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Her name was Aanya.
She was the kind of girl people noticed once, smiled at politely, and forgot. The kind whose presence was like a soft breeze—comforting, but never commanding. Petite, always in neatly ironed uniforms, her hair tied back in a tight ponytail with a blue ribbon every Thursday. No one asked why. No one cared to.
Maybe it was a small superstition, a relic of childhood, or just a habit she never shook off. To others, it was unimportant.
To Aryan, it was everything.
The first time he saw her, she was hunched over a worn-out copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, her fingers playing absentmindedly with the end of her braid. It was Monday. He remembered because he'd just transferred to Rosewood High the previous Friday.
She didn't look up.
But he did.
He watched her all through that class—how she highlighted phrases with a sky-blue pen, underlined certain words twice, and pressed her lips together whenever she came across something she liked. Her concentration was unnervingly still. Most teenagers fidgeted. She didn't.
By Wednesday, he had memorized the exact number of seconds she took to solve a quadratic equation.
By Friday, he knew the brand of lotion she used—jasmine and aloe—and how long it lingered on her school sweater.
He started sitting one row behind her. Just close enough to catch the fragrance. Not close enough to raise suspicion.
Then, came the small invasions.
He joined the Literature Club. She was there.
He volunteered for the science project. So did she.
He made her laugh during a boring seminar with a comment about the speaker's lisp. She looked back at him, amused and confused, but her eyes lingered. That was all he needed.
Aryan had a way of making people feel seen. He didn't overpower. He infiltrated. Like smoke.
He'd walk beside her without asking. Offer help casually—carrying her books, reminding her about a test. Nothing too eager. Nothing too slow.
Aanya, who had always walked in shadows, suddenly found herself in a warm spotlight. It made her feel… special.
She began looking forward to him. His voice. His questions. The way he tilted his head slightly when she spoke, like he was genuinely listening.
She didn't know he had mapped the creaking pattern of the staircase outside her house.
She didn't know that on windless nights, when the curtains were slightly ajar, he stood silently beneath her half-closed window and watched her sleep.
She didn't know that one rainy evening, while she was out at tuition, he entered through the back door her maid often forgot to bolt. He didn't steal anything. Except her toothbrush.
It now lay inside a zip-lock bag, neatly labeled and tucked beneath the floorboard under his bed. Next to a napkin with her lipstick stain. A page from her rough notebook. A strand of her hair.
Souvenirs.
She didn't know he sometimes whispered her name before bed, not like a lover—but like a collector admiring his most prized specimen.
She didn't know that his fascination wasn't born from attraction. It was born from blood.
She didn't know she was his sister.
He did.
And that secret sat inside him like a ticking bomb—silent, deadly, waiting.
He watched her brush past him in the hallway that Thursday, blue ribbon swaying behind her like a soft flag of surrender.
He smiled.
She smiled back.
And just like that, another boundary blurred.
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