College – A Life to Be Forgotten

College life is supposed to become the best chapter in a person’s life.

For Ken, it became the chapter he wanted to forget the most.

The first year of college began quietly. Luckily, he got admission in a college close to his home, so long travels and crowded buses never became part of his routine. Every morning he walked into the campus casually with a bag hanging on one shoulder, not knowing that his life was slowly moving toward a story that would stay with him forever.

He quickly found a small group of friends who matched his thoughts and humor. They laughed at the same jokes, bunked classes together, watched movies in cheap theatres, roamed malls without buying anything, and sat endlessly discussing life as if they had already understood the world.

Those days felt light.

Ken was still the same mischievous boy from school — noisy with friends, careless about studies, and always seated in the last bench. Teachers knew him more for his interruptions than for his attendance.

And then one ordinary day, something happened that he never expected.

After nearly seventeen or eighteen years of life, Ken saw a girl who made him stop thinking for a moment.

Her name was Hini.

She was the complete opposite of him. While Ken belonged to the last bench, Hini lived in the first bench. She was calm, studious, disciplined, and soft-spoken. She listened carefully in class while Ken never paid attention to the class. She completed assignments on time while he searched for excuses.

But the first time he saw her face-to-face, none of those differences mattered.

It was her eyes. Those quiet eyes carried something he could not explain. For the first time in his life, Ken did not know how to behave naturally. His heart, which had faced competitions, crowds, and sports finals without fear, suddenly became nervous before one girl.

That was the first blossom.

Every morning, entering the classroom became meaningful only because he would get to see her. Sometimes she never even noticed him, but for Ken, those few seconds were enough to brighten an entire day.

Even while laughing loudly with his friends, part of his thoughts always stayed with Hini.

He bunked classes and went to movies. He wandered through shopping malls with friends. He sat in noisy food courts pretending to enjoy conversations, but inside his mind, Hini quietly existed everywhere.

Slowly, admiration turned into obsession.

Ken began following her silently. From classroom corridors to the canteen. From department blocks to the college bus stop. Sometimes, by borrowing his friend’s bike, he even followed the road leading near her residence area — never approaching, never speaking, only watching from a distance as if protecting a dream that he was too afraid to touch.

He kept everything hidden from the world.

Until one day, he finally revealed everything to his close friend, Thee.

Thee was not only Ken’s trusted friend but also a good friend of Hini. Gathering all the courage he had, Ken asked Thee to tell Hini about his feelings and ask what she thought about him.

For the first time, hope entered his life.

But hope did not stay long.

Every time Ken built courage inside himself, Thee returned with the same painful answer.

“Hini is already in a relationship with a guy from her family circle.”

The sentence broke him repeatedly.

Still, he never stopped hoping.

This process continued many times. Ten times. Fifteen times. Maybe even more. Every rejection hurt him, but he kept holding onto small imaginary possibilities. Somewhere deep inside, he believed love alone could change destiny.

Years passed.

College slowly moved toward its final days.

One day, during a college function, Ken did something nobody understood except himself. He bought flowers for every classmate. Red flowers for everyone.

But for Hini, he chose a white flower.

Not because he loved her less.

But because he saw her differently from everyone else — pure, distant, calm, and impossible to possess.

He handed it to her quietly.

But Hini never gave much thought to it.

Maybe she never understood the meaning behind that white flower. Or maybe she understood and chose silence.

Then came the final day of college.

Farewell decorations filled the classrooms. Friends clicked photographs, exchanged signatures, promised to stay connected forever, and cried over endings they did not yet fully understand.

For Ken, however, that day felt heavier than everyone else realized.

Because it was the last day he would ever see Hini.

Without anyone noticing, he took a few photographs of her. One smiling picture during farewell became his most treasured possession. Somehow, he even managed to secretly keep one of her photographs safely with him.

Those photographs became memories he protected more carefully than his certificates or medals.

Years passed.

Life changed.

Friends disappeared into jobs, marriages, responsibilities, and cities. The noisy college corridors became silent memories buried under adulthood.

And one day, Ken realized something painful.

The photographs were gone.

The physical photo he had hidden carefully was lost somewhere in time. The digital copies stored safely in his old Yahoo account disappeared forever after the account was deleted due to inactivity for more than ten years.

Just like that, everything vanished.

No photographs.

No memories left to touch.

Only feelings remained.

Sometimes, life does not break us through endings.

It breaks us by slowly erasing the evidence that something once meant everything to us.

And for Ken, Hini became exactly that — his first blossom

Whenever Ken hears the song Get Down (You’re The One For Me), even now, he gets reminded of her. A simple smile carries a great untold story.

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