Theme - Theme 2 - Secret Admirer
(Graphicer - missFiesty_69)
My Secret Admirer?
The first letter arrived on a rainy afternoon.
Zoya wiped the fogged window of her bookstore, watching the streets shimmer with the reflections of car lights on wet asphalt. It had been an uneventful day...until she found the envelope slipped beneath her door. No name, no return address. Just her own name in delicate, old-fashioned handwriting.
Her fingers trembled as she opened it.
Some people admire the moon from afar, knowing they can never touch it. And yet, they look every night. You are my moon.
A secret admirer.
Zoya frowned, rereading the words. The bookstore was her sanctuary, her quiet world away from the chaos of life. Who had noticed her enough to write this? And why anonymously?
Days passed, and the letters kept coming.
Each one carried more depth, more longing. They spoke of the way she tucked a stray curl behind her ear when lost in a book. The way she hummed absentmindedly while arranging shelves. The way her laughter lit up the dim corners of her store like fairy lights.
Who was watching her so closely?
Zoya was not the kind of woman who believed in fairytales. She had built her life brick by brick, strong and independent. But these letters - they chipped away at something she hadn't even realized was shielded.
Then came the flowers. White lilies, her favorite.
A single note accompanied them
They remind me of you - pure, radiant, impossible to ignore.
Zoya’s heart raced. The mystery was intoxicating, but so was the fear. She needed answers.
~
“Asad! Have you been sneaking love letters to someone?”
No one else would dare tease Asad Ahmed Khan like this. But Najma, his sister, had no such restraint.
He glared at her over his coffee mug. “Why would I do that?”
Najma shrugged. “You write like a poet when you think no one’s looking. Maybe you’re secretly in love with someone?”
Asad shook his head. No, love was not a luxury he could afford. His world was built on discipline and structure. But Zoya...
He had watched her from a distance for months. Not in a way that would alarm her, never invading her space. But she was impossible to ignore. She existed in color, while he was stuck in monochrome.
So he wrote. It was the only way he knew how to let her in.
~
Zoya made a decision. She would find HIM.
The next letter had come that morning, left in the exact same place. She stayed late in the bookstore, waiting, the anticipation clawing at her nerves.
The clock struck midnight. The streets were empty. And then...
A shadow moved near the entrance.
Zoya’s breath hitched as she stepped out. “Who are you?”
The figure froze. And then, into the light, stepped Asad.
Her world tilted.
“Asad, aap?” she whispered, stunned. Too shocked to see HER landlord.
His jaw clenched. This was not how he had wanted her to find out. He had imagined a hundred ways to confess...but none like this.
“You?” she asked, voice barely above a breath.
He exhaled. “Uhh...I...I never meant for you to find out this way...”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t think you’d ever look at me the same way.”
Silence stretched between them. But something shifted. Asad, the man who never let emotions betray him, stood before her...unguarded, vulnerable.
“I wasn’t supposed to fall for YOU” he admitted. “But I DID. And this was the only way I knew how to tell you.”
Zoya took a slow step forward. Then another. She wasn’t the kind to believe in fairytales. But standing here, under the glow of streetlights, her heart whispered a different truth.
Maybe, some love stories weren’t meant to be spoken. Some were meant to be written in letters, in stolen glances, in the quiet spaces where two souls found their way to each other.
And maybe, she had found hers.
Maybe love wasn’t always grand gestures or declarations beneath the stars. Maybe it was hidden in ink-stained confessions, in the silence between unspoken words, in the way two hearts recognized each other before the mind could catch up.
Zoya looked at Asad - not as the stoic landlord, not as the enigma who had slipped love between pages, but as a man who had dared to bare his soul without ever expecting anything in return.
Her fingers brushed over his, the warmth of the moment threading between them.
“You weren’t supposed to fall for me?” she murmured, a small smile playing at her lips. “Well, maybe neither was I.”
And yet, here THEY were.
Under the quiet hum of the city, with the scent of rain lingering in the air and unsent letters still waiting to be written, Zoya finally understood...some love stories were never meant to stay a secret.
I'm too lazy to search 
Mangal Lakshmi
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