The sun had almost set.
That strange golden hour light — soft, blurry, lingering a little too long between buildings — stretched across the medical campus like a secret being slowly unveiled.
He sat by the corridor near the library wing, watching dust swirl in the light beams, the muffled footsteps of students echoing faintly off the stone. Everything felt paused. Suspended.
Sagnik.
The name had taken root in his mind like a low hum behind a song — always there, always pulling his thoughts back to her.
He had seen them again. Today, walking across the anatomy courtyard — no umbrellas, no obvious closeness. But close all the same. The way Aanya tilted her head when she spoke to him, the way Sagnik never looked rushed when he was around her.
They weren't dramatic. Not public. But there was something in their orbit.
Not possession.
Belonging.
It made the senior's chest tighten in ways he hadn't anticipated. Not with jealousy — not entirely. It was something quieter. A recognition of something he'd never had, maybe never would.
He'd never spoken more than a few words to Aanya. Just those half-glances, occasional nods in corridors, maybe a held door or a shared moment of eye contact too brief to matter — but it had. To him, it had.
He remembered the first time he'd really noticed her. Not the way everyone else did — not because she was smart or kind or brilliant in labs.
It was the way she waited.
Waited just a second longer than necessary when someone was behind her. Waited when someone stammered their way through a doubt. Waited while the world rushed — as if her presence alone could slow it down.
There was a kind of gravity to her stillness.
And Sagnik… somehow, he'd stepped right into her orbit.
He'd seen them — again — that evening outside the dissection hall. The air was thick with the heat of long hours, and students were slowly trickling out, some tossing bones of jokes and others actual bones back into trays.
She had come out first, brushing her hair back with a blue-gloved hand.
Then him.
Sagnik.
He wasn't extraordinary to look at. Not the type people turned twice to see. But there was an ease in the way he carried himself. Like he didn't need to chase moments; they followed him instead.
He walked beside Aanya like he'd been doing it forever. Their pace matched too well to be accidental.
And then —
She laughed.
Head tilted back slightly, hand touching her neck as if the laugh caught her off guard. It was that laugh. The one that wasn't polite or restrained. The one that slipped out when she forgot to hold back.
The senior hadn't heard it. But he'd seen it.
And that was enough.
He stood by the edge of the parking lot, arms folded, pretending to scroll through his phone. A ridiculous performance.
He didn't want to interrupt. Didn't even want to talk.
Just to watch — selfishly — from a distance, and wonder.
What would it have been like?
What would it be like to walk beside her that way? To earn that kind of laughter, that comfort, that glow?
He didn't resent Sagnik.
Not really.
He envied him.
Not for the jacket. Not for the way she sometimes bumped his shoulder with hers.
But for the way she looked at him.
Like she'd already made her choice.