They were strangers who weren't quite strangers.
Anaya had seen him a hundred times — at the metro station, by the campus café, under the old banyan tree that held the dreams of every student who dared to sit beneath it. Always at a distance, never more than a glimpse. Like watching a beautiful painting you weren't allowed to touch.
Riyan was always surrounded — laughter, friends, music — yet she saw a silence in his eyes that felt too familiar. Her heart would pace like it had read a secret between the lines of his presence.
She wanted to speak. Every time. But words melted on her tongue.
He noticed her, too — the girl with stories in her eyes and silence on her lips. But something about her felt like a song he couldn't sing aloud.
So they kept crossing paths.
Many a time.
But never really meeting.