Nysa's POV

It happened.

We met.

A simple café near my college — one of those places where the chairs wobble and the tea isn’t great, but the light hits just right around 4 PM.

He stood outside when I reached.

Black shirt. A watch I hadn’t seen before.

Hands in his pockets. Hair messy in that careless way that somehow still looked intentional.

He smiled when he saw me.

Small. Almost shy.

“Finally,” he said, “the mithai dealer arrives.”

I laughed nervously and handed him the box like it was something sacred.

And somehow, just like that — all the awkwardness melted.

We sat by the window

We ordered chai .

My hands were shaking too much to hold a glass anyway.

I thought we’d talk about college, about friends, about the sweets.

But we didn’t.

We talked about dreams.

And by “we,” I mean — he talked.

And I listened.

In that deep, undistracted way I had never listened to anyone before.

He told me about his obsession with surgery — not the glamor of it, but the discipline. The calm. The precision. The quiet authority a great surgeon walks with.

“There was this surgeon,” he said, staring past the café wall, “at the trauma OT during my posting Everyone was panicking. Blood everywhere. And this guy? He was still. Like gravity. I want that. That kind of command — not over people, but over chaos.”

I didn’t interrupt.

He went on to talk about travel.

Not destinations, but experiences.

“People always say they want to travel to ‘find themselves.’ I don’t. I just want to get lost for a while. No name, no duty, no expectations. Just the road, and stories.”

And in those two hours — I realized something.

Apurv Sharma wasn’t perfect.

But he was real.

He had layers no one took the time to uncover.

And maybe that’s why I never wanted him to stop talking.

His words weren’t sweet.

They were sincere.

His dreams weren’t fancy.

They were honest.

And all I could do was sit there and fall — deeper than before.

Not for how he looked.

Not for how he made me feel.

But for the way he saw the world.

Like it was broken, beautiful, and worth chasing anyway.

The café clock struck 5:42 PM when he stood up.

“I should go. ” he said, brushing a crumb off the table.

“Yeah,” I replied softly. “Of course.”

And just like that — it was over.

Two hours.

That’s all it took for him to make a permanent home in the softest corner of my memory.

And I didn’t even say what I wanted to.

That I could listen to him talk about arteries and sunrises and surgeries for a hundred lifetimes.

That maybe I brought him sweets…

but he gave me something far, far sweeter.

“He said he wants to disappear on a road trip, like just vanish. Can you believe that? I mean who even says things like that? No one talks like that anymore!”

My roommate rolled over on the bed and buried her face in her pillow.

“Again, Naysa?”

“Yes. AGAIN.”

It had been four days since that café meeting.

Four days. Ninety-six hours. 5,760 minutes.

And I had relived every single one of those 120 minutes with Apurv at least a thousand times.

My roommate, Sanya — bless her soul — had listened like a soldier in war.

I told her everything.

How his fingers tapped the table when he got excited mid-story.

How his voice dropped when he spoke about trauma surgery, and how something in me just broke hearing the seriousness in his tone.

And every single time I reached the part where he stood up to leave, I sighed like the ending of a tragic movie.

Tonight, she interrupted my monologue mid-sentence.

“Naysa, listen. I know you like him. Like really like him. You’ve said that word ‘surgeon’ at least seventeen times this week.”

I laughed. “Eighteen.”

She rolled her eyes.

“But babe,” she said, sitting up now, serious for once. “You know what I’m hearing?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m hearing the same story. Over and over. But it’s not a story anymore. It’s a loop.”

That hit.

I stared at the blanket between my fingers.

She softened.

“You had your moment. Maybe it was everything. Maybe it was nothing. But you had it. And now, I think it’s time…”

She leaned forward.

“…to finally say it’s okay.”

I blinked.

“Say what?”

“That it’s okay if it ends right there. That two hours were enough. That you didn’t need forever to feel something real.”

I stayed quiet for a long moment.

And then, with a whisper, like telling a secret I’d been hiding from myself—

“I think… I’m okay.”

Sanya smiled.

“Say it again.”

“I’m okay.”

Louder now.

“I’m okay.”

And strangely, I meant it.

For the first time, I wasn’t saying it to convince anyone.

Not Sanya.

Not Apurv.

Not even my diary.

I was saying it to myself.

Because yes — I could play those two hours like a film on loop.

Yes — I could still feel the way his words landed on my chest like soft thunder.

But also, yes —

I was okay.

Because what mattered wasn’t if he came back or replied or noticed.

What mattered was:

He was real.

The moment was real.

And so was I.