The young man broke a branch from a tree to make himself a sort of cane for him to walk with. His legs ache every time he tried to walk without clinging to something for support. Despite his current situation, the young man was grateful that the upper half of his body was still fully functional and that whatever accident that he had prior to arriving here had not completely left him paralysed. The young man had been walking for some time now. He was not sure where he was walking to or where he was currently for that matter but he had to go somewhere. He could not just lie in the meadow forever. He decided to go find someone who could help him though he would not describe what he was doing that way himself. He would prefer to be on the lookout for somebody that shared his plight.

The young man wanted an explanation as to why there were so many bodies lying in the meadows that he had just left. They were all probably from the bus station and wanted to go play bingo but got tired walking so they took a rest in the meadows for a bit. The young man must have forgotten about it or it was a surprise for him but nobody expected him to wake up so early. All he was hoping for now was that they were not truly dead. The survivor’s guilt that the young man will be inflicted with knowing that he was the only person alive among the many others who did not make it will get to him even if he never knew any of the victims. He was betting that they were just passed out or sleeping and would wake up eventually. The young man thought of just waiting for them to wake up but then when he got hungry, he decided to go find some food which is why he was now lost in the woods and that he was still in denial about it.

The young man had thought he would find some sort of tavern nearby like the one he saw in the photo gallery of the DSLR camera he had found but he never came across any establishment of the sort and had to made do with eating the fruits and berries he picked up from the trees in the woods he was at. He drank the water from the river that was adjacent to the woods. The water appeared and tasted as good as clean water can be at least to the standards of the young man who regarded bottled mineral water as a luxury and usually drank from the rusty water dispenser which gave him a mild case of the coughs that was exacerbated by his smoking habits. The young man would always see boxes of packaged mineral water in droves at convenience stores that he had almost forgotten the source that the companies that manufactured it got it from.

The young man took another look at the photo gallery of the DSLR camera that he had found in the meadows. The camera appeared brand new, not that the young man had any clue as to the latest models for DSLR cameras to confirm this observation. Either way, the person who lost it must have recently purchased it or really took good care of their camera. The young man was going to take a wild guess and believe that it was actually new because if the previous owner had guarded the camera well then they would not have lost it. There were not many photos in them. Even the pictures that were in the photo gallery had no people in them, only landmarks of the place that they were shot at. There was no telling who the camera could have belonged to. The young man was hoping for a photograph of the owner at the very least in the photo gallery to identify and probably locate but no luck.

The young man had initially assumed that all the pictures in the gallery were in close proximity to where he had found the camera since most of it looked as if they were shot nearby. The various pictures of the meadows, the rivers and the woods were all places he had seen and found but he did not find the tavern. The young man thought that maybe he had to walk a little further to find it but now he was not so sure. He considered going back to the meadows, to where the many lying bodies were. Maybe they have already woken up. Perhaps some of them know or remember what has actually happened and the young man should have just waited for a while longer. Has this young man made a mistake by going to find this tavern? Since there was nobody to answer him, any response to that would be coming from himself and he was not going to answer his own question.

The young man was hungry when he decided to leave the meadows to search for food since there was not any there. He has already eaten now but there is still a long day ahead for him. The young man has now got to make a choice whether he wants to pursue this tavern or go back to the meadows. He feels like it would be a waste of time to go back all the way there. It has not even been that long and the young man is already making deliberate decisions that will help him forget about the people back in the meadows. If the young man was going to leave this place and get back home, he was going to have to go through the woods anyway. The only other way was over the mountains and there was no way this young man was going to hike through some mountains alone. He was scared of heights and he has always been that way since he was a young boy.

When he was younger, an aunt of his had tried helping out with this irrational fear of his. His aunt had brought him to an event somewhere which strapped participants to a wall for them to climb without the risk of even stumbling down let alone falling but all of this was to no avail. Later his aunt admitted to being embarrassed for bringing him to the wall climbing venue because the young man who was still a boy at the time cried to be let down back to the ground. The boy