Prologue
The world never noticed him when he first began noticing her, even though he knew she was out of his league. Her laughter spilled like sunlight on glass, scattering in every direction, touching everyone but him. He watched from the edges, where shadows clung, holding his secret like a fragile flame.
From the very first meeting, he felt a quiet sorrow—marveling at how sweet she was, how the glow of peace could appear on a person’s face. As time passed, she became more and more attractive to him. Yet the boy never found the courage to express his love, not even in dreams. It wasn’t only a matter of bravery; deep down, he already knew she might be involved with someone else, and that she was happy with that. Still, he fell for her—quietly, fiercely—without asking for anything in return. In the pauses between heartbeats, in the silence of his nights, she was there—yet never his.
There were moments when he dared to dream, when sleep stitched together fragile illusions of a life where she might look back at him, her eyes carrying the same affection he had carried for years. But even in those dreams, she slipped away, her hand reaching for someone else’s.
Love, he realized, wasn’t always about possession. Sometimes it was about holding fragments of light, even as they burned you. Sometimes it was about writing a story where the ending was already lost.
And so he lived with it—
a love incomplete,
a love unspoken,
a love that whispered only one truth:
In dreams, not mine.
