Valentine forever...

He wrote his name on a piece of paper that lay besides the old Linux machine in the Computer lab that he was using to jot down a rough draft of his proof for the Math question. She read it, pronounced it very slowly. She looked at him after finishing, and he had a disappointed look in his eyes at the same time as he was nodding his head as if to say "Yea!".
"Oh! I guess I got it all wrong! I am sorry. How is this pronounced?"
"No ... it's okay ... It's just that ..."
"No what is it?"

How in the world could I have guessed that the letters "ll" together could ever be pronounced like "kh" and not "ll", she thought.

Oh she actually cares, he smiled sheepishly as he thought.

What she didn't think was that he would take her gesture to be really thoughtful, and what he didn't think was that was just her nature ...

That was the first meeting of these two vividly opposite individuals - Him being not-so-quiet not-so-intelligent-but-hard-working short-statured guy and her being the smarter, taller, shyer kinds. He was from England - the part where "ll" is read as "kh", and she was from America, where "ll" written is taught as "ll". Regardless of these minute differences, the Math course provided the medium for them to interact, for her to teach him stuff that she felt so at home with, and for him to pretend that he didn't know stuff so he could spend some more time with her - her continuously talking and him, well, disappearing into his magical world, sheltered by the cocoon of her words. He was well aware of the state of ecstasy that he was in when he was with her, and the intolerable pain of the time he wasn't. He was in a fix as to whether he should tell her about those inexplicable feelings? Was she in the same boat as him? After all, she cared how she pronounced his name; she put effort teaching him the Taylor's series and the Chi Square test; she made him not miss home as much as he would have otherwise.

It is weird how a human being - one single entity - holds two different opinions about one thing at the exact same time. He was going back to Wales at the end of this semester regardless of whether he told her or not, and regardless of whether she accepted his proposal or not. He did not want to miss the one chance of asking her to be with him for their entire life.Given the assumption that she accepted him as her life partner, would he move to US or would she move to Wales with him? After much debating, when being with her and controlling his emotions was proving to be no less agonizing than the desire of possessing her, he decided to throw the ball in her court, and let her take control of it.

It was almost the end of the term, and he had about a month before he was leaving for Wales. She was heading towards the library after the class ended at 4:00 p.m. He invited her for a coffee. December approaching, there was a warm kind of chill in the wind. She was blabbering about how the Vietnamese Math TA of her section was a meretricious guy when she noticed him unexceptionally quiet and thoughtful. She calmed down, and waited patiently for him to talk.

"I am going back on 20th December."
"Hmm. All set?"
"Uh. Umm."
Her eyes did the questioning for her this time. What is it?
Gravely came the reply, "Will you be my Valentine forever?"
She went blank for the longest two seconds of her life. How? Why? Now? I mean, isn't he going away for what's called forever? Was I supposed to tell him?
His voice cut through the voice of her mind. "You do not have to answer this. It's okay.I have been thinking about you for a while now, and the feeling of being so much in love has forced me to walk upto you and ask this question. I do not even know that if you choose to say yes, what vision should I hold of our future. It's just that I felt like asking you and ..."
"May be I ought to have told you, or I thought I did tell you - I am sorry if I didn't, I am married."