If someone had asked me about Ava back then, I wouldn’t have known what to say. Not because I disliked her, and certainly not because I liked her. I simply didn’t know her. To me, she was just another classmate. One face among fifty others in a crowded room.

At least, that was the defensive answer I would have given to anyone who asked.

By then, our repeat year at college had settled into a heavy, predictable routine. Wake up. Spend ten minutes staring at the ceiling, trying to decide whether attending class was worth the effort. Argue about it in our three-man group chat with Jason and Sam. Lose the argument. Go to college. Come home. Repeat.

Most days were entirely forgettable—the kind of blurry, gray days that blend together into a single, massive lump of time after a while.

One hot afternoon, Sam and I were sitting in our usual back-row fortress, waiting for the next lecture. The professor was running late, which meant the classroom had completely devolved into chaos. Half the class was shouting over each other, and the other half was hunched over their desks, glued to their phones.

Sam was currently losing his third mobile match in a row, his thumbs tapping furiously against the glass screen.

“I’m literally uninstalling this garbage game today,” Sam muttered, his jaw clenched in pure frustration.

“You say that every single week, Sam,” I said, leaning back against the wall.

“This time I actually mean it, Ethan. The matchmaking is rigged.”

“You said that exact same sentence yesterday at the tea stall.”

Sam completely ignored me and tapped the re-queue button anyway.

With nothing better to do, I let my eyes wander lazily around the classroom. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. My gaze just moved across the room out of sheer boredom, passing over the tight-knit groups of our junior batch. A few familiar faces, a few names I had finally memorized.

Then, my eyes stopped.

Ava was sitting a few rows ahead, right near the large glass window. She was completely tuned out of the loud classroom chaos, entirely focused on reading a textbook. That was all. There was no cinematic, dramatic music playing. No real reason to keep staring.

But then I saw it—the silver multi-colored pen. She was twirling it through her fingers in that same smooth, familiar rhythm, completely unconscious of the habit.

*She’s on page forty-two,* my brain noted automatically. *Why am I noticing that? I don’t even know what subject that textbook is for.*

Panicking at my own creepy observation, I forced myself to look away and stare intensely at the chalkboard until I forgot about it. Or, at least, until I tried to.

The strange thing was that tiny, insignificant moments like that kept happening. It didn’t happen every day, or even every week, but it happened just often enough for my overthinking brain to register a pattern. Sometimes I’d catch her talking animatedly with her friends. Sometimes she’d be furiously copying down notes. Sometimes she’d just be scrolling through her phone during a dull seminar.

Normal things. Things literally every student in the building did.

The terrifying difference was that my brain seemed to instantly flag whenever she did them. I never sat down to think about why. I just treated it like a weird glitch in my daily routine.

One evening, while the three of us were riding home through the heavy traffic, the question slipped out before I could stop it.

“Have either of you gotten to know anyone from our class yet?” I asked, raising my voice slightly over the roar of my bike’s engine.

Jason glanced back over his shoulder, mildly surprised by the sudden question.“A few people from my lab batch. The guys who actually do their own calculations.”

“Same here,” Sam called out from his scooter, riding parallel to us. “I know the guys who sit in the middle row. They’re good for copying assignments. What about you, Ethan?”

I thought about it for a split second, my grip tightening on the handlebars.

“Not really,” I replied with a shrug.

Which was the absolute truth. Outside of Jason and Sam, I barely spoke a word to anyone. I preferred it that way. To an introvert who overanalyzed every syllable, talking to new people always felt like heavy, unpaid labor.

Sam laughed, his scooter engine sputtering as he accelerated. “Dude, you’re literally going to graduate a second time and still know absolutely nobody.”

“That is exactly the plan,” I muttered.

“That’s a terrible plan, Ethan.”

I just smiled, keeping my eyes on the road ahead. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was a terrible way to live. But changing a deep-seated habit like that sounded way too difficult to attempt now.

The very next morning, I almost didn’t make it to college at all. The weather outside was perfect—cool and slightly overcast. My bed was incredibly comfortable, and the first lecture of the day was completely unimportant. I had a long, beautifully crafted list of excuses ready to text the group chat.

Then Jason called my phone directly, bypassing the chat entirely. Five minutes later, defeated by his cold logic, I was on my way.

The lecture itself turned out to be a total disaster. It was so incredibly boring that even the professor looked like he wanted to pack his bags and walk out. I was staring blankly at the whiteboard, pretending to listen while mentally calculating how many minutes were left until lunch, when a soft laugh echoed from a few rows ahead.

It wasn’t a loud laugh. It was quiet, muffled by a hand, completely lost in the background noise of the lecture hall for everyone else.

But without a single second of hesitation, my head snapped up.

Ava was leaning toward her friend, laughing at something that had just been whispered.

The entire moment lasted less than a single second. The panic of making a fool of myself kicked in, and I forcefully faced forward again, fixing my eyes back on the whiteboard.

But for the rest of the hour, the professor’s voice faded into static. I couldn’t stop thinking about one terrifying detail.

I wasn’t thinking about her, or even the joke she was laughing at. I was thinking about the fact that out of a room filled with thirty people whispering and shuffling papers, my brain had instantly recognized her voice.

That felt incredibly strange. A cold knot of anxiety formed in my stomach. *How did I pick her voice out so fast? I’ve never even spoken to her.*

I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t want to know. After all, she was just another classmate in a room full of them.

After all, she was just another classmate.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Wasn’t she?