Samuel wasn’t used to people like him.

The kind of boy who lit up a room just by walking into it, whose laugh seemed to pull heads around like a magnet. He wasn’t loud in a way that demanded attention — no, it was gentler than that. Like sunlight through leaves. Effortless. Warm.

They met by accident. Well, kind of. Samuel always sat in the far corner of the library, where nobody ever bothered him. But one afternoon, he looked up from his book to find someone dropping into the seat across from him, breathless and grinning like they’d just outrun a storm.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked, already halfway into it.

Samuel blinked. Shook his head.

That was how it began.

No dramatic introductions. No forced small talk. Just a boy who’d decided, for whatever reason, that Samuel’s corner of the world was worth sitting in. He talked about everything and nothing — the weird dream he’d had, how the weather felt like soup today, the fact that the vending machine downstairs was a scam.

Samuel barely spoke. He didn’t have to. The other boy — Enuji — filled the silences like it was the easiest thing in the world. And when he left an hour later, promising to "steal this seat again sometime," Samuel found himself hoping he would.

It wasn’t friendship yet. Not quite. But it felt a little like the beginning of one.