The summer I turned nine, I got lost in a library.
Not "lost" like I couldn't find the way out—
but lost like I wandered through bookshelves until the world outside disappeared.
I was clutching a math puzzle book way too advanced for me, sitting on the cold floor of the quietest aisle.
That's when a girl sat down beside me.
She didn't say anything at first. Just peeked at the book in my hands and whispered,
"That one's tricky. Page 14 has a typo."
I blinked.
She wore a pale blue dress and had bangs too long for her face. She looked like she belonged in one of the storybooks on the shelves.
"You solved it?"
She shrugged. "I tried. I like patterns."
We talked for maybe ten minutes. She liked constellations and pencil games. I told her about how I wanted to invent my own number.
And then her mom called her name, and she had to leave.
"What's your name?" I asked.
But she just grinned and said,
"We'll probably forget each other anyway."
I did forget.
Until years later.
When I met a girl in a summer class,
quiet and kind, with that same way of tilting her head when she listened.
It wasn't until much later—after we were already something fragile and real—that I found that same book again in a donation box.
The same bent spine. Same scribbles in pencil on page 14.
And inside the back cover:
"Sora. Age 9."
Some stories don't begin when we think they do.
Some start long before we're ready to live them.
Before names. Before memories.
Before anything that looked like love.
And maybe...
that's why they last.
YOU ARE READING
Unknown Variables
RomanceIn a quiet corner of high school life, a modest math prodigy finds himself caught between a goddess-like childhood friend and a shy, brilliant girl from summer school. As anonymous love letters stir questions he can't answer, he discovers that the h...
