Aisha closed her laptop. She didn’t open the PDF again that night.

But to Aisha, it looked like a curse.

A strange feeling crept over her—not understanding, but companionship . Someone else had struggled through this. Someone else had turned cold, hard chemistry into a story.

Her eyes drifted to the margin of the PDF. Someone—a previous owner of the digital file—had left a faint, grey, highlighter mark. She zoomed in. It wasn’t a definition. It wasn’t a formula.