Bedtime romance short story
As soon as I boarded the bus, I noticed her: she was wearing denim, carrying an elegant little bag on her shoulder, and her dimples danced on her rosy cheeks while her big eyes gleamed with a gentle light. How wonderful it would be to get to know such a beautiful and gentle girl! But how should I start a conversation with her? Asking the time would be too cliché; asking if she was getting off the bus would be too shallow; and saying we might have met somewhere before would be unbearably trite.
I put a 5-kopek coin into the automatic ticket machine, and it immediately spat out a ticket. Thank goodness, my luck had arrived! This was a particularly lucky ticket: it had eight digits, and not only did the sum of the first three digits equal the sum of the last three digits, but both sums were exactly seven. Seven is a very auspicious number! God created the world in seven days, there are seven wonders of the world, and I was lost in these reveries…
But the girl hadn’t noticed the stroke of luck that had befallen me and walked straight to the door. She was getting off the bus! Beautiful girl, lucky ticket, goodbye! I thought in despair. Suddenly, a superstitious thought popped into my head: if you eat the lucky ticket, everything will go as you wish. Hoping this would work for me, I turned around, closed my eyes, and swallowed the ticket. Then I started listening to my inner voice, expecting a miracle to happen.
But it was in vain! My face turned red, and I couldn’t come up with a single clever idea to win her heart. I could only look at her with a helpless yet earnest expression and silently beg: girl, please don’t get off, stay for one more stop, just one more stop with me! And then the miracle happened: the girl I was so infatuated with seemed to hear my heart’s call. She slowly turned around and decisively walked towards me.
Amazing! I was so overjoyed that I felt dizzy.
The girl glanced at me, then faced everyone, and with her pleasant voice, she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please take out your tickets. It’s time for a ticket check.” As she spoke, she took out her ticket inspector badge and turned to me. “Sir, please show your ticket.” My heart jumped into my throat, and I couldn’t say a word. “Is the ticket machine malfunctioning?” she asked concerned when I didn’t respond. “No, no, it’s working fine.”
“Then, is it out of tickets?” “No, no, there are tickets,” I answered, utterly confused. I didn’t even know what I was saying. “So, you didn’t buy a ticket?” Her tone turned stern. “No, no, I did buy a ticket.” “Then where is it? Please show it to me.” “It’s, it’s here,” I pointed to my stomach, “I, I ate it. Because it was a lucky ticket.”
The people around us started laughing. Oh, that damned ticket brought me so much trouble. The girl laughed too. “I’m not a surgeon; I’m just a ticket inspector. I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for your luck now.” She emphasized.
I knew what she meant and asked dejectedly, “How much?” “If you pay now, it’s 5 lira; if we go to the office, it will be more.”
A fine is a fine, so I decided to follow her to the office. I put on a resigned expression, got off the bus with her, took out my wallet, paid the fine, accepted the receipt, and reluctantly said goodbye. Later, using the stamp on the receipt and the number on her inspector badge, I found this beautiful ticket inspector and invited her to a movie. To my delight, she agreed, and eventually, she became my wife.
Just imagine, if it weren’t for that lucky ticket, how could we have met and fallen in love?
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
