Part 1: Love at First Sight, or…?
The first time Maya saw Arjun, he was standing alone on the old stone bridge that overlooked the river, hands tucked in his jacket pockets, hair messy from the breeze, staring at the water as if it were speaking to him.
When she approached, he smiled softly. Almost shy. But in his eyes, just for a second....she saw something else. Something cold. Something Intense.
She didn't believe in love at first sight. She believed in books, Monday routines, and exactly three coffees per day. But something about the quiet way he smiled when she asked if he was okay made her pause, just long enough for the universe to slip something into place, as if something fluttered in her stomach, may be for a nano second.
Their meetings on the bridge became routine. Maya read books she barely remembered; Arjun watched the river or sketched in a frayed notebook. He was charming in a broken-boy way, effortlessly drawing out her curiosity.
"Moved here for a fresh start," he said one evening.
His voice was calm, but again, his eyes flickered with something unspoken. She didn't push. Not then.
One evening, as the sun bled orange across the river, he handed her a folded paper.
"Read it when you’re home," he murmured. It was a letter --- tender, poetic, almost painfully vulnerable. He wrote about her laugh, the peace he felt near her, how she made him "feel normal again."
That line should've stood out. But she was too busy falling. Falling in Love, falling in believing in her fairy tale.
Next day, she waited at the bridge, waiting anxiously for Arjun. But he did not come.
She kept going there, but he did not show up. It was as if he never existed.
No calls. No text. No sign of him. He disappeared.
After a week, she went looking for him. His apartment door unlocked. Empty rooms. Dust. Silence.
On the floor: another letter with her name on it.
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