Gloria is a university student. She is beautiful, smart, and intelligent. Almost every man in her department has a crush on her. However, Gloria is a lady who is focused on her studies.
She is in the same chemistry department as Joseph. Joseph is interested in her, but he doesn't know how to approach her and express his feelings. He is also afraid of her response. He keeps thinking to himself, "Maybe she will reject me."
Among all the men in the department, Joseph is probably the last person anyone would expect Gloria to accept. This is because he is an introvert. He is not as extroverted as the other men. His introverted personality makes him appear timid and less confident.
So Joseph decides that he will start writing anonymous notes and sending them to Gloria. He puts his plan into action, and every morning, he tries to leave a short handwritten note for her.
He does this in a clever way. Whenever the students are entering the lecture hall, usually as a crowd, Joseph waits behind until Gloria has taken her seat. He then follows the crowd into the hall and secretly places the note on her desk without her noticing.
Suddenly, Gloria would notice a small piece of paper on her desk. She would pick it up and read it, only to discover that it was an anonymous message.
Joseph finds it easier to express his feelings through these notes than to stand in front of Gloria and tell her how he feels.
At first, when Gloria sees the note, she simply tears it up. The second time, she does the same thing. The third time, she tears it up again.
However, as the notes continue to arrive, something changes. By the fourth time, Gloria begins to wonder who is actually leaving these notes for her. Her curiosity grows, and she becomes interested in finding out who the person behind them is.
Because Gloria had noticed that whenever they came in for lectures, she would always find a note on her desk, she began to pay closer attention to her surroundings.
However, Joseph would always outsmart her. After all, it is easy to deliver something to someone when they have no idea who is delivering it. So, while Gloria's attention was focused in a different direction, Joseph would sneak in from another angle, and boom! She would be caught unaware once again.
The clever way Joseph kept delivering the notes was beginning to interest her. She was becoming more curious about who this person was, and her curiosity continued to grow every day. She was no longer just interested in finding out who was behind the notes; she was also beginning to look forward to reading their contents.
She wanted to talk to this person, but she didn't know how to go about it.
As the notes continued to arrive and her efforts to discover the sender kept failing, Gloria could no longer contain herself.
One day, just after the lecturer had stepped out of the classroom, she walked to the front of the lecture hall and made an announcement.
She simply said,
Am going to keep a note where you kept it.
Having said that, she returned to her seat.
Nobody really understood what she was talking about, but Joseph, who was sitting in the front row, knew exactly who she was referring to.
He immediately began to feel nervous. He could sense that he was about to be discovered, and the truth was that he wasn't really prepared for it.
After the lectures, Joseph made sure nobody was watching him. He also kept an eye on Gloria to ensure she wasn't looking in his direction.
He then went to the exact spot where he had dropped the first note. And there it was, another note waiting for him.
He picked it up and opened it. Gloria had written a message telling him that they should meet at the school cafeteria by 3 p.m. Otherwise, he should forget about sending her any more notes.
Joseph had no choice but to meet her.
So, by 3 p.m., he made his way to the cafeteria, and there she was, waiting for him.
He approached the cafeteria, passed by her, and continued walking. Two minutes later, he came back and passed her again. Another two minutes later, he did the same thing. He kept walking past her and returning to the other end of the cafeteria over and over again until Gloria finally noticed him.
She looked at him and asked, "Joseph, why do you keep passing this way over and over again?"
He replied that he was waiting for someone.
She then asked, "Who could that be?"
Joseph told her that someone had written him a note asking him to meet them at the cafeteria. That was when he finally laid everything bare.
It took him a lot of courage to say those words, and honestly, it was quite cute.
Gloria simply smiled for a moment before asking, "So, you are the one behind all this?"
Joseph immediately began to apologise. Surprisingly, there was a new kind of courage flowing through him. Perhaps the hardest part was finally over.
I expected Gloria to get angry or react differently, but she did nothing of the sort. She simply smiled and told him, "You shouldn't have put me through all this stress. This was something you could have done in just one day."
From that day onward, they became very close friends. As time went on, their friendship began to develop into something more meaningful. Eventually, they started dating.
After completing their four-year university programme and subsequently participating in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme, they graduated and eventually got married.
And that was how Joseph fear of rejection, his anonymous notes, and a little courage turned into a beautiful love story.
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