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She was crying as she got on her 4-o'clock bus. But no, those weren't tears of a sad girl -- if anything, she was full of indifference. That salty water was simply a physiological reaction in order to keep her eyes wet, as the cold wind out there always seemed to make them too dry. Tears were a way for chemical balance, a rational occurrence that left no room for other forms of interpretation.

After a quick scan around the bus and noticing that, apart from strange guy in the back, she was alone, she sat on her regular spot and looked out the window. She turned her MP3 player on and put it on shuffle -- whatever fate brought to her was fine.

It was such a beautiful cloudy day, yet there she was. The first song that came up matched her emptiness perfectly. The meaningless beats and meaningful words. She listened carefully to a couple of lines until it all became just a melody in the background of her mind.

She looked at the couples holding hands on the sidewalk and all the smiles and all the signs of love. She looked at the groups of friends that chatted and laughed as though life was something to only be cheerful about. And she couldn't understand it. Because everyone left. At some point, no matter what, people just left, and then life was just about disarrays when they were gone. They left and took with them everything, leaving behind something emptier than vacuum.

She missed being one of those people she was watching. She had a spare seat next to her that would never be taken.

And there they were, those familiar tears. They ran down her cheeks towards her shirt like a river flowing to the ocean. Only that this time they were a reaction that proved she had it all wrong. It wasn't nothing - it was loneliness.