It was always the second window seat on the left. Near the old lamp that flickered even when it didn’t need to. The college library wasn’t special—cracked wooden floors, slightly musty air, and an old clock that ticked too loudly.
But to me, it was everything.
Because that’s where she sat.
Every day at 4:00 PM, I’d walk in with a book I had no intention of finishing. She’d already be there—blue scarf tied in a lazy knot behind her neck, glasses slipping down her nose, fingers flipping pages like she’d memorized the rhythm.
She never looked up. Not once.
Until she did.
The day it started, it was raining.
The soft kind of rain that made everything seem slower. I reached the library, soaked halfway to the knee, and made my way to my usual spot.
She glanced up, met my eyes for a second too long, and smiled. Just enough to be noticed, but not enough to be confident it was real.
I glanced at the wall clock.
4:17 PM.
After that, it became a pattern.
Every day, the glance. The smile. The silent companionship of two people in a room full of books, pretending to be busy, secretly waiting for one another to look up.
Sometimes she’d leave notes under her notebook as she walked past:
“Page 127 has a terrible metaphor.”
“Do you always underline in green?”
I never replied in words. I just smiled back the next day, already underlining a random sentence in the brightest green I could find.
On Fridays, without a word, we’d walk out at the same time. Cross the street to the tea stall. Two cups. No sugar. Always the same spot by the bench under the gulmohar tree. No talking. Just sips and steam and a kind of silence that said,
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Then one day, she stopped coming.
The first day, I figured she was sick.
The second, maybe busy.
The third, I came early—just in case I had missed her.
But days turned to weeks.
The chair remained empty. The lamp still flickered.
The clock still ticked, and every day at 4:17, I still looked up.
But there was no smile waiting for me anymore.
I never knew her name.
No Instagram, no number, no clue. Just the scarf, the glances, the tea. A ghost of something beautiful that never asked to be named.
Eventually, life moved forward.
I graduated. Got a job in another city. Routines changed, but the memories didn’t.
Two years later, I walked into a bookstore café. Rain again. Late evening. The same smell of paper and chai.
And there she was.
Blue scarf. Green pen. Sitting by the window. Still underlining. Still beautiful.
She looked up—exactly like before.
4:17 PM.
She smiled.
“Still underlining in green?”
I nodded. My voice caught somewhere between my throat and the past.
She closed her book, took a sip of her tea, and asked,
“Sit?”
I did.
We didn’t talk about where she had gone. Or why she stopped coming.
Some stories don’t need those chapters.
They’re meant to be paused and then resumed—right where they left off.
Like ours.
At 4:17 PM.
Thanks for reading
[NOTE : I tried writing a story hope you like. If you liked the story please also read my article about Ai and humanity. Also please consider following me, it would a great help for me.]
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