“Where are you going?”
The girl didn’t know if that was directed to her. If she was smarter, maybe, she would have done the better thing. Taken the path of least resistance. Kept her head down, and hoped that her messy hair—that thankfully, hadn’t caught on her earrings yet because her last hair tie had snapped, like straw on a camel’s back, and she didn’t know where the extra rubber bands she packed were—would hide her face.
But Ann didn’t. Maybe it was some instinctual thing, some underlying driving mechanism that she couldn’t begin to understand let alone stop, forcing her to look up. She… Ann was reminded, from time to time, the words her mother whispered to her in the spaces that only belonged to them. There were many things that she had said to Ann, and above all else it was this: a woman could only ever look out for herself.
And maybe all those lessons that Ann had learnt had a purpose, and still those might be the words that followed her wherever she walked. But beyond all of that, what stayed with Ann was her voice.
A hateful black sound, of shouts or worse a low muttering, one that she’s always had a hard time reconciling with all the insightful things her mother had to say. For all her faults, and Mother had many before her lungs decided they didn’t want to be the vehicle for her venom anymore, Ann couldn’t help but love her. Perhaps she’ll never like her mother, but at the very least love was something hard to take back when it was first given.
(“Ann,” she had said, “People have always been consumed with this need, the first need, I think. The need for others to understand them. Your father, the fool he was, wanted to be an artist that everyone could connect with. It is a parasite—”
And so was so many of the other needs that plagued daughter and the rest, but somehow the mother was immune from—
“And if you do not control it, you’ll lose yourself. In the pursuit of letting others know you when you don’t even know yourself.”)
Ann looked up, at the woman that had the mind to stop here. Their eyes met, and connection was the other name for the spark that went through her. Then there went through her another instinct; the way she clutched her thigh for the switchblade in her pocket was automatic. So was the way she relaxed when she felt it there, still where it was meant to be.
“Are you alright?” The woman asked again, subconsciously coming closer to her. Funnily enough, if Ann was looking at her mouth, she would have thought that question came from somewhere else, through the veil of seawater. Garbled sound, distorted, and a product of the imaginings that her mind liked to plague her with.
The other woman was dressed in a crisp button up shirt, and a navy skirt dotted with specks of white like stars. Her hair was undone, the bun she had unravelled and ended as loops framing her face. Ann didn’t think the woman—Rei, her name tag read—even realised it, stuck in the present. Focused on what she had to do now, the places she had to be, and apparently the girl sitting on the bench of the busy underground rail station.
“Fine.” Ann said more curtly than she wanted to. Then, a bit dumbly, “Your hair’s loose.”
Rei’s hands went automatically to her shoulders, sudden, jarring, before she forcibly relaxed. “Huh, I guess it is.” The other woman smiled, and Ann could see her embarrassment. And something else too, the thing that caused her to jump like a cat on a hot tin roof.
“I…” Ann swallowed, and breathed freely, maybe the first time in a while, “Wherever the wind leads me.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s where I’m going. But—sometimes,” And it pained her to admit this, but it was the truth, a truth that could only exist here, a place filled but still so empty, “I can’t tell what direction that is.”
Rei’s teeth flashed—she was a smiler, Ann knew. But it was wrong. Tense? No, scared was closer. Worried. The corners of her eyes were tight, an edge of manic exhaustion that was only clear when you looked at the edges of what made up a person.
“Are you going somewhere too?”
Ann noticed another thing. The way silence lingered after that question. She’s used to being in places like this, these liminal spaces, vast swathes of the empty and the abandoned. Ann made a game of it, and this place is no different. It wasn’t like either of them were isolated—the opposite if anything, but what did that matter? Everyone was immersed in their own lives, diffusing into positions that could be seen from a bird’s eye view. And still Ann thought the irony was hilarious; the idea that they could have been surrounded by a circle of faces, and still be alone. Still be hidden and unknown.
“I’m waiting for someone. He’ll be here soon.”
“Which train? I heard there’s going to be a delay on the 921 line—an avalanche fell onto the rails this morning.”
“A delay?” She said, like tasting those words on her tongue, “Maybe. He was supposed to be here before sunset.”
At that, the bright fluorescent light blinked for a moment before coming back online. Ann lost track of time too, sometimes, but it was well past midnight by now.
“And you’re still waiting?”
Rei’s face fell. “What else am I meant to do? Go home?”
She huffed out a laugh, low and amused. It was a bitter sound, and it rang in Ann’s ears.
The other woman couldn’t help but feel a kinship with Rei. Two people, all alone in their world. Or maybe Ann was projecting, a small part of her said. That maybe—like her mother said so many times, connection was weakness, that attempting to find that connection was a cruelty man inflects onto themselves—she wanted to see herself in the things around her.
It won’t be the first time. The self is like a lens, and the tint of the glasses that everyone uses to see the world.
(“Everyone moves to serve themselves, Ann,” were the words a girl heard, as her mother’s hand cradled her cheek, “and that pesky thing people call sympathy or empathy are just the things people feel when they see themselves in others. We don’t know how to not think about ourselves.”
The woman smiled at her, but even an outsider would find it hard to call it the kind of smile a mother gave to her daughter.
“I’ll tell you once, dear, and only once: the world is an unimaginably big place. Fate or the universe, or whatever you delude yourself into believing in, doesn’t care about you. The wheels of time just spin, spin.”)
Maybe that makes her a cynic. Maybe she’s scared. Whatever her mother told her, on all those days that stretched into years and decades, Ann didn’t know if she bought any of it anymore.
