Listening to murmurs that he could not understand or even hope to comprehend. In a unknown station he found himself lost, welcomed by the fear of a foreign world. Blinding technicolor lights that drowned thought and rationality gave the train station a purple haze that exuded an air of nightly freshness. The atmosphere was mellow and still despite the sounds of faceless passersby and distorted rhythms playing through speakers. If it was not for the lights and the sounds, the thing that would blind your eyes would be the constant waves of wind.

But among all the common, milquetoast faces, there was a woman that stood out. He could see her miles away, even if he was partly blind because of the lights. And as the distance was cut by the her hurried footsteps, he could see what was so special about that person: unique and attractive, but not imposing or intimidating. The girl herself was not particularly fashionable, but her natural being, in the most basic sense of the word, was rich.

Fluttered cheeks made of cherry blossoms gave the woman an air of innocent purity, while her visibly toned body exuded an air of feminine sexuality. Her face and physique formed a juxtaposition that justly created an image of divine duality that rivalled the concept of Ardhanari through individual perfection, at least in the eyes and perception of a boy who knew naught about the world and found himself in a constant state of loss of words.

Her perfection began at the waves of her nigh endless black hair, then travelled across her slender upper body, and ended on pale legs that possesed not a single blemish or bruise. Perhaps even life thought that hurting such a sculpture would be a sacrilege.

Truth is, he felt weak. There was an air of elegance around her, with a strong yet subtle hint of humbleness that made her fragrance humane and even more rich. Beautiful and painfully idealistic; almost surreal and most likely perfect.

And as she hopped on the train with natural movements that, at a first glance, seemed calculated, the man came across a grave realization: he was never going to see her again. He was a dreamer, but he was not naive; he knew that encounters with women of this kind were sparse treasures meant to be found once and, through the rich exercise of imagination, be cherised for a lifetime.

And in her lifetime, an infinite amount of things could happen: she could fall off the train and die unexpectedly (a death that would certainly be plastered all over the news in the most casual and transitory manner), she could marry the wrong kind of fella and suffer, or even worse: she could get a bad job and suffer the hell that is the stability of a monotonous life. All these things, and many more, of course, could happen, and there was nothing he could do about it. She was out of his reach, and so were all those circumstances that he would never witness.

As he thought about this, an acute and thunderous sadness stained his feelings; that night he wouldn't dream, he realized. The pain of sudden loss was frustrating and slightly enfuriating. Why had he met her, he thought? All those brief, charming memories were just pendants that would serve as a reminder of how unfair fate and life were for those fond of the romantic line of thinking.

This experience would serve as his first encounter with the harsh reality of the cycles of joy in life. He could only wish the most ideal life for her, and the less painful one for himself.

Lost and drunk in that foreign land dressed in neon lights, he became less romantic, and his dreaming essence was corrupted by the queer fragrance of realism.