Zhao Lian pov

I Didn’t Expect Rain Today

I didn’t expect it to rain today.

But that’s the thing with this city—it doesn’t ask for permission. One moment, the sky is cracked open with late summer sun, and the next, it’s crying like it remembered something it shouldn’t have forgotten.

I was standing just outside the literature building, fingers wrapped around the strap of my bag, pretending to scroll through my phone like I wasn’t watching the clouds fold in on themselves.

Everyone else had already left. The last lecture ended twenty minutes ago, and I had told myself I’d go grab bubble tea before catching the bus home. But then I saw him.

And my feet forgot how to move.

Li Yuhan.

There was nothing extraordinary about him. At least not in the way most people notice. He didn’t walk like he owned the world, didn’t speak like he needed to be heard. But he had this quiet… gravity. Like the kind of person whose silence made more noise than anyone else’s words.

He was standing by the bike racks, one hand in his coat pocket, the other holding an umbrella—not open yet. He looked up at the sky like he could argue with it. Or maybe like he understood it too well to try.

I watched him adjust the strap of his messenger bag and then shake his head, barely—like someone who just remembered something annoying, like forgetting your keys or getting caught in the rain. It was such a small gesture. But it felt like a paragraph.

I don’t know what made me walk toward him. Maybe it was the rain starting to fall. Maybe it was the way he didn’t rush to leave like everyone else. Or maybe it was the completely stupid hope that he’d see me the way I’d been seeing him for months now.

One step.

Then another.

And I was close enough to hear the rain on his umbrella when he finally opened it.

“Zhao Lian,” he said.

My name in his voice did something to me.

Not in a dramatic, thunderclap way.

More like… a window cracking open in a quiet room.

“You’re getting soaked,” he added.

I looked down at my damp sleeves and laughed, trying to hide the heat rising in my cheeks. “I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

He didn’t say anything for a second. Then he shifted slightly, just enough for the umbrella to cover the space between us.

And there it was.

That impossible kind of silence—the one that wraps around two people and dares them to break it.

I didn’t.

I stood beside him, half under the umbrella, pretending to read a text that didn’t exist. The air smelled like wet asphalt and paper. His umbrella had a little rip in the corner, and I watched a single raindrop hang there for three seconds before it finally fell.

“You waited for the rain to stop?” I asked, even though I knew he hadn’t.

“I don’t mind it,” he said.

I nodded. “Neither do I.”

Liar. I hated the rain. But standing next to him in it, I could’ve sworn I loved every drop.

He turned slightly to look at me, and for one second—one stupid, fragile second—I thought maybe he knew.

Not in a confident, rom-com way. But in a quiet, ache-behind-the-eyes kind of way.

Like he was carrying the same unspoken thing I was.

But he just nodded toward the path leading to the west gate. “You want to walk together?”

My heart said yes. Loudly. My mouth said, “Sure,” like it was no big deal.

We walked like people who didn’t know how to fill the space between them.

Our shoulders didn’t touch.

Our hands didn’t brush.

But the umbrella was just big enough for both of us. And somehow, that felt more intimate than anything I’d ever done with anyone.

He didn’t talk much.

Neither did I.

But that silence between us? It didn’t feel empty.

It felt like the kind of pause you take when you’re scared to ruin something perfect.

When we reached the bus stop, I expected him to keep walking. But he stopped.

“This is your stop, right?” he asked.

I nodded, fingers tightening around my bag. “Yeah.”

He hesitated for the briefest second.

It was the kind of pause that could have been a confession in another life.

But in this one?

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

And just like that, he was gone.

The rain had stopped by the time the bus came. But I still stood there with wet hair, a racing heart, and the kind of silence that makes your chest hurt.

He had shared his umbrella.

And that was nothing.

But also—everything.

That night, I wrote about him in the back of my sketchbook.

Not his name. Not even his face.

Just a sentence I didn’t want to forget:

 " He stood beside me like he belonged there, and I didn’t dare ask if he felt it too. "

The First Time I Noticed Him

People always ask, “When did you fall for him?”

And I think they want a moment.

Like a slow-motion scene, books spilling in a hallway, eyes meeting across a crowded room, violins playing in the background.

But the truth is, I don’t remember falling.

I just remember noticing.

It started on a Tuesday. Not that I knew then it would matter. Tuesdays were the boring middle-child of the week. The kind of day that slips past unnoticed unless something goes wrong—or something begins.

I was late to class. Not by much. Just late enough that the only seat left was near the back, by the window, next to someone I didn’t know.

I almost walked past it, planning to stand in the back and disappear like I usually did. But then the professor looked up, and I panicked. So I took the seat. I sat beside him.

Li Yuhan.

Back then, I didn’t know his name. I just noticed things.

Like how he always had a notebook open, but he barely ever wrote in it. How he tapped his pen against the edge, like he was waiting for thoughts that never quite landed. How he didn’t slouch like most people our age. His posture was quiet. Composed. Like he was always just a little aware of the world watching him, even if it wasn’t.

He didn’t look at me that day. Not once.

And still, I left class thinking about him.

The next week, I was early—by accident, really. I didn’t plan to sit next to him again. I just… did.

He was already there. Same seat. Same notebook. Same silence.

He had earphones in. Not blasting music, just low enough to hear but still be half-present. I remember sneaking a glance at his phone screen, trying to guess what kind of songs he listened to.

It was something soft. Something piano-based. Probably instrumental. It made sense.

He seemed like the kind of person who didn’t like lyrics telling him how to feel.

That day, he sneezed.

And I handed him a tissue.

He looked surprised—like no one had ever handed him a tissue before.

He didn’t say thank you. He just nodded.

And somehow, that tiny moment… it stayed.

Not because it was dramatic. But because it wasn’t.

After that, I started noticing more. Too much, maybe.

How he always left exactly two minutes before class ended, never in a rush.

How his handwriting looked like it belonged in a letter someone would keep folded for years.

How he sometimes smiled at the professor’s jokes when no one else did.

It was never a “lightning bolt” moment.

It was a hundred quiet realizations:

That his voice had the same softness as a late-night radio host.

That he held his coffee cup like it was something fragile.

That he made silence feel like a safe place.

One day, we bumped into each other at the library.

He was carrying a stack of books. All poetry.

I joked, “You don’t look like the poetry type.”

He shrugged. “They don’t need me to be. They’re already written.”

I still think about that.

I don’t know when it became something more than noticing.

Maybe when I started memorizing the sound of his laugh.

Maybe when I realized I looked for him in every crowd, without meaning to.

Maybe when I started wearing lipstick and then wiping it off before class, afraid it would say too much.

But I do know the moment I knew I loved him.

It wasn’t even about him.

It was me.

I caught myself smiling at a message my friend sent, and I wanted to show him.

Not for his reaction. Not for attention.

Just because he was the person I wanted to share things with first.

The ordinary things. The things that don’t matter—until they do.

That’s how I knew.

Not in the way stories are written.

Not in ink and drama and declarations.

But in the quiet.

In the space between heartbeats.

In the moment you look at someone and think:

“If you asked me to stay in this moment forever, I would.”

They say love starts with a spark.

Mine started with stillness.

With a boy I didn’t know

sitting two seats away,

doing nothing at all—

and somehow

still managing to undo me.

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