Healing rarely announces itself.
It doesn't come with trumpets or sudden clarity.
It tiptoes in on ordinary days—
when your playlist shuffles to an old song,
and you don't skip it.
That's what today was.
Ordinary.
Her hands were ink-stained from hurried notes.
Her eyes were tired, not from tears—but lectures.
She hadn't checked the corridor before stepping out. Not on purpose.
She just… forgot.
That was progress.
She still felt it, though.
A pinch when she walked past the bench where he once sat.
A flutter when she heard laughter that resembled his.
But now, it didn't derail her day.
The ache had settled somewhere softer. Manageable.
Her friends had noticed too.
"You seem… lighter lately," one had said the other day.
She shrugged, smiling. "Maybe I am."
Not entirely.
Not fully.
But enough.
Healing wasn't about forgetting.
It was about making peace with remembering.
And on this ordinary day, peace looked like her sipping chai in the cafeteria,
smiling at a bad joke,
pulling her cardigan tighter—not from pain, but a stubborn breeze.
And then it happened.
Not a confrontation.
Just a moment.
He crossed her path.
Not dramatically.
Not slowly like movies make it.
Just—walked by.
And for the first time, she didn't freeze.
Didn't turn away.
She glanced up, heart calm.
He was mid-laugh, talking to someone else.
He didn't see her.
And maybe that was the best part.
Because she realized, in that flicker of a moment—
She didn't need to be seen by him
to know she was still whole.