First-ever and an illicit rendezvous, I was sitting in front of her, feeling like many decades of the yen and quest had come to an end . Feeling like I was given a high dose of Dopamine and Ketamine, begetting eminent pleasure and the sense of contentment in me, disconnecting me from everything except her. Her impeccable, white round face slightly pointed towards the chin was cradled in the black scarf like a fourteenth day moon in the sable sky. I was in a trance, groping for the boundary between reality and reverie. We neither spoke a word nor moved, kept staring at each other as if we were dumb and paralyzed. I was elated, satisfied, grateful. But her face was blank, expressionless, and her big black eyes were not blinking at all. I wanted to live the moment, wanted to stop the time, eternally.
Suddenly, an irritating and piercing sound shattered my body. Everything vanished, she disappeared, and I realized that it was a dream, a beautiful dream, more than my life without her. That was the sound of the alarm, a reminder for university. I began to loathe reality like we all do when we have a dream, which takes us to a world we crave, the world of our fantasies. And suddenly we are hurled into a reality, which is deprived of everything we had in our dream. In spite of that, everyone would prefer reality over a dream, and so did I, and got out of my bed begrudgingly.
Window seat of university bus, headphones, chewing gum in mouth, perhaps it was one those reasons, I didn't want to miss university. I got on the bus and sat on my favorite seat, the window seat, fished out my headphones and put them on. Sharp pang arose inside me. Dream again! I felt like I had been exiled from a country I loved the most, the country full of happiness, the country which accommodated her, the country in which she was mine, only mine. During my journey to and from university, the only irritating thing in summer was scorching beams of sunlight through the naked windows of the bus. That day, during my way to the university, the dream was consistently disrupting me and distracting me from the music in headphones, Even my best collection of songs couldn't help it. But I knew gradually and slowly I would forget that dream unless I had another one like that.
When I arrived at University Peter was standing there, his bus used to come earlier than mine. He opened his arm and greeted me with a routine hug. We hung around there for other friends. In no time, all of my friends gathered there, and we ambled towards the canteen.
Simon, a sharp-witted, humorous guy, purchased a cigarette from the mini shop and sat on a rickety wooden chair while I perched myself on the empty crate of cold drinks. He put the cigarette between his dark lips, lit it up, and reeked whirling smoke in the air. He offered it to me, I hesitated at first, but then I took it and inhaled smoke, and I started to cough. Everyone was laughing at me. I was not experienced in smoking, and I was proud of that. I gave the cigarette back to Simon, he finished it quickly and stabbed it against the wall. After smoking, he started to tease Kelvin. We used to make fun of his pronunciation. I joined Simon and offered Kelvin a difficult word. I persuaded him to pronounce, and he never disappointed us with his unique talent. He created a new pronunciation for that word. Kelvin was a nice guy, a naif, not very clever but argumentative.
We tramped towards the old classroom, mayhap it was more than thirty years old but furnished with relatively new chairs. As usual, our classroom's multimedia was not working, and peon was trying his best to restore it. Actually, no one wanted to complain about multimedia because it was like an angel who used to save us from tiresome and dreary lectures. Almost everyone used to like those glitches, but they didn't do it explicitly, even our position holder Aden.
I reserved seats for Aden and Steve in the third row. They were my best friends, the second reason I went to university. We were together from the first year of university. Aden was a studious boy and was very conscious about his GPA. Steve was a free bird, he didn't care about his grades.
We were very few students in the class. I was waiting for someone, for my third reason. I used to lie to myself that "this can't be the reason" but actually it was, to some extent in the initial days, and to a greater extent in the final days of university. My eyes were fixed at the door, this time not for my friends but for her. Almost after ten minutes she appeared wearing a purple scarf, walked to a chair in the second row. She gave a glance at me without any expression. I began to feel happy I started to believe that she was noticing me, considering me. I was exorbitantly optimistic towards her, where ever she sat in the class, wherever she went, whatever she did, I used to conclude that she is doing for me, to get close to me. Although I knew that my assumptions were baseless, absurd, preposterous. Many times I had to face grievous reality but never gave up like an obstinate child.
Soon Steven emerged in the classroom with a pretentious smile on his face and squiz directly at Katherine. He said hello and started the conversation with her as he got closer. Oh! I forgot to tell you her name, it is Katherine.
"I love dreaming, because in my dreams, you're actually mine"