Chapter One
Zayn
They say architecture is a language.
If that's true, then mine's starting to sound like a cry for help.
Three deadlines. One unfinished model. A rendering that looks like it belongs in a recycling bin. And a professor who raises his eyebrows so often I'm convinced he's trying to lift my GPA with sheer judgment.
I don't know why I thought this semester would be different clearly i came in with plans strict ones.
Blueprints for my mental health, routines etched like stone. But even the best structures crack under pressure.
And I'm cracking.
Hard..
The library wasn't part of the original plan. It's too quiet, too sacred. But tonight, I need the silence. I need the walls. I need to sit somewhere that doesn't scream at me.
So I go.
It's late.
That perfect in between hour when the campus ghosts stretch their limbs and the living shuffle around in hoodies and eye bags.
I take my usual seat on the second floor-by the wide window that frames the city like a moving diorama. My sketchpad lands on the table with a soft thud. It's heavier than it should be. Full of half-formed ideas, overdrawn angles, and erased attempts at something beautiful.
I rub my temples. My brain feels like an
over-designed floor plan. There are too many rooms, not enough air.
That's when she flickers into memory.
A flashback.
It's not dramatic , just a single moment from last week.
Same library. Same hour. I was buried in the biomechanics of stairwells,
wondering why I even cared about optimal riser she walked past me. Books in hand and like a quiet storm.
She didn't look at me.
But something about the way she moved like she belonged here without needing to prove it-etched itself into my thoughts.
I don't know her name. I don't know her major. But I've seen her three times now, and that should mean nothing.
Except it doesn't....
She's the opposite of everything I'm drowning in. Unbothered Self-contained
, Like an abandoned structure still holding its shape.
I remember her sitting near the old poetry shelf, legs crossed, eyes down, earbuds in.
She wasn't performing solitude.
She just was.....
Unreachable in the way ruins are
untouched not because no one tried, but because no one was allowed.
There was a notebook in her lap. Not spiral-bound.She flipped it open like it held secrets. Like it was the only thing in the world that got her.
And me?
I watched like an idiot.
Pretending to adjust my drafting pencils.
Pretending not to care....But I did.
I do care....
Which is dangerous.Because I don't have room for distractions right now.
I barely have room for myself.So I try to shake the memory and get back to my sketch. Redraw the trusses.
Recalculate the load.
But the angles keep warping. Her shadow slips into my perspective lines, curls around my margins.
I press my pencil harder.
Too hard.
The lead snaps ,a perfect fracture.
Just like me.
I sit back, drag a hand over my jaw. Outside, the city hums under streetlights.
The kind of sound that never stops, even when everything else does.
My phone buzzes. Group chat. Studio panic. Someone's crying over Photoshop crashing again.
However, I don't answer, Instead, I look toward the poetry section. It's empty.
Knowing she left possibly I wait another minute.
Just in case she shows up again.
But she doesn't Show up I tell myself that's next time id definitely speak to her .
But with her presence gone I didn't need more ghosts.
Not when I'm still haunted by her.