She stared into Rei’s eyes, and she swore she saw that same old loneliness looking back at her, like a silver mirror.
“I would. There’s no point in waiting for something that might never come.”
“No, I doubt that. You’re the type to bundle yourself in a castle and throw away the key.” Again she has that polite smile on her face and her eyes—which were dull before, disconnected and sorrowful, lonely maybe—now were sharp.
“I’d be surprised if you—”
Ann clenched her jaw. She knew how that sentence was about to end. “You don’t even know my name. Hell, you know nothing about me, so don’t pretend you’ve got me all figured out.”
Rei sighed softly, like someone who’d given up the fight, “We’re all the same. Pretend all you like, but at the end of the day, it’s always the same story.”
“… That’s not true.”
“Is it?” Rei gave her a sad glance, like her pity was somehow a kindness, “Why are you here, then?”
Rei leaned in closer, closer than Ann ever expected a stranger to, until they were looking at each other eye to eye. “What are you looking for?”
Something made her more honest than she should have been. “Connection—purpose, understanding, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it.” Ann stutters out, feeling like someone’s caught her in the act. That somehow whatever cloak of anonymity that she surrounded herself like armour was gone. Ann was just another wanderer at the cross-roads, and somehow this woman—Ann’s eyes went to Rei’s name tag again—had plucked her out from a crowd. Seen her, somehow, some way.
Rei stared at her again, still too close. She followed Ann’s gaze to her tag, and laughed. “I guess you already know my name. What’s yours? Names carry meaning, you know.”
“I… I’m Ann.”
She didn’t know why she responded. She didn’t know what motivated her to say it. It felt like being trapped in a moment of truth then it didn’t. Rei moved back a little, her eyes darting around looking for something. And then they met Ann’s again. Rei’s look hardened.
What happened next caught Ann off guard. If someone asked her to explain it, she would be stumped on where to start. Rei, poised and gentle, reached for her blouse, snatching by the collar with her fist. She dragged Ann, into a dark corner, through and behind the door labelled with a ‘STAFF ONLY’ sign, shoving her against the dirty wall.
It was rough, the chipping plaster jagged enough in some places to dig into her back through her T-shirt. Ann moved more on instinct than anything else—she gave it as good as she got, nails clawing at Rei’s star-patterned skirt. She put her forearm against Rei’s unexplained violence, and got scratched badly for her trouble. Ann tried to pivot Rei’s weight against her, hoping that somehow she could throw the other woman off balance and make a run for it. In the end, both of them ended up face first on the floor.
Through the door, Ann couldn’t help but note manically, she could still hear the tell-tale sounds of a train stopping. That was her way out of here, that had to be, because—
Rei, with her sharp grip on Ann’s hair, snapped her head downwards to the floor. Ann could feel it—even if it might have been just in her head—the crunch of bone, blood seeping down her nose—
She pushed Rei off her with all the strength that came from someone fighting for their life.
The room that Rei had pulled them both into had a table pushed to the corner, and Ann used this to her advantage. She grabbed Rei’s left shoulder and dragged them both up, trapping the other woman by the desk. Ann guessed that the last thing people who died violent deaths remembered before they were cut short had to be the sound of it all, how it echoed. It had to be, because all Ann could feel was the heaving of her breaths, in, out, in, out, and her deafening heartbeat. It felt like her heart could burst out of her chest any moment now. Rei was trying her best to shove her off, but—
Her hand moved quick, without her even wanting to. Ann didn’t think she understood exactly what she was doing, until Rei went pliant below her.
“Don’t.”
Her switchblade laid between them, cradled between the flex of her fingers, and Rei’s neck. She’d already flicked it open, and even against the dim filtered-through light of the supply closet Ann was sure that Rei could see the gleam of its sharp edge.
Ann panted, hoping that there was some better way to get air into her lungs again, “Why… why did you—”
“If you don’t put away the knife, I’m going to scream. I’ll make sure—”
Ann moved the blade to the side, using her wrist instead to put pressure on Rei’s throat. Ann could feel Rei’s heart, too, the blood rushing through her carotid arteries. The woman in the star-speckled skirt stilled, like the weight of everything had just come crashing down on her.
Then, someone spoke. Ann knew that it had to be her, but the words didn’t sound like they belonged to her, cold, distant. “How are you planning on doing that, Rei?”
There was a cacophony of emotions on Rei’s face. Funny, how fear made us so clear to other people. The woman cycled through a dull sort of panic, then the first stirrings of anger, before settling on something that looked a lot like contentment. It made a strange picture: her skirt, the one that contained the heavens, was still perfectly pressed, and it was jarring against her dishevelled hair.
A lock of Ann’s own hair dropped onto Rei’s cheek. She smiled.
“Ann—to see is to be seen.”
They were breathing as one.
“Isn’t this what you were searching for—”Ann felt her speak more than she heard it, vibrations transferring skin to skin, “… right?”
Rei moved her hand, without fear, past Ann’s face, brushing a thumb against the stars that adorned her ears.
“I don’t know much but…” Rei glanced up at her, with an ease that was out of place, like she knew somehow that everything would be fine even with a knife at her throat, “We’re all made of the same star-stuff.”
She laughed, again. Free from it all, whatever doubts that had plagued her earlier vanished like pollen in the wind. “The Cosmos is within us.”
Writer – Areeba Zabrina
Editor – Lakshya Narooka
Artist – Khemjira Phutirat
–June 2026–
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