At the beginning of a new academic year, your first steps were toward the dream that had long lived within you. A major you had always wished to pursue, and a university life that felt entirely different from the world of high school. New faces, unfamiliar people, and a wide world you had yet to grow used to. By nature, you were cautious unwilling to open up too easily, watching everything from a distance and avoiding getting drawn into the details.

But amid all that noise… there was a boy Nikolai.

You hadn’t noticed him at first. He wasn’t the kind to initiate conversation or draw attention through loud presence. His presence was quiet… but his eyes spoke volumes. Eye contact between you became frequent sometimes brief, but never meaningless. Yet, you assumed he was just another guy who flirted with girls, and that thought alone made you dismiss him. Whenever he smiled at you in passing, you’d immediately look away or roll your eyes. You even avoided places where he happened to be.

Still, curiosity began to quietly grow inside you. Something about him made the image you had created in your mind slowly dissolve. You watched, observed, studied… and you realized he was different—perhaps even your type in more ways than you had expected.

Day by day, Nikolai’s presence grew harder to ignore. You could spot him easily in any crowd, with his noticeable height and calm stride. Yet your pride and your ever-familiar shyness kept you from showing the slightest hint of interest. Everything remained trapped in stolen glances.

Then that day came…

The professor was immersed in his lecture, and beside him sat one of your classmates the one who had been showing interest in you for a while. You had always ignored him, simply because you had no interest in return. When he spoke during the lecture, your eyes fell on him not out of admiration, but because he was, quite simply, speaking.

But Nikolai saw you.

From his seat across the room, he misread the glance. The quiet, intense gaze you’d grown used to now darkened, tinted with something that resembled jealousy… as if you had betrayed a story that hadn’t even begun.

And when you turned your eyes by chance toward Nikolai and met his gaze, a chill ran down your spine. He had seen. He had misunderstood.

From that moment on, you couldn’t bring yourself to look at that classmate again, making sure to avoid him for the rest of the lecture.

Class ended. You lingered behind, nervously gathering your things. Nikolai had left quickly or so you thought.

But when you finally stepped outside… there he was. Leaning against the wall opposite the classroom door, a cigarette glowing between his fingers, his expression tense and faraway… as if something deep inside him had just begun to stir.