

An article about a team. A joke about a professor they shared. A question about homework. A meme sent at midnight without explanation.

Nothing intense.

Nothing romantic.

Just two people beginning to talk. Truly talk, with that rare lightness sometimes found with someone you barely know and who, for that very reason, does not judge you yet.

Léa was careful not to think about it too much.

She was in a relationship. She had Karim. She was not the kind of girl who invented stories or feelings where there was only friendliness.

She told herself clearly, quietly in her mind, every time she noticed she had smiled when his name appeared on her screen. Every time she caught herself checking her phone a little too often. Every time she chose her words with a care she had not put into messages to Karim for a long time.

He’s just a friend. He’s just someone nice. It’s normal to have nice people in your life.

And it was true.

Everything was true.

But there was something else too — something she did not yet put into words, something that had no precise name. Just that light, almost imperceptible sensation of existing a little more when she replied to him.

Little nothings.

One evening, Adam texted her late.

Are you asleep?

She was not asleep. She was lying in the dark, eyes open, listening to Karim’s breathing beside her — that steady, indifferent breathing of someone who sleeps with the calm conscience of someone who has nothing to reproach himself for. Or of someone who no longer asks questions. She could not have said which was worse.

She hesitated for a second.

Then she replied.

No. Still awake.

And they talked until one in the morning. About nothing important. About everything that matters without seeming to matter — childhood dreams, regrets, places they wanted to visit one day, the music you listen to when you are alone and would not easily show to others.

At one point he wrote:

You seem like a good person, Léa.

She looked at that sentence for a long time. Not because it was extraordinary. But because it had been so long since anyone had told her something like that — simply, without reason, without her needing to earn it first.

When she finally put her phone down, it was almost two in the morning.

She fell asleep almost immediately, the phone still warm in her hand and something light in her chest — something she had not felt for so long that she had almost forgotten its name.

Beside her, Karim slept.

He did not know.

He could not know.

And Léa, eyes closed in the darkness of their bedroom, did not try to understand what it meant.

Not yet.

— End of Chapter 2 —

💙.

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