The exam hall was half empty now.
Boards were over. Bags were packed.
Desks carried nothing but forgotten pens and the ghosts of second chances.
The air had changed. Not just because it was March, and the fans still weren't working. But because something was ending.
Not loudly.
Not with confetti.
But with silence.
Ahaana sat in the last row of the pen fest hall, scribbling farewell notes into her slam books. A few girls cried. Some boys laughed too hard. Most people were busy taking final selfies, getting last-minute signatures, exchanging phone numbers that no one would ever use again.
But her mind was calm.
It was done.
The exams.
The school.
Him.
Ayaan Gazi hadn't said a word to her since the farewell party.
He didn't try to message her. Didn't stop her in the corridor.
He didn't need to.
Because everything that needed to be said had already been told—
in the look they shared beneath the spotlight.
In the way she didn't run after him.
In the way he didn't try to fix what he broke.
But that didn't mean she stopped noticing him.
He still walked the same way—shoulders relaxed, chin high.
Still sat with his group, still had that boyish charm.
But now, he looked… tired.
Not the kind of tired that came from studying.
The kind that came from watching someone leave your orbit—and knowing you couldn't pull them back.
As the day came to a close, the slam books began circulating again.
One reached Ahaana's hands.
She smiled when she saw whose it was.
Ayaan Gazi.
Blank pages.
A silver pen tucked inside.
She held it for a second too long.
Then wrote:
> "You were the chapter I didn't plan to write.
But thank you for teaching me how to end one."
— A.S.
She didn't sign her full name.
She didn't need to.
When she passed it back to his friend, she didn't look his way.
But hours later, as she stood at the school gate for the last time—hugging Simran, laughing with Aditya, taking blurry selfies she'd later over-edit—she felt it.
That gaze.
She turned.
Across the crowd, through the busyness, through the noise of one last school day…
he was staring at her.
Not the filtered version.
Not the one in sarees or soft light.
Just her.
No makeup. No pose. Wind in her hair. Tear in her eye. Smile on her lips.
She looked at him.
And he…
looked like he finally saw her.
They didn't wave.
Didn't smile.
Didn't say goodbye.
But it was enough.
Because sometimes, love doesn't end with a kiss.
It ends with a look that says:
> If we had met differently... maybe.
And she turned away.
Not because she was running—
but because she was finally free.