NS1/EW24

We have come to this: the last, but also the first. The beginning, but also the ending.

For years I thought this was the station I loved most. With its triple island platforms and winding tracks, it was easy to ignore the people pushing and rushing past me. Be it from the ground, in the bus to school or being a part of it on one of the trains. How I loved every single part of it.

The year I was turning eighteen, I came here for the first time. Half bangs that covered my right eye and a beanie to hold my hair in place. I was that sad girl, only just separated from someone who came to be the wind. Someone who actually loved me.

I prayed for years to find someone like this. I struggled through 2012, mourning over someone who didn't care, and finally found the light at the end of the tunnel: him. The one who brought me to the North-South Line, and the North-South Line to me.

After school we constantly came here, and it became a routine for me to send him off in 160, on to Johor. Or him to send me off in 197, back to my home in Paya Lebar. You could even catch a glimpse of our ghosts here, him in his ITE uniform and me with my bright blue backpack.

There used to be a Wendy's which we frequented. The way he slurped on his beef chili and always remembered my usual order. That one time when I opened the door a little too hard and it hit a lady standing at the side. Where we held each other's hands across the table, where I couldn't stop staring at him because I was so in love.

But walk a little further to the back, and you'll see a couple arguing. She can't let him go, her arms bound tight around his, but all he does is shove her off. She grabs his bag and runs away with it and he chases her, pulling on her arm.

It gets to the point where you want to step in and do something but you can't, because they're ghosts. The boy wins in the end, and leaves her to die. She sits on the stairwell where everyone passes by her, not paying her any attention. She can't stop crying, wiping her tears on that thin grey cardigan.

She is soon replaced with a girl in a pink butterfly t-shirt, six months older than the previous ghost. She isn't crying this time, but you can see the anxiousness on her face. The anticipation, impatience, nervousness. She finally perks up in your direction; the same boy passes right next to you and walks over to her.

He is in a white polo tee, ITE emblazoned on the chest. The commas appear at the top of his mouth when he smiles, while she grins until the fang pokes out the corner of hers. They hug, and it is a stark contrast to their fight just earlier.

They walk away and you follow, watching the boy shyly grab her hand. I missed you, he says, his voice echoing across and to you. You watch them sit on the two steps at the end of the atrium, where the escalators to the station are, sharing a box of kuey teow.

A train departs, making you look up to it and stare until it's beyond the horizon. By the time you look back down they are gone too, replaced yet again. She is now in a black cardigan and with short hair, while his hair is gone and he looks tanner and more muscular.

She's in tears again, but he isn't shoving her away this time. Instead he looks like he's about to cry too, looking at her in this state. You stand close enough to hear her say I miss her, until another train comes along and smothers their voices.

That train was on its way to the south, just like their relationship was.

He brought me to places all over and I obliged until in the end, I fell for everything else but him. He rendered me unable to love another human being. His leaving opened some doors that took all my soul to close, as well as the closing of the one door that I kept banging on until my hand almost fell off.

And I am so sorry, I have tried. But I will always hold a grudge, one that even I myself find hard to live with. I don't think anyone should ever love someone who, deep in her core, still hates him to his.

The train approaching Platform A will end its service at Jurong East Platform D. It was a warning all along, foreshadowing the ending that came to be. And we ignored it despite hearing it at every station prior.

His footsteps that walked towards me will never erase the ones that walked away. And that is the reason why the station I loved with all my heart came to be the one I hate with all my soul. Why the boy I thought was my saviour came to be the man that ruined everything.