Just another quiet evening, the kind that slipped by unnoticed. Amaya was scrolling absentmindedly, half-bored, half-tired, letting her thumb move faster than her thoughts. Stories blurred into each other—songs, skies, quotes she’d already forgotten.
And then she paused.
A profile she didn’t recognize.
A name she hadn’t seen before.
Jacob.
There was nothing extraordinary about it. No loud captions. No forced charm. Just a simple presence that felt… calm. She lingered for a second longer than usual, unsure why. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe boredom. Maybe the way some things enter our lives without explanation.
Her phone buzzed.
A message request.
She almost ignored it. She usually did. Stranger messages were easy to dismiss—faces without context, words without weight. But this one was different. Not because it was clever or confident.
It was polite.
A simple greeting. No assumptions. No urgency. Just a line that felt respectful enough to answer without hesitation.
Amaya replied without thinking too much about it.
Just one word. Just enough.
That should have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
Their conversation didn’t rush forward. It unfolded. Slowly. Naturally. Like two people testing the temperature of the water before stepping in. He asked about her day. She answered honestly. She asked where he was from. Kerala, he said. The word felt distant and familiar at the same time.
Days passed. Messages continued.
They spoke about ordinary things—music playing in the background, weather differences, small routines that made up their lives. There was comfort in the simplicity of it. No pressure to impress. No need to perform. Just words finding their place between two screens.
Amaya noticed how easy it was to talk to him.
She didn’t check the time when she replied. Didn’t rehearse her responses. She laughed more than she expected to. Somewhere between conversations, she realized she was looking forward to seeing his name light up her screen.
And that realization scared her a little.
Jacob didn’t push. He never demanded her attention. He stayed steady—present without being overwhelming. Friendly. Consistent. There was something reassuring in that. Something that made trust feel less like a risk.
What began as casual conversation quietly turned into routine.
Good mornings that felt warmer than they should.
Late-night chats that stretched longer than intended.
Stories shared without realizing how personal they’d become.
Neither of them called it anything.
Neither of them asked where it was going.
They didn’t know it yet, but something fragile was forming—built not on grand gestures, but on presence. On listening. On the comfort of being understood by someone who had once been a stranger.
Amaya didn’t fall in love that day.
But she stepped closer than she ever meant to.
And somewhere far away, Jacob was doing the same—unaware that this simple message would soon become the beginning of something neither of them was prepared to lose.
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