📖 Narrator – Winter Beauty

Some boys chase laughter.

Some chase spotlight.

But once in a while, there’s a boy who notices the girl who never raised her hand.

He remembers the shade of her scarf,

the rhythm of her pen,

the way her candy wrappers crinkle when she’s nervous.

He doesn’t fall in love with her face.

He falls in love with the sound of her turning a page.

Eshan didn’t ask her name.

He just waited —

not for her to speak,

but for her silence to recognize him.

🌧️ Eshan’s POV

Eshan had a habit of noticing things people missed.

The way chalk dust lingered in the air even after the board was wiped.

How someone’s fingers trembled slightly before answering in class.

The pause between sentences — when something important was about to be said, or not said.

That’s when he started noticing her.

The girl on the last bench.

The one who always arrived early, always left quietly, always carried a pen with ink that smudged.

He didn’t know her name.

But he knew her scarf had a tiny loose thread she always twisted around her finger when she was deep in thought.

He knew she pressed flowers in her notebook — not because they were pretty, but because they were already broken.

And he knew she liked soft candies.

He knew this because one day, he had dropped one by accident — a simple, sugar-wrapped toffee he kept in his pocket.

She’d looked at it like it meant something.

She hadn’t eaten it.

She’d saved it.

That was the moment he realized something most people never would:

She noticed effort — not attention.

So, he tried again.

Not with words.

But with quiet things.

A folded poem left beneath the tree where she often sat.

A refilled ink cartridge slipped into the desk slot beside hers.

A pressed flower — identical to the one he saw in her notebook — tucked between the library books she always reached for.

He didn’t expect anything in return.

That wasn’t the point.

He just wanted to become the person who saw her, even when she didn’t want to be seen.

Because she wasn’t invisible.

She was just… rarely looked at correctly.

One rainy morning, he walked past her desk and noticed something that made his breath catch.

The candy wrapper he had left was folded.

Pressed flat like a treasure.

Kept safe — beside the same white bougainvillea.

He smiled.

It wasn’t a confession.

It wasn’t a reply.

But it was everything he needed.

🖋️ Narrator – Winter Beauty

Some boys don’t write love letters.

They fold them into candy wrappers.

They press them into silence.

Eshan never said “I like you.”

He simply remembered things she forgot to admit she needed.

And sometimes —

remembering is the loudest way to love someone.