He had seen her often — in the quiet corridors of the university, her books pressed lightly against her chest, her hair moving as if reluctant to obey the wind. He admired her from afar, not with the fever of youth, but with that wistful ache reserved for things one cannot possess and does not truly wish to. She never noticed him; and when she did, her gaze passed through him as though he were some half-forgotten figure in a dream.

He told himself he disliked her — her laughter too bright, her certainty too rehearsed, her beauty too aware of itself. Yet something in her lingered in his mind, an aftertaste of longing, a shadow on the heart that reason could not erase. It was not love, nor even desire, but nostalgia for a life that might have been, for a tenderness that never came to pass.

Years later, in a rain-washed city, he met her by chance. She remembered him faintly, smiled without warmth, and spoke with that same careless charm that had once unsettled him. They drank, they laughed, and in some forgotten hour the past slipped its leash. They went to her apartment — not from passion, but from the stubborn need to test the illusion, to see if the dream had ever been real.

It was not.

The night passed like a faded song. There was no magic, no mystery — only two strangers trespassing upon a memory that had never belonged to them. When she slept, he looked at her and felt nothing but quiet clarity. The enchantment had dissolved. The beauty he once worshipped had been built from distance, from imagination, from all the tender lies youth whispers to itself.

When dawn broke, he walked through the silent streets and smiled. The longing had ended. What he had mistaken for love was merely the echo of admiration — a ghost from a gentler time.

That was anemoia: the yearning for what never was.
And at last, he was free.