The new boy didn’t speak much his first week.

He sat at the back of the room, always near the windows. He took notes in looping cursive and had the sort of posture that suggested he’d been trained to sit still for hours, like a statue. He didn’t join lunch tables, didn’t check his phone, and didn’t laugh at other people’s jokes.

He didn’t need to. People noticed him anyway.

You first saw him in the library. He was standing near the poetry section, head tilted, spine half-curved as he read something by Seamus Heaney. His thumb ran along the edge of the page like it meant something to him. He didn’t look up when you passed, didn’t even blink, but somehow… you felt it. That tug.

Now he’s seated across from you in English class, one row over. The teacher mentions Shakespeare and he exhales like someone just lit a match in his brain. A minute later, he speaks for the first time. His accent draws eyes, but his words hold them. “It’s not about love,” he says, calmly. “It’s about timing.”