THE DIARY

The bus was already crowded when Aanya stepped in, clutching her bag. She spotted Arjun near the window and, without thinking, walked straight to him.

“Busy pretending to be serious again?” she teased as she sat down.

Arjun lifted his eyes, a small smile forming.

“If I don’t pretend, you’ll think I’m slacking.”

“True,” she said, trying not to stare at the tiny crinkle near his eyes when he smiled.

They talked the way they always did—half-joking, half-real, a strange comfort neither ever named.

Aanya asked one of her random questions again.

“Do you ever feel like we meet for a reason?”

Arjun blinked at her. “That’s… oddly dramatic.”

“So? I like dramatic.”

“And I like logic,” he replied, turning his gaze to the window—though the small smile stayed on his face.

Suddenly his bag jerked open, the zipper giving up completely. Books, pens, and a worn brown diary slipped out.

“Careful, professor,” Aanya said, catching the diary before it fell under someone’s shoe.

“Thanks,” he sighed. “Hold it for a second. I need to fix this.”

She held the diary gently, curious but polite. It felt personal, warm from his hand. Before either of them remembered it, the bus reached Arjun's stop.

“That’s me—ugh, I’ll fix the bag later. See you tomorrow!”

“You forgot—”

But he was already gone, jumping off the bus as the doors closed.

She stared at the diary now resting in her lap. Her heart thudded.

At home, she placed it on her desk, pacing.

Give it back tomorrow. Don’t touch it.

But her fingers kept drifting toward it.

“It’s not like I like him,” she muttered to herself.

Yet her stomach fluttered like she did.

Finally, with a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, she opened it.

Most pages were filled with goals, notes, worries.

Then she saw her name.

“She asks questions no one else asks.

Sometimes I don’t know what she’s really thinking.

She listens like she cares, but then pretends she doesn’t.

I can never tell if she likes my answers… or if she hates them.”

Aanya froze, heat rising to her face.

She shut the diary softly, holding it like something fragile.

Her voice trembled into the empty room:

“I like your answers. I just… never know how to say it.”

She smiled, a quiet, surprised smile.

Tomorrow, she would return the diary.

But tonight, she sat with the truth she had always hidden — even from herself.