Documenting awkward MRT interactions that shouldn’t be remembered, but played on repeat in my head for I couldn’t scroll:
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Accidentally made eye contact with a woman subconsciously sipping boba¹. I hadn’t actually seen anything, but she reacted as if she were caught red-handed. Her guilty, wandering glance gave her away, thus out of sheer embarrassment, she pulled her black mask up over her nose, cast her eyes downward, and began casually scrolling.
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Two adjacent seats opened up in a row of five, and the old man instantly snagged the middle one when he already had the side seat, now leaving single open seats on his left and right. In that split second walking through the door, d was also trying to snag two spots, but was beat. He must really hate couples.
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The poodle was leaning comfortably out the cage the owner intentionally left opened. In my mind, “Someone call animal control, it could run any second!”
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I held onto the handle near the entrance, keeping a distant from the center of action. As the car began to accelerate, my body swayed against the motion, still at rest. When the car stopped, I stumbled backward, my limb still pinned to the handle. Then a man comes in, standing underneath where the handle should’ve been. His head was an inch away from my bloody hands, the tips of his hair grazing back of my hand. I wanted to die inside.
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Caught a woman flying sideways with a single arm. She had reached out and grabbed thin air as the train lurched forward, sending her catapulting in slow-mo and sailing across two seats before landing near arms length.
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Saw a woman doing ninja fruit slashing mid air while eyes glued to the phone and heading up the escalator. I wondered if she had invisible VR sets on and that I should be calling the subway police.
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A lady dropped her boba drink halfway down the stairs which sloshed a bit right onto a foreigners corduroys. Luckily it didn’t spill out completely, otherwise I wouldn’t feel bad for chuckling in silence.
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Far too many boomers watching AI dramas on their commute.
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Caught a girl in an awkward position as her head’s stuck inside the crook of man’s arm as he held onto the overhead handle that swung to the other side of her head. They clearly weren’t lovers, as she immediately scrambled to empty space when the car loosened up.
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A man’s head was right underneath my overhead handle, which was pulled sideways. If I’d let go, it would’ve swung straight into his face, which his eyes were glued to stupid shorts. Urgh, why aren’t men ever aware of the space they take up?
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A young man, looking like an Asian Mike Faist in khakis and a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, in his mid-to-late 20s, stood at a 90° angle to a girl in knee-high socks, shorts, and a dark hoodie. The girl seemed a little young to be dating the guy, though they both could have been college students. With his calm eyes but furrowed brow, he took subtle notices of his surroundings while made no eye contact with the girl nor spoke. The girl stared blankly at the sweater in her hands. All the tension was trapped in that nook by the door, and I was smiling, typing it all down from the reflection in the window.
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Its prime time to buy in, I texted d, glancing over at the lady next to me as she placed an order for 0050 at 89.75 ².
Open for submissions.
Footnotes
- We call it MRT here. And eating and drinking are (strictly) forbidden.
- The reason why I have blackout screen covers; its the ideal time to trade during busy hours.