Contest Title: Between Love and the Edge of Leaving
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We met the way people meet things they don’t expect to remember—by accident, and then by repetition.
She always sat in the back row during afternoon tutorials, not because she was invisible, but because she looked like she preferred choosing where she existed. I noticed her first because she corrected a lecturer under her breath and then acted like she hadn’t spoken at all.
The second time, she borrowed my pen without asking.
“You’re the quiet type,” she said, writing something in her notebook.
“I’m not quiet,” I replied. “I just don’t talk unless it’s necessary.”
“That sounds like quiet with extra steps.”
I should’ve stopped talking to her then. Instead, I laughed.
After that, it became a pattern neither of us named. She’d show up, I’d be there earlier than I meant to be. We’d sit near each other in a way that looked accidental from far away and intentional up close.
One day she said, “You always leave early.”
“I don’t.”
“You do,” she insisted. “Right after you start looking comfortable.”
That annoyed me more than it should’ve.
“So you’ve been watching me?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard not to notice people who pretend they’re not part of the room.”
I didn’t have a reply for that. So I stayed longer the next day.
Somewhere between borrowed pens and unfinished conversations, we became something that didn’t fit into any normal label. Not friends exactly. Not nothing either. Just… consistent.
Then came the notice board.
Her name was on it.
Scholarship transfer. Immediate relocation. No appeals.
I saw it before she told me.
“You already knew?” I asked when I found her outside the hall.
She didn’t look surprised that I knew. That was the worst part.
“I found out last week.”
“And you didn’t say anything.”
She kicked a small stone off the pavement. “If I said it out loud, it would’ve become real faster.
“It is real,” I said.
“Yeah,” she agreed softly. “That’s kind of the problem.”
There was a pause. Not awkward. Just heavy.
Then she added, “I didn’t plan for this year to include you.”
I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “That’s flattering, I guess.”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
That shut me up.
We didn’t do dramatic goodbyes. No crying in rain, no airport scenes, no last-minute confessions that fixed anything. We just walked.
Campus looked normal around us. People complained about exams, laughed too loudly, lived like nothing was ending.
“Do you regret it?” I asked at some point.
“Meeting you?” she said.
“Yes.”
She thought about it for a long time. “No. I regret that it stopped being simple.”
We stopped near the old bench behind the faculty building—the one nobody really used unless they were avoiding something.
She sat first. I followed.
“You know what’s funny?” she said.
“What?”
“I still don’t know what to call us.”
“You could try ‘friends,’” I said.
She shook her head immediately. “Too small.”
That surprised me.
“So what then?”
She looked at her hands. “Something that didn’t get enough time to become anything else.”
I didn’t respond because anything I thought of sounded like a mistake.
Her phone buzzed eventually. Taxi.
Of course it did.
She stood slowly, like she was testing whether standing would break something.
“This is the part where you say something meaningful,” she said.
“I don’t do meaningful.”
“You’ve been doing it all year,” she replied.
That almost made me smile.
At the gate, she adjusted her bag and looked at me properly for the first time that day.
“I think I liked you,” she said, like she was confirming a fact she didn’t want to study again.
“I think I noticed,” I said.
“Too late,” she added.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That seems to be the theme.”
There was no kiss. No promise. No sudden change in the air.
Just her stepping away, and me realizing I had learned her presence like a language I would now lose.
She didn’t turn back.
And I didn’t call her name.
Because some things don’t end loudly.
They just stop having a next moment.21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcU12a3DYnW
and then Add to home screen.