During such afternoons when frustration seems to be my proper state of mind and attack modes are all but vague memories of first year first sem fiascoes, it is when I've met the pretty chinese girl who had that very, very mischievous smile.

I could not help but blush when she flashed that smile to me. I was dead wondering why such a mischievous smile could produce so much hatred and fury and madness in my soul. It was a smile like no other, and it created feelings in me that I hitherto haven't experienced before. It was a surreal kind of emotion that made me shrink.

However, she was terribly beautiful. As if I need to remind myself that we all live in a terrible world.

"When I am king you will be first aginst the wall" says Radiohead, in Paranoid Android. The song plays over and over in my head as long as she was in sight.

Drunk with that fury, I rush out of the oven where we were first acquainted. It was terrible, and not even C2 and a smoke could release the tension inside. Normally such a treat would have made me ok. Today, however, the matter seemed as complicated as it is terrible. I was so confiused, so harassed and so enchanted.

I had grown up believing in the infinite harmlessness of pretty chinese girls; even Chun-li was, for me, a kitten waiting to be cuddled. But not with pretty chinese girls flashing mischievous smiles at me; that one certainly destroyed the composure I have so painstakingly tried to raise.

I now try my best to avoid getting anywhere near the place where she had flashed her smile on me, although at such afternoons I remain unconsolably frustrated. Even though attack modes are but ancient histories left without any material proofs, I still desire to stroll around this terrible world unmolested; unmolested, to say the least, by pretty chinese girls flashing mischievous smiles. May I be able to dream in peace. 

"It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing."              - Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Was I pretending to be the image of happiness when I saw her  seemingly happy and in love with my office subordinate?

I had to show a good face. Flash a nice smile. But truth hurts, quite dearly in my context. Truly the history of man has never heard of a man so hurt and so sad.

Right. As if my existence really mattered. Not that it's anything terribly special, but such a situation was not totally unprecedented. I think I am even lucky, i was spared the what could have been terrible questioning from people eager to see the side of me without much composure, without much tact. It was so simple, so bastardly painful and so irrationally real.

But then again, mine is a history of diminishing returns, malificence and categorical imperatives.

So when I saw her seemingly happy and in love with my office subordinate, all I had to do was to be the image of happiness.

Pretty depressing.