In the crooked corridors of St. Edith's High—a modest school stitched together by chipped bricks and hand-me-down ambitions—two lives ran parallel in the most inconspicuous of ways. He, Aarav Malik, sat in the third row, always one seat away from the window. She, Mira Talwar, occupied the desk diagonally across, where the morning light filtered through her hair like it had a favorite.
They were not friends in the way fairy tales prescribe. No secret handshakes. No midnight calls. But there was a rhythm—a quiet understanding in borrowed pencils, in exchanged glances during group projects, in the soft laughter that didn't belong to anyone else but each other. Aarav was all quiet smiles and untamed curiosity. Mira was sharp-witted, her beauty cloaked in defiance and freckles.
It was the final week of their last year in school. The world outside was tightening its grip, but inside those gray-walled classrooms, time moved like honey. Aarav had begun to feel something else blooming within him—a feeling that trembled at her smile, that memorized the curve of her question marks and the way she rolled her eyes at bad grammar.
And so, on a Tuesday stitched with overcast skies, he waited beneath the old peepal tree near the back gate—a place where secrets often waited to be unburdened. Mira arrived five minutes late, headphones dangling, her expression caught somewhere between suspicion and amusement.
Aarav's voice trembled before it rose. "Mira, I— I think I like you. More than like. I've felt this way for a while now, and I thought you should know."
For a moment, the wind stood still.
Then came the silence. Sharp. Slicing.
Mira's lips curled, not with kindness but with an incredulous smirk. "You what? Aarav, are you serious?" she asked, her tone bordering laughter and disdain. "You're not even my type. You're just… I don't know, average. Ordinary."
Aarav's heart thudded, not with excitement now, but with something colder.
She continued, unaware or perhaps uncaring. "I always thought you were sweet, but this? This is ridiculous. Don't mistake politeness for possibility, Aarav. We were never anything more than… classmates. Maybe not even that."
He didn't respond. Not immediately. The silence around him was now deafening, the peepal tree casting shadows that suddenly felt like tombstones.
Mira turned, her ponytail swaying like a final verdict. "Grow up, Aarav. This isn't some romantic movie. Life doesn't work that way."
And just like that, she walked away—leaving behind a boy who had dared to hope and now stood knee-deep in a humiliation that stung like winter rain.