Description
They didn't mean to hurt her. Not really. "Aloo. Panda. Motu." They were just nicknames. Cute. Funny. Said with love, wrapped in laughter. So she laughed too. She laughed until her stomach hurt. Until her jaw ached. Until the laughter sounded real enough to even fool herself. But at night-when the house fell silent and the only sound was her ceiling fan clicking rhythmically-those names didn't feel so cute anymore. In the quiet, they became weights. Weighing on her arms. Her cheeks. Her stomach. Her heart. She wasn't fat. Not really. She wasn't ugly either. But she wasn't beautiful. Not the kind of girl people wrote songs about. She wasn't the girl. She was the friend. The confidante. The shoulder to cry on. The afterthought. And she had made peace with it. Or at least, that's what she told herself every morning as she tugged her oversized hoodie sleeves over her hands and let her untamed curls fall like a curtain around her face. Until him. Until his eyes didn't skim past her like everyone else's. Until his smile didn't say "cute" like she was a stuffed toy. Until his presence made her question everything she had built her walls for. This isn't a story about glow-ups. This is a story about a girl who was never broken. Just unseen.
PROLOGUE ✨
