At the KLCC stop, almost everyone in the train got off, including the three girls who had rudely chatted over her head, much to her relief. There were empty seats around her now, but she headed straight for the back of the train and found a seat by the window. An old woman with a straw bag full of rags was nodding off a few feet away and two teenage boys were seated a row ahead of her, arguing about futsal.

She sat down, immediately drawing one of her knees up towards her, resting her foot on the front seat that was perpendicular to hers. The cassette in the Walkman had stopped, so she reached into her bag to turn it over. She knew nobody listened to audio cassettes anymore, but unlike the other girls in her dorm, she couldn't even afford a Discman, let alone a portable mp3 player. So she held on to her brother's Walkman, passed onto her when she went to college.

She woke up this morning knowing she had to take a ride. The good thing about being in a public university was there were too many students to keep track of, so nobody would know she had ditched the day's classes and left the school grounds. When the man behind the counter asked for her destination, she told him "Pasar Seni" without thinking, knowing full well she had no intention of getting off there.

It was something she started in her second year at college. She would do it every Sunday. She would pay for a pass, got on, rode the train till its last stop, got off, crossed to the opposite track, and wait for the next train to arrive and do it all over again. It seems the only place she could be alone. It didn't matter to her that the train was never completely empty, the other patrons were people she did not know, would never meet again, so she didn't really care. She could just sit by a window, watch the cars below, the big houses blurring by, peer into the darkness of the tunnels and think. Or not think. Just be lost amongst strangers.

When the train stopped, a man walked in from the other compartment. She noticed him when she got on, he was wearing a T-shirt with a cannabis leaf on it. There were plenty of empty seats but he couldn't seem to find a spot he liked. He looked at her and frowned, as if to accuse her of taking his favorite seat in the train, then settled for one by the doors.