Aarya shifted on the desk, her eyelids fluttering as the last remnants of focus slipped away. Hiten had been scribbling something in the notebook when he noticed her head slowly leaning toward him. For a second, he thought she was teasing him — but then her weight settled gently on his shoulder.

Time stilled.

Her hair brushed against his jaw, strands damp from the lingering humidity, carrying with them a faint sweetness of jasmine and rain. His breath caught, his heartbeat kicking hard against his chest as if it wanted to announce the moment to the entire world.

Don’t move, he told himself. Don’t ruin this.

The notebook lay forgotten. His mind, usually sharp and quick, was a blank page. He sat there, still as stone, though inside he was anything but calm.

Minutes passed like that, quiet and delicate. The rise and fall of her breathing soothed him and unsettled him all at once. How could something so simple feel so impossibly rare?

“You’ll catch a cold like this,” he whispered, voice softer than the rain outside.

Carefully, almost reverently, he shifted. With a steadying breath, he guided her up from his shoulder and onto the bed. She stirred, frowning faintly as if protesting the loss of warmth, and his heart clenched.

Then, just as he was about to step back, her fingers curled into his sleeve. The gesture was small, almost unconscious — yet it rooted him in place.

Even in sleep, she doesn’t want me to go.

A shaky smile tugged at his lips. He sat at the edge of the bed, draping the blanket over her carefully. The storm outside intensified, lightning flaring briefly across the walls, followed by the rolling growl of thunder. The room felt smaller, safer, like the rain had built them their own world.

For a long while, Hiten simply watched. Her face looked calmer in sleep, free from the guarded expressions she wore when awake. The curve of her lips, the way her hand rested so close to his — everything about her pulled him in.

Then, as if to test him further, she moved. Her grip tightened on his sleeve, and her lips parted.

“Don’t… leave me alone,” she murmured, voice fragile, almost lost beneath the sound of rain.

The words pierced him. He swallowed hard, leaning closer until his breath brushed against her temple. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered back, the promise carrying more weight than he’d expected.

But before he could even pull away, her hand slid fully into his, fingers intertwining as naturally as if they’d always fit there. His composure cracked; the calm mask he wore every day slipped, and for once he let himself feel the rush of it — the terrifying, beautiful closeness.

Lightning struck again, illuminating the room for a fraction of a second. Hiten caught his reflection in the glass of the window: a boy sitting at the edge of a bed, holding onto the hand of a girl who didn’t even know how much of his world she already carried.

And then it happened.

Her lips moved again, her voice soft, blurred by sleep, but the words cut sharper than anything else had before.

“I… like you, Hiten.”

He froze.

The rain seemed to fall quieter, the whole world pausing to let those words sink in. His pulse raced, joy colliding with disbelief, fear tangling with hope.

She shifted slightly, still lost in dreams, her hand not letting go of his.

Hiten’s throat felt tight. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to replay those words over and over until they carved themselves into his heart.

But one thought refused to leave him:

Was it the truth of her heart… or only the dream speaking for her?

And as thunder rolled again in the distance, Hiten sat there in the dark, gripping her hand as if it might give him the answer.

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