It's cold. Too cold for anyone's good. I clamber onto the train, flop myself down on a seat and unzip my coat. Grabbing my hat, I rub some feeling back into my cheeks and nose. I look up, and there she is.
A beautiful girl, in all possible ways. I feel I can tell it, though she wears layer upon layer of clothing and has most of her head covered too. Her thin dark curving eyebrows frame what is visible of her: a milky-coloured perfect face. Large, beautifully grey eyes twinkle at me from their sockets, curling up at the sides into a pretty arch down to her cheeks. Her nose is right where it should be, complementing a symmetric face in a quirky but pretty way that makes me want to keep looking.
I do, too. I keep looking over that face again and again. The train moves on, with station upon station whizzing past and a white countryside slowly melting into the afternoon sunset. Suddenly I find I'm not cold anymore. Just looking at that perfect, warm face with small but full and luscious lips makes me feel warm. For the first time, I catch myself admiring the shape of someone's jawbone. The warmth that she gives me grows into an urge, breaking out on my cheeks that blush not due to the cold but because of her.
Suddenly I see much more of her than just her beautifully framed face. She's wearing a black, loose-fitting hat pulled down below her ears, a dark green woollen scarf wrapped around her neck numerous times, and a medium-length black coat with gold-coloured buttons. My god she's nice.
I flash a smile, hoping that those starlets will see it in their cold perfection. It's pathetic, I know, but still I do it. It's the first time I smile at a stranger, and all the while I'm doing it questions pound the back of my head. Questions are halted like a needle ripped off a record player when I notice the eyes take focus, the cheeks move and the lips part.
In a split second hormones drive the air out of my lungs and make my chest feel constricted beyond belief. Her lips curve upward into an amazing smile, like a carefully constructed machine creating pure perfection.
I feel so ugly. I feel so unworthy. But I keep smiling.
We sit like that, looking into each others' eyes for what was maybe a few minutes but seemed infinitely longer. Then she let out a little laugh and sighed.
"Isn't that a little comical?" she says, with peals of bells in her voice.
"What is?" I manage.
"You, me, staring at each other, smiling for no reason." That voice is both girly and womanly, with a hint of deepness and of innocent beauty. I'm stupefied.
"There is a reason..."
I want to say that I think she's the cutest thing I've seen. But that would be trite. It would be stupid to say that she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It all seems so low, so base when dealing with this woman.
"Sometimes you just get a feeling you want to smile. You gave me that feeling." Stupid, stupid, stupid... I said that? I'm embarrassed that I even smiled at her.
"Oh yeah? Well then, thank you and you're very welcome. You made my day." She giggles a bit, hunching her shoulders a bit in a likeness to some cartoon character girl.
For the rest of the trip, I'm in a daze. I can't remember if I said anything, I can't remember what I did. I just remember her getting off at a stop (my stop, incidentally) and throwing one last look and smile at me before turning around to disembark. I followed a bit behind.