It was the kind of morning where the clouds hung low like unspoken thoughts—quiet, grey, and heavy with things they couldn't say.
Aarav Mehta stood by the window in the corner of Class 11-A, arms folded across his chest, eyes drifting toward the playground where the boundary wall cut the sky into squares. His desk—second from the back, adjacent to the window—was a perfect vantage point for someone who didn't care to be seen but wanted to see everything.
He didn't blink often. His classmates said it was unnerving, like he could see right through you—like you were just another expressionless page in a book he'd already read a thousand times.
The bell rang. No one moved. It was the fourth period and their English teacher hadn't arrived yet.
Aarav hadn't opened his notebook. He hadn't opened one in weeks.
Not because he didn't understand. He understood far too much. That was the problem.
Most people studied for marks. Aarav once did too. He remembered the awards, the praise, the glint in his mother's eyes. But somewhere along the way—he forgot why he cared.
Now, he studied people.
He observed how Komal always raised her hand a second too early, like the silence scared her. How Manish doodled under the table because he couldn't speak back to the teachers. How Neha laughed too loud when she was nervous and how the front benchers only nodded when they thought someone important was watching.
Aarav didn't judge them. He didn't judge anyone. But he didn't admire them either.
"Bro, you ever gonna write something?" asked Yash, nudging him.
Aarav turned, slowly, like the sound took a few extra seconds to travel through the fog of his thoughts.
"Hm?"
Yash chuckled. "The poem assignment. It's due next week. We have to submit something for the school magazine, remember?"
"I remember," Aarav replied, his voice flat but not unfriendly. "I just don't have anything to say."
"You? The guy who wrote that short story last year that made Miss Ritu cry? What happened to you, man?"
Aarav turned back to the window.
"I said it all too early."
Yash blinked. He laughed nervously, unsure if it was a joke. "Right…"
It wasn't.
---
Outside, the school gate creaked open. A white car parked just beyond the old peepal tree, where sunlight scattered like broken glass on the leaves. A girl stepped out.
She wore the same navy-blue skirt and pale-blue shirt as every other girl in the school. But there was something oddly cinematic about her entrance. The way the wind toyed with her hair. The way she paused to look up at the school building, eyes squinting into the grey sky, as if trying to read its secrets.
Aarav tilted his head.
She wasn't new to the world. She was new to this place. That made all the difference.
As she walked toward the main building, the clouds finally gave in. A slow drizzle began, soft and unsure, like tears that didn't want to be seen.
---
The principal arrived five minutes into the English period, an unusual interruption.
"Class 11-A," he said, clearing his throat. "This is Suhani Ray. She's joining us from Kolkata. Please make her feel welcome."
The girl stood with a straight posture, hands behind her back. Her eyes scanned the classroom not like someone shy, but like someone searching for something.
"Good morning," she said, her voice calm, her Bengali accent brushing the edges of the words like poetry.
"Welcome, Suhani," the class chorused mechanically.
The teacher pointed to the only vacant desk—directly in front of Aarav.
He sighed internally.
New students were always the same. Curious, chatty, too eager or too nervous. They always asked him the same things.
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Why don't you talk much?"
"Are you always this serious?"
He leaned back as she settled into the chair. He could smell faint jasmine from her shampoo.
Suhani didn't turn around. She didn't say a word.
Not even a glance.
Strange.
---
By lunch, her presence had already created ripples.
"She's so pretty," whispered Komal.
"She was in some big interschool theatre group," said Neha.
"I heard her dad's some big-shot IAS officer," muttered Manish.
Aarav listened, not because he was curious, but because listening helped him map the ecosystem.
Suhani sat alone on the far bench, eating her lunch slowly, like each bite had to be justified. She wasn't ignoring people. But she wasn't inviting anyone either.
When Aarav walked past her to refill his bottle, her eyes briefly met his.
They didn't smile. They didn't widen. They didn't look away.
She simply saw him.
Aarav paused for a microsecond. Something stirred—like a memory he didn't know he had.
---
That night, Aarav opened his notebook for the first time in months. Not a school one. The black leather diary he kept hidden under his mattress.
He wrote:
> "Some people enter a room like punctuation—an exclamation, a question, a comma of hesitation. But she entered like ellipses… unfinished, waiting, soft in the silence."
Then he closed the book and went to sleep without brushing his teeth.
---
The next day, she spoke.
"Your handwriting's beautiful," she said during free period.
He looked up.
"You dropped this," she added, placing a crumpled page on his desk.
Aarav's chest tightened.
It was a torn page from his black diary. It must've slipped into his school bag.
He picked it up carefully, eyes darting to check if she'd read it.
She had.
But she didn't comment. No giggles. No praise. Just that sentence about handwriting.
"What do you think it means?" he asked, his voice low.
"What?"
"The quote."
She smiled faintly.
"It means… someone is watching carefully. Someone who doesn't want to interrupt the world—just... record it."
Aarav looked at her properly for the first time. Not just the shape of her face or the way her bangs curled inward, but the space she held.
She wasn't filling it. She was protecting it.
From that day, they began talking. Slowly. Carefully. With long silences between questions, and even longer ones after the answers.
---
A week later, another new student arrived.
Kabir Sahni.
From Delhi.
Loud, confident, with the walk of someone who'd won too many trophies but didn't need to brag about them anymore.
He made friends within an hour. Laughed with teachers. Played football during lunch. Joined the debate club without being asked.
Aarav hated him on sight.
"Why?" Suhani asked.
"Because he's too loud."
"That's not a reason."
"He pretends to belong."
"And you?"
"I don't pretend."
She didn't smile this time.
"You hide."
He didn't respond.
---
During English, Kabir raised his hand to volunteer for a group reading. The teacher asked him to pick a partner.
"I'll take Aarav," he said with a grin.
Aarav raised an eyebrow.
"I don't read."
"Even better. I'll read, you stand there and look broody."
Laughter followed.
Aarav stood up. Walked past the teacher's desk. Took the textbook.
And read the poem.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
With such raw emotion that the room fell still.
When he finished, Kabir stared at him.
"Damn," he said. "You've been hiding that voice?"
"I wasn't hiding it. No one asked."
Kabir nodded, oddly impressed.
Aarav walked back to his desk.
Suhani was smiling at him—not the amused kind, not the teasing kind. The kind that said I knew you could.
---
Aarav wrote in his diary that night:
> *"Two people entered my life this week. One like rain—quiet but soaking everything. The other like thunder—loud, unwanted, impossible to ignore.
I used to think silence was power.
Now I wonder…
Was it just fear wearing a mask?"*
And for the first time in years, he dreamed.
Not of exams or escape.
But of possibility.