Arif was a very smart boy. His smiling face and striking eyes could impress anyone, be it a boy or a girl easily. Besides, he was deeply involved in social and cultural activities. Due to his handsome figure and pleasant personality he had a lot of admirers around him, mostly girls. Some were strikingly pretty as well. But Arif maintained casual acquaintances with them, seeming to find deeper connection with girls who were less conventionally attractive.
In his school and college years, he spent most of his time with these girls. They were his good friends, sharing laughter and confidences over shared interests and a comfortable camaraderie. They valued his friendship and knew Arif only as a friend, nothing more. Perhaps some hoped for more, but Arif, with an unconscious carefulness, kept those boundaries firm.
While studying for his BBA at a private university, Arif visited his village home for vacation. It was monsoon and the village was lush and waterlogged. As he arrived home, he was surprised and pleased to find Zeni in the village as well.
Zeni, their nearest neighbor from childhood, was now a young woman. She lived in a nearby city with her parents and was attending college there. She explained she was in the village to learn to swim in the familiar river. Both were genuinely delighted to see each other after so long, a warmth of shared history and comfortable familiarity sparking between them.
Over the next couple of weeks, their days in the village blurred into a tapestry of shared moments. They spent hours swimming in the rain-swollen river, played board games indoors during downpours, gossiped about village life and city happenings and explored the verdant countryside by boat.
One afternoon, while drifting along a narrow canal by boat, a sudden downpour erupted. Laughing, they steered towards a small highland and sought shelter under the wide canopy of an ancient tree. Huddled together under the thick leaves, the world narrowed to the space between them.
They stood close, the silence punctuated only by the drumming of raindrops on the leaves. Arif felt an unfamiliar closeness, a quiet hum of awareness in the air. He glanced at Zeni; her profile was serene, raindrops clinging to her eyelashes. He wondered if she felt it too, this shift in their familiar dynamic.
When the rain eased, they began the walk back. The path was slick with mud and Zeni’s foot slipped. Instinctively, Arif reached out, his hand closing firmly around hers, pulling her upright. For a heartbeat, they were intensely connected, his strength supporting her balance.
“Thank you, Arif !” Zeni exclaimed, her smile radiant with relief and something else he couldn’t quite decipher. She didn't release his hand. Hand in hand, they walked the rest of the way to the boat, a new intimacy woven into their steps.
Days later, their time in the village drew to a close and they returned to their respective city lives. But for Arif, something had irrevocably changed. A quiet revolution had begun in his heart. The feel of Zeni’s hand in his, the shared silence under the rain tree – these moments replayed endlessly in his mind, each repetition deepening a nascent feeling he couldn’t quite name, yet recognized instinctively as love’s first tender touch. He wrestled with the question: “Could Zeni possibly feel the same?” A hopeful whisper dared to surface within him.
Many pretty girls had sought Arif’s attention, drawn to his charm, but none had truly touched his heart. They remained casual acquaintances, pleasant but ultimately superficial. How was it then, he wondered, that Zeni, with just a shared boat ride and a fleeting touch, had unlocked a depth of feeling he hadn't known existed? It was a quiet mystery he turned over and over in his mind.
Arif completed his BBA and secured a job at a bank. Zeni, too, finished her studies. Fate, or perhaps mere coincidence, intervened when Zeni’s father was transferred to Arif’s city. They began to meet again, more frequently now, in the familiar urban landscape that felt so different from the intimate village. They talked for hours, about everything and nothing, yet Arif found himself circling around the unspoken truth in his heart, unable to voice it.
He tried to read Zeni’s eyes, her smiles, her silences, searching for a hint, a sign. But Zeni remained an enigma. Woman’s heart, he mused, was indeed impenetrable. How could poor Arif ever truly understand, ever dare to hope? Several times, the words trembled on his tongue, ready to confess the feelings that bloomed in the rain-soaked village, but each time, fear clamped his mouth shut. Fear of misreading her, fear of rejection, fear of losing even the comfortable friendship they shared.
Then, with a suddenness that left him reeling, Zeni’s wedding invitations arrived. Arif received one, a beautifully embossed card that felt like a formal decree of his loss. He attended the wedding, a silent observer in the joyous crowd. He watched Zeni, radiant in bridal red, walk away with another man, a stranger who was now her husband, her future. A future that would never include him.
As he watched her leave, a sharp ache resonated within him, the quiet sound of a dream breaking. He had missed his chance, the opportune moment lost to unspoken words and paralyzing fear.
He knew then that his tender feelings for Zeni, this unexpressed love, would become a cherished, bittersweet memory, buried deep within his heart, a secret garden he would revisit in the quiet moments of his life, forever.