She had never really seen him.
He had been working in the same office for over years. She had been there for few months. Few months, and somehow, he had remained invisible to her. Just another face in the corridor. Just another person who worked there.
That was all.
Until the team outing.
It wasn't even during the event that it happened. It was at the very end of it — a careless, ordinary moment — when she saw him. And without any warning, without any announcement, without even the decency to knock — he walked straight into her heart.
It let him in.
Just like that. No permission sought. No consultation. No warning.
Like a virus.
She didn't even know it had happened.
Had she known sooner, she would have taken an antibiotic immediately. Knocked it out before it could settle, before it could make itself comfortable, before it started rearranging the furniture of her heart without asking. But viruses are clever things. They don't announce themselves. They simply — quietly, warmly, with absolutely no regard for your carefully constructed walls — and they begin to spread.
This one spread slowly.
Beautifully.
Dangerously.
It started with small things.
As the days passed, and as the days she happened to see him in office increased — it aggravated. She started noticing things. Small things. Invisible things. The kind of things only a quietly smitten heart notices.
He went for a quick walk after lunch with his team. She would find herself — somehow, mysteriously — already there, or arriving just in time. Not to speak to him. Never to speak to him. Just to catch a glimpse of his back. Because looking at his face? That required a courage she hadn't yet found.
She recognised his voice from across the floor before she saw him. Recognised his movement with just her peripheral vision — without even turning her head. Her brain had no explanation for it.
But her heart knew.
She could detect his presence without turning her head, without looking, without any logical explanation.
Her brain had nothing.
Her heart knew everything.
And then — the white shirts.
He wore a white shirt at least two, sometimes three times a week. Different patterns, always white. She wanted — desperately, irrationally — to ask him why. Was it a system? A preference? A laundry schedule? She never found out. She still wonders, probably.
She found his LinkedIn. Professional, composed, appropriately impressive.
His old, forgotten Facebook — full of young photos from a life he had probably moved on from, an account he didn't even remember existed.
She found it unbearably, stupidly lovely.
Then came the information. A colleague — his teammate — told her he was a good man. Single. A teetotaller. And our heroine, who had her own quiet, painful reasons for not liking people who drink — felt something loosen in her chest.
The verdict: 24 karat gold.
She heard this and thought: can we sell him then?
Not only that — single. A good man. And most crucially, most wonderfully, most importantly:
A teetotaller.
And our heroine, who had her own quiet, painful reasons for not liking people who drink — felt something loosen in her chest.
She was in cloud nine.
She sent him a LinkedIn request. He accepted — immediately. An Instagram request the next day. Accepted again.
She was so very happy.
She noticed, occasionally, the posts he liked — they would bloom in her feed like little clues. She pieced together that he seemed to enjoy The Big Bang Theory.
She had never watched it. She was a Friends person, completely and entirely.
But she thought — what if?
What if she watched his show, and he watched hers? What if they argued about Sheldon versus Chandler? What if they sat together and watched both, and she made fun of his choices and he defended them.
And then — she decided to tell him.
Not slowly. Not carefully. Not with the gentle, sensible approach of getting to know someone first, building something, letting it grow.
No.
She built him a webpage.
Purple. With falling hearts. And a letter inside that would vanish after two minutes — like a secret that self-destructs, like something from a spy film, except the spy was a very shy girl who couldn't look at his face and the mission was her own terrified heart.
She sent him the link with a casual: "I made a design, do you mind taking a look?"
He said: "Super. This is not some suspicious link right?" he was polite.
She nearly passed away.
She convinced him it was safe. He opened it. He read half of it — and then the two minutes ran out and it vanished, taking her words with it into the digital void.
He said: "It vanished halfway. Design is nice."
Design is nice.
She had poured her entire heart into a disappearing letter with falling purple hearts and he said design is nice.
Her brain cackled. Her heart wept. She sent him the link again.
This time he read it — and didn't believe it was real. Thought it was a fake account. Thought someone was playing a prank.
She said hi to him on Teams to prove it was her.
When she finally made him believe it was truly her — he was nonchalant.
It killed her inside. But she had startled a stranger with her whole heart. What had she expected? Despite, he was so kind, even asked sorry if he had hurted her in any way unknowingly, how genuine and kind of him..Right?
She told him things she perhaps should not have told him.
About how she used to notice him walking to lunch. About waiting near the lift just to catch a glimpse. About coming to office, some days, just because he would be there.
She told him all of it.
And he — twentyfour karat gold, teetotaller, white shirt enthusiast, Big Bang Theory fan — responded mostly with short replies and the occasional thumbs up.
Her brain was laughing. Her heart was not.
Weeks passed. The virus stayed.
She asked him, finally, if he had any past he was healing from — any family difficulty, anything that was keeping him in a place where he couldn't say yes or no. She just wanted to say: I will wait. If that's what it takes, I will wait.
His reply:
What will you do knowing about it. Just leave it.
She asked her closest confidant — an AI, because we are living in those times, and her AI knew everything about this story, every single chapter, and had told her approximately fortyseven times to put the phone down — whether that reply was rude.
The AI said: No. He was simply protecting his boundary.
Oh AI, she thought. Where is your emotional intelligence.
It did sound rude.
But perhaps — in his own guarded, private, twentyfour karat gold way — he was simply trying to make a clean full stop. So she wouldn't keep hoping.
And so here she is.
Virus still present. Heart still fluttering at the memory of a white shirt. Dreams still occasionally featuring someone who responded to her entire soul with a thumbs up emoji.
She asked herself: what is the medicine?
And her brain — exhausted, fond, slightly exasperated, deeply loyal — finally replied:
First, love yourself. Love your life. Get to know who you are. Start doing what you actually want. The virus will leave on its own. It always does.
Will her heart listen?
Unclear.