She didn’t remember leaving the café yesterday.

One moment she was drowning in panic cold sweat, shaking fingers, pulse louder than thoughts 

and then he was there.

“Aira. Breathe.”

Two words. Anchor and command.

Her lungs listened.

Not because she was strong because he was solid.

She didn’t thank him.

She escaped instead. Pride running faster than gratitude.

The walk home blurred in the rain of her thoughts. By the time she reached her room, she finally collapsed silently, privately knees to the floor, palms gripping her sleeves so her body wouldn’t fall apart. The world said the danger was gone.

Her body didn’t believe it.

What haunted her wasn’t the creep’s touch it was Arman’s gaze.

Steady. Protective. Homely.

A word she had forgotten how to feel.

Safety terrified her more than fear did.

The Next Day

The café was crowded  noise, laughter, warmth, routines a universe she didn’t belong to today. Her throat tightened just standing at the entrance.

No seats open.

Except one.

Far wall.

Beside him.

Still as stone.

Eyes on nothing and everything.

Like a man who lived outside himself.

She hadn’t really looked at him yesterday panic didn’t allow that.

But now, her mind caught details before she could stop it.

He wasn’t “handsome” in the shallow, magazine sense.

He was striking the kind of face built from quiet history rather than vanity.

Strong brows drawn in natural intensity, not anger.

Jaw sharp, not polished  like life had carved it, not genetics.

His hair, dark and slightly grown out, looked like someone who forgot to care about appearances, not someone who didn’t value himself.

And his eyes… dark, deep, unbending not dramatic, not dreamy just painfully alive, like someone who had seen too much and learned to stay silent about it.

There was no arrogance in him.

But there was weight.

A stillness that didn’t belong to his age.

Like he was holding back a war no one else could see.

Her legs moved before her mind agreed.

She hated that.

But she didn’t stop.

She stood at his table. He didn’t look up.

She sat.

The chair scraped loudly announcing something she didn’t want announced.

No reaction.

Just tension.

Aira: “…I never properly thanked you.”

His jaw tightened, then released.

Not annoyance control.

Aira (smaller voice, but steady): “For yesterday.”

He didn’t soften. He didn’t push her away either.

He simply looked and somehow that hurt more.

Aira: “I’m Aira.”

He nodded once, slow.

Arman: "Arman.”

Silence. Too full, too heavy.

Her fingers curled around her cup a grounding ritual she created long ago.

She tried again, politely, humanly, without expectation:

Aira: “What… do you do?”

He paused. A breath. A calculation. The truth offered cautiously.

Arman: “Entrepreneur.”

The word fell rigidly, like he was holding the rest of the sentence hostage.

Her turn.

Aira: “I’m a physiotherapist.”

His eyes flickered not recognition of her job, but of something inside himself reacting.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

But time shifted around them.

Not hostility.

Not attraction.

Memory. A shadow of it.

Aira didn’t notice fully she only sensed the air change for a second before settling again.

She looked away politely, afraid of reading too much into things.

Aira: “I know you don’t want conversation. I just didn’t want to be rude.”

He blinked once and the robotic stillness softened by a fraction.

Arman: “You weren’t.”

The tiniest kindness, strangled before it could become real.

Her shoulders dropped a little relief, disappointment, confusion.

She didn’t know whether to stay or leave. But he didn’t move, didn’t look irritated, didn’t close himself off further.

So she stayed.

Their silence wasn’t empty.

It was two storms learning to sit beside each other without colliding.

Across the room, someone burst into laughter bright, careless.

Her eyes flinched from the sound.

His gaze flicked to her brief, instinctive as if he registered her discomfort before she even made a sound.

He looked away just as quickly.

She didn’t thank him again.

He didn’t ask if she was okay.

But she breathed.

Without him telling her to.

Not deeply. Not perfectly. But enough.

For the first time in a long time, survival didn’t feel like drowning.

She didn’t dare call it healing.

Healing was too hopeful.

She called it breathing and for her, that was already too much.

Aira lied down in her apartment that night , recalling the uneventful Day, what she believed would be 

Of how she saw him before he saw her like always.

Not because she wanted to, but because something in him dragged the eye even when the mind screamed look away.

Arman sat in the corner of the café, motionless, back straight, shoulders squared too neatly. Not relaxed  restrained. Like someone bracing against impact even in stillness.

The world around him buzzed and moved, but he didn’t belong to it. He looked like a man who had been built for wars the universe didn’t remember anymore.

His face was the kind that didn’t soften when left alone. Sharp lines, sharpened further by silence. Hair too neat, too black, like it absorbed light instead of reflecting it.

Not handsome in the warm, safe sense.

Handsome like a locked door in an abandoned building that you know you shouldn’t open.

Aira realized suddenly her fear wasn’t of him. It was of herself.

Because every time she saw him, her chest didn’t tighten in panic… it loosened.

Like she had found a disaster she trusted.

His eyes lifted slowly the darkest she had ever seen on a human face. Not brown, not black… just void.

A gaze that didn’t ask. Didn’t judge. Didn’t soften.

A gaze that said:

I see everything, and I carry nothing for free.

She felt small. Not because he belittled her he barely acknowledged her but because he looked like a man who had already buried versions of himself she could never even survive.

His stare traveled over her face with unsettling precision, as if memorizing something he was never given permission to touch. Not longing.

Recognition.

The most frightening kind the kind you can’t explain.

For a moment she wondered if she was imagining the intensity.

Then he blinked slow, tired and everything vanished.

Expression wiped, spine straightened, shoulders locked.

As if he had shut the door again.

As if she had never existed.

And yet…

every bone in her body whispered the truth:

This man could destroy her without lifting a hand.

But he was also the first place sh

e had felt safe in months.

Arman was not beautiful.

He was the storm that strips the earth clean.

And Aira pathetic, trembling couldn’t look away.