Shreya spent her last year of college in the quiet tension of Classroom 4B. Her professor, Raj, was the same star athlete from three years ahead of her in high school—the boy she admired from afar but never spoke to.
Now, he was her Assistant Professor, professional and distant. His gaze often lingered a moment too long on her assignments. Shreya buried her crush under layers of schoolwork, convinced he saw her only as a student.
On the last day before graduation, Shreya stayed behind to submit her thesis. The heavy monsoon rain trapped them both in the department office. As she handed in her files, she whispered, "I guess this is the last time I’ll be your student, Raj Sir."
Raj set the files down. The formal "Sir" finally broke his composure. He pulled out a worn, laminated bookmark from his drawer—it was a sketch of a gulmohar tree that Shreya had dropped in the high school library four years earlier.
"I’ve been waiting for you to graduate so I could finally return this," he said, his voice losing its formal tone. "I spent my whole senior year looking for the girl who drew it. When you walked into my lecture on the first day, I almost couldn't breathe."
Shreya looked up, stunned. "You remembered me?"
"I never forgot," Raj admitted, a quiet smile appearing in his eyes. "I just had to wait for the right moment to tell you that it wasn't just a schoolgirl crush. It was always both of us."
As the rain slowed, they walked out of the building together. They were no longer teacher and student, but two people finally starting their own story.
