We had stopped —
debating lunch,
voices overlapping in a blur
I wasn’t part of.

I saw her before it happened.
In her own group,
talking, laughing,
alive in her own world.

I noticed her then.
Didn’t think she noticed me.

We started walking again,
when I caught her gaze —
already locked on me.
I turned once.
Twice.
Three times, fast —
as if the air had folded wrong.

Still, she stared,
eyes didn’t flinch.
Like she knew me.
Or like my hair held a secret
she’d solve.

“Where’d you get your perm from?”
she asked.

I blinked.
“…I don’t have one.”

She tilted her head.
“It’s natural.”
She said it like a spell—
making us nod in succession.

I kept walking.
But something tugged at me.
So I turned around —
to say thank you, maybe.
Or something else.

But she was gone.

That was it.
A blink.
A glitch.
A ripple in the script.

It wasn’t love.
Not even close.
Just a moment —
quick, strange, unshakable.

No name.
No number.
No reason to remember it.

But I do.

A stranger
who saw me
when I wasn’t trying to be seen.