The One Who Stayed The cracks

The cracks

He had learned to expect departures. People came with smiles, promises, and warm words—but they always left when the silence got heavy. So he stopped waiting, stopped hoping. Until she showed up. She said “hi” like it was the simplest thing in the world, and when he ignored her, she said it again the next day. And the next. She wasn’t a storm or a sudden spark—she was persistence, gentle and steady.

Friends. The word sat strange in his chest. Fragile. Warm. It had been so long since anyone used it for him that he almost didn’t know how to react.

Thakshan 🖤

“I didn’t ask you to,” he muttered, his walls instinctively rising again.

shiny ✨

“I know,” she said simply. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”

And then she smiled, as though the whole thing was settled.

That night, lying awake, he thought about it again. Friends. The word didn’t sting. It didn’t ache. It… fit.

And that was when he realized—his walls weren’t unbreakable after all. She wasn’t tearing them down; she was finding the cracks, seeping through in the quietest, gentlest ways.

Trust doesn’t shatter at once—it seeps in slowly. It happened in moments so small, he almost didn’t notice them.

The way she sat near him in the canteen—not too close, not too far, just enough to remind him she was there. The way she filled silence without forcing conversation, humming quietly to herself or tapping her pen against her notebook. And sometimes… the way she defended him.