An Old Friend

And I got off the bus, half sleepy, half awake. While picking up my luggage from the upper compartments within the bus, the corner of my right eye caught a glimpse of a familiar face. He is a friend from college - he was a friend from college. Someone I knew, someone I hung out with. With a single image memories of a distant past flashed through my mind - all the times the ten of us were hung on the monkey bars within the park in front of our college, all the times we, the largest group in class, entered with pride, all the places we ate at, all the times we calculated who paid more or who paid less, all those Foosball tournaments and all those moments of joy. I was ashamed to face him. Looking at how I have fallen in these years, I no longer have the courage to stand in front of anyone who knew me. I am not a lost cause, but I am certainly not the person they used to know. Everything they admired, idolised, and praised me for is gone, replaced with traits, better or worse. I left the scene to collect my luggage from outside the bus, while staring intently at the bus doors for him to come out. Would he recognise me? I have changed a lot. Does he remember me? Does anyone of them remember me? I wonder. And then he stepped out, his pupils expanded and his face surprised. I saluted him, a natural reflex it is, while he called out my name. Damn! So they do remember who I am. We had little to talk about, eerie silence, pesky hesitation, the both of us knew nothing to talk about. I was more up front, had some generic questions ready, while he answered half-heartedly. My mind wandered off on a trail of its own, in quest of figuring out what went wrong? Was I the one that left the group? Or were they the ones who abandoned me? Does that question truly matters? He told me how all of them had been meeting, not frequently but time to time, and have been in touch. And then we parted ways. With a heavy heart I knew there was no way to go back, but I certainly will never forget: the best, and probably only, friend group I was ever a part of.

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