Days passed with a rhythm that felt both familiar and overwhelming.
Morning light slipping through the thin hostel curtains, announcements echoing across the compound, seniors hurrying to their lectures while others argued loudly about who used their stove without permission. Every day brought something new, yet I still felt like I was walking through a maze with no clear map.
Then finally the mystery of the strange number unraveled.
According to him, everything began the very first day our eyes met.
"When I saw your bright smile," he typed, "I felt something. I just knew you were the one. I was so into you already."
I stared at the message long enough for the screen to dim.
What was I supposed to say to that?
Thank you? Sorry? Are you normal?
Before I even replied, he continued:
"I wanted to walk up to you and your aunt that day, but you were talking to someone and I heard you calling your number. I copied it immediately. I'm sorry if it's weird… I'm Jared. And you are?"
My jaw almost hit the floor.
He copied my number?
From the air?
Just like that?
For a moment, I honestly couldn't decide whether to laugh or feel threatened. But curiosity pushed me forward. I replied, not out of interest, but because I wanted to understand what kind of person thought that behaviour was normal.
And later, when everything finally clicked, the confusion turned to annoyance.
I remembered clearly, I had actually given my number to another student that day, another fresher like me. Jared must have been standing somewhere nearby, pretending to mind his business while copying digits that weren't meant for him.
But the real shock came when I realised he wasn't even a student...
He was a staff of the school.
That was when everything inside me shut down.
A staff, an adult, interested in a new student? The intention was too obvious. I didn't need explanations. I didn't want stories. And I definitely wasn't about to entertain someone who should've known better.
I blocked him, number, chats, everything.
I let the irritation fade, though it lingered in the back of my mind long enough to become a story worth laughing about someday...
Almost a month into school, the real struggle began.....adjustment.
I got lost more times than I could count, turning into wrong corridors, entering the wrong lecture hall, almost sitting through a class that wasn't mine. Every lecturer looked similar from far away, every pathway had the same dusty colour, and somehow even the students blended into one large moving crowd.
Names slipped out of my memory.
Faces repeated.
Buildings duplicated themselves.
It was ridiculous how many times I mixed up classrooms or rushed into the wrong office and had to backtrack quietly like a confused kitten. The place was big, busy, loud, always shifting.
But deep within that confusion, something else stirred.
A quiet pull.
A subtle shift.
Threads always begin silently right in the middle of the chaos, before the story takes shape. And though I didn't know it yet, a new thread was already forming, waiting for its moment to appear.
Where it all begins is never loud.
It's in the small, strange, unexpected places.
And mine had just started.
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