koi no yokan (恋の予感 – “The premonition of love”)

The subtle sense, upon first meeting someone, that you will inevitably fall in love with them.

There are certain nights that don’t end.
Not in sleep.
Not in silence.
Not even in forgetting.

I met her between two seconds. Not a full moment

no, something briefer. Something before memory, before decision. The way a drop of ink might already know it’s meant to spill into a poem. That’s when I felt it: koi no yokan, not quite love, not yet, but the certainty that it will be.
I think my heart bowed before I did.

She didn’t say much. But it was the way she looked at empty chairs, as if they all remembered someone. The way she picked at coffee mugs like the rim held secrets. You don’t fall for people like her.
You remember that you already did.

I tried to fight it with logic, measured breaths, practiced detachment. But koi no yokan is a liar. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t ask. It settles. Like smoke in a closed room. Like light through paper walls.
And that night, I wasn’t breathing smoke, i was inhaling her inevitability.

I don’t know her name.
But I know I’ll love her.
And in some ways, maybe I already do.
That’s the cruelty of koi no yokan
it’s not love.
It’s worse.
It’s the whisper before the scream.
It’s the outline before the absence.
It’s knowing the fire is coming, and warming your hands anyway.

And if you ever feel it…
You’ll understand.
This wasn’t a meeting.
It was a prophecy.

–aaditya