I honestly don’t remember our very first meeting. How could I? I was barely four years old when my parents took me to school for the very first time, holding my tiny hands so tightly as if letting go would make me disappear. I still remember the faint smell of fresh paint on the classroom walls, the colorful alphabets hanging like little rainbows, and the nervousness bubbling inside me. Everything felt so big, so new… and I was just a small boy lost in it all.

What I didn’t know back then was that, on that very same day, another little girl walked through those same gates. She was just as new, just as clueless, and just as scared. And one day, she would become the most important part of my story. But at that time? We were strangers—two tiny faces in a sea of children, completely unaware of the connection that destiny was slowly weaving between us.

They say many childhood memories get lost somewhere in the shelves of the mind, and that’s exactly what happened to those early years. The school was the same, the corridors were the same, the playground was the same… but we were just two nameless shadows to each other.

Sometimes I try to recall—did we ever share a smile then? Did our paths ever cross in the noisy playground or while standing in the lunch queue? Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But those memories have faded, like old ink on a worn-out page.

And you might be wondering—if I don’t even remember those moments, how am I telling you all this? Well, patience. Because this story doesn’t begin with a single moment. It begins with a feeling. A feeling that slowly grew with time, so silently that I didn’t even notice when it became a part of me.

Back then, life was simple. School meant playing in the dust, running through corridors, hiding in the last row during class so the teacher wouldn’t notice me. Days were filled with laughter, scraped knees, and lunch boxes filled with sandwiches and chocolates. And in all of that chaos, she was somewhere too—living her own little world. We were just two children in the same universe, yet orbiting far away from each other.

But something was changing. Something I couldn’t explain then. Because love doesn’t happen with a bang—it doesn’t come with fireworks or grand music like in the movies. It slips in like a soft breeze through an open window, like sunlight falling quietly on your face in the early morning. And that’s exactly how this story started—slowly, gently, without warning.

Years passed like pages turning in a book, one after another, and the names that were once unknown became familiar. A “hi” here, a shared notebook there. Little things, nothing extraordinary, but they built the bridge between two strangers. The memories of those days might be blurry, but what came after… that stayed. So vivid, so deep, that even today, I can hear every single heartbeat of those years.

The real story was only the beginning, and neither of us had a clue. Not then. Not for a very long time. But when it did… it changed everything.