99.Stop: The girl and the decision not made

The train had just started moving as the woman sank into the now-so-familiar cushions. Ninety-nine times she had boarded the train, ninety-eight stops she had seen. None of them had been hers, but she wasn’t too worried. She still had three tickets left and felt that she was almost there.

The train had mostly emptied out by now. As her gaze swept through the rows of seats, she spotted only one figure left. The girl with the hoodie sat a few rows ahead. The woman stood up and walked over to her. “Still here?” she asked in a soft tone.

The girl looked up from the window, surprised. “Oh… I thought I was the last one,” the girl’s voice was high and quiet, barely more than a whisper, yet the woman could hear her clearly. The only sounds around them were the barely audible rattling of the train and the creaking of the seats.

The woman sat down. “How many tickets do you have left?”

“Um… No specific number,” the girl replied, pulling something out of the pocket of her jacket. It was a ticket, slightly larger than the ones which the woman had seen so far, and it shimmered golden rather than the usual dull brown.

The woman frowned. “What’s that?”

The girl gave a half-smile. “A sort of VIP ticket. The lady at the station said that with this card, I can travel as far as I want and get off wherever I want. No one can steal it from me, either.”

A surprised “Wow” escaped the woman. “That’s definitely something special. You must’ve been exemplary, huh?”

The girl’s smile turned sad. “I don’t think so. It’s more of a curse than a blessing, really. Every time I see a stop, I look for every possible flaw. And when I get back on the train, I wonder if maybe that was the stop where I could’ve been happy forever. Who knows, maybe I’ve already missed it.”

“Hmm. Not everything that glitters is gold,” the woman replied thoughtfully.

“No, it’s not.”

The two sat in silence for a while before the girl spoke again. “What about you? Do you also have a cursed golden ticket?”

The woman laughed. “No, fortunately… or unfortunately, I don’t,” she said, pulling out her last three tickets. “I was just given a lot of these.”

Silence fell again. Unlike usual, when a conversation comes to an awkward halt, this quiet wasn’t uncomfortable. For both women, it seemed almost healing, soothing—like a peaceful moment shared between two old acquaintances.

“What would the perfect stop look like for you?”

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“I’m not sure,” the girl replied. The question clearly gave her a lot to think about. “I like many things, but I don’t know for how long. A beach and sun would be nice, but it’d get boring quickly. I like animals, but in cages, they make me sad, and free, they can be dangerous. It’s hard to say. What about you?”

“I think it would be similar for me. There are so many things that seem like paradise at first glance, but only reveal themselves as hell on the second,” the woman said, her thoughts drifting to previous stops—the lonely cliffs, the hungry card trees, the lost child… “There’s always something you might overlook.”

The train began to slow down. “Will you come outside with me?” the girl asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

This time, the train tracks ran straight through a city. The woman and the girl stepped off into a pedestrian zone lined with flickering advertisement boards and towering iron sculptures of distorted humans and horses. They had landed in the hustle and bustle of a big city.

For a moment, both were speechless. It all seemed so comfortingly familiar, almost as if they had returned.

“We should look around,” the girl suggested, glancing at the woman.

“Yes… yes, we should,” the woman replied, still a little overwhelmed by the familiarity of it all.

They wandered through the streets, passing ice cream parlors and cafés, stepping in and out of bookstores and drugstores. Everything was just as it was back when they were alive. The songs of street musicians, the smells of bakeries, the colors of flowers planted in small parks scattered throughout. And though the shopping mall from before had looked no less real, it had felt much more surreal compared to this city.

When they came to a church tower, they seized the opportunity, ascending to take in the view. The city was even more beautiful from above. It stretched far but, surprisingly, not to the horizon. A suburban area of single-family homes separated it from the sky, and beyond that, in the distant haze, a barely perceptible chain of mountains. It looked almost real.

“It’s so beautiful here.” They hadn’t spoken for a long time. Instead they had simply walked side by side in silence, marveling at the world around them. So when she heared her the girls voice again, it took the woman a moment to catch her words.

“What? Oh, yes… Yes, it really is. Almost perfect.”

“But not quite perfect. Enough to make you happy, but not enough to keep its charm forever,” the girl said, gazing dreamily into the distance. “I’d stay here if I didn’t have to stay alone.”

For a brief moment—a mere fraction of a second—the woman considered offering to stay with the girl. She liked it here, too. But she knew this wasn’t the stop meant for her. Not for herself and not for the girl. And, above all, it wasn’t her place to convince the girl. Instead, she responded with a question: “Do you want to stay?”

She didn’t ask because she wanted to know the answer. She already knew it.

The girl sighed. “No.”

When they descended the steps, the train was already waiting for them. The girl turned around before boarding, taking one last look at the city. For a moment, she wavered—as she did at every stop—but ultimately, she stepped back onto the train, followed by the familiar feelings of uncertainty and regret.

As the train started moving, the woman didn’t sit next to the girl. She had taken a seat a few rows behind her. For the first time, she sat alone.

Her gaze shifted to the girl, and a hint of sadness crossed her face. The girl didn’t realize it yet, but she had already reached her stop. Her final, destined stop was the train itself. She would never disembark to stay, always riding the same train, seeing every stop, constantly rethinking and questioning her choices. She would never decide—out of fear of regret. Regret that, nevertheless, would accompany her every step as she would leave and returne to the train.