Sunday afternoons are supposed to feel peaceful. Mine never do.
Because the moment I'm alone with my thoughts, they all do the same thing — drag me back to Class 9. Like my mind refuses to move on from memories I pretend don't affect me.
I don't know why that particular memory came today.
Maybe because the house was too quiet.
Maybe because I wasn't distracted.
Or maybe because… I've already started accepting something I never dared to before.
Whatever the reason, the moment my eyes closed, I was back in that old corridor of Class 9, notebooks in my hand, hair messy from the last period, and the same feeling — that strange, annoying flutter I always denied.
It was break time.
Students everywhere — noise, laughter, teachers shouting from the staff room.
And then I saw him.
Rayan.
Standing near the window of our section.
Talking to a girl from our class — just a regular classmate.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing dramatic.
And yet… something in my chest tightened in a way I still cannot explain.
They were just talking.
He wasn't even smiling the way he smiles when we joke.
It was a normal conversation. But I froze anyway.
And the worst part?
I immediately scolded myself.
"Why did I stop?"
"What's wrong with me?"
I forced myself to look away and walk to my bench, pretending it didn't matter.
Pretending I didn't care.
But I heard my own thoughts — loud, accusing, panicked.
"He treats everyone like this."
"Nothing he does with me is special."
"I'm imagining things."
"Maybe… maybe I was mistaken all this time."
It wasn't jealousy.
Not the dramatic kind.
Not the kind that burns.
No.
It was the quiet kind.
The one that feels like a cold pinch inside the heart.
Like losing something you never admitted you wanted.
I sat down and kept my eyes on my notebook, but I could still hear them talking from behind.
Every word felt like a reminder.
That maybe I wasn't important.
That maybe whatever I thought we had… was only in my head.
I remember whispering under my breath, almost angrily:
"Why am I even thinking like this? We're just friends. He talks to everyone. Why am I acting weird? What am I even wishing for? He's not mine. I'm not… missing him or anything. No. No."
I denied everything so fast, I didn't even give myself time to understand what the feeling actually was.
Because back then — and maybe even now —
I was scared of admitting the truth: that I loved every part of him without ever realizing when it began.
But in Class 9, I wasn't ready to face it.
So instead, I convinced myself:
"He treats everyone equally."
"I'm overthinking."
"It's nothing."
And yet, that small moment stayed with me.
Even now, in Class 10, sitting alone on a Sunday, I remember it so clearly it feels like yesterday.
Why?
Maybe because that was the first time I understood that sometimes…
the heart recognizes someone long before the mind accepts it.
And mine had recognized him a long, long time ago.
---
But sometimes, when I sit alone like this, when the world grows quiet and even the ceiling fan sounds like it's whispering secrets I'm not ready to hear, a thought rises in me — soft, persistent, uninvited.
Maybe love doesn't arrive loudly.
Maybe it doesn't shout or claim or demand.
Maybe it begins exactly like this…
In the small pauses.
In the stolen glances.
In those moments when the heart sinks for reasons the mind refuses to admit.
Maybe love grows in silence first.
And maybe mine did too.
I think back to that day in Class 9 — the window light on his hair, the easy way he spoke, the simple normality of it.
And how that tiny ordinary moment broke something open inside me.
A feeling I pretended not to feel.
A truth I folded into the corners of my notebooks.
A heartbeat I hid behind laughter.
And yet… it stayed.
It always stayed.
Maybe I wasn't mistaken.
Maybe I only pretended to be.
Because some people don't enter your life with noise —
they enter like a breath, like a whisper, like a familiar warmth you never learned to name.
And sometimes…
the heart falls first.
Long before you even realize you're already in love.
---