He noticed you on a rainy Tuesday. You were sitting alone on the library steps, drenched and clutching a small sketchbook, your hands moving silently through the air. Your expression was calm, but your eyes—your eyes screamed of things unsaid, of words trapped behind silence and years of being misunderstood.

He didn’t know your name then.

He only knew that something about the way you stared at the sky made his chest ache.

Days passed, and he kept seeing you.

At the coffee shop, always ordering with a small notebook and pen.

At lectures, sitting at the back, never speaking.

You never looked at him.

But he watched.

Not in a creepy way—more like the way someone watches a flower struggling to grow through a crack in the pavement. With awe. With quiet hope.

He learned your name from a professor: you were mute. Had been all your life. And you didn’t let people in. Not anymore.

People stared at you like you were broken.

He stared like you were made of poetry.

And that’s how it began.

Every time he saw you, he smiled. He waved. You never waved back.

Once, you left a note in his hand as you passed by: “Stop wasting your smiles.”

He kept it in his wallet.

He tried to talk to you after that. In clumsy, awkward bursts.

You wrote him small replies like:

“You don’t need to pity me.”

“I’m not your project.”

But you never once wrote: “Leave me alone.”

So he stayed.

Little by little, you let him closer.

One day he found you crying behind the campus greenhouse, and though you didn’t say a word, he sat with you for two hours, just listening to your silence.

He never asked what hurt. He only whispered, “Whatever it is… I wish I could take it and bury it under the deepest sea.”

You didn’t cry harder. But you leaned on his shoulder.

And from that moment on… you were no longer just the girl with no voice.

You were you.

And he was in love.

But how do you tell someone you love them when they flinch at every new connection?

He thought maybe he’d never get the chance.

Then came the day of the campus art showcase.

You hadn’t submitted anything. You hated being the center of attention. But somehow, a single painting appeared on display that night. It was yours. It had your name.

It showed a girl behind glass, reaching out… and a boy on the other side, reaching back.

Below it, you wrote: “Sometimes silence is the loudest scream for love.”

He stood there, staring at it for over an hour.

And that night, he didn’t sleep.

He studied. He watched hours of videos. Practiced till his hands were sore.

For two weeks, he disappeared. You thought he gave up. You thought you scared him away.

You cried when no one saw.

Then, on a quiet Friday under the oak tree behind the library, he appeared.

Holding a bouquet of violets.

He stood in front of you, heart hammering, lips trembling—and then he lifted his hands.

And he signed.

“I love you.”

Your breath caught.

He stumbled through the signs, shaky and slow, but you understood every word.

“I don’t want your voice. I want your heart.”

“Will you go on a date with me?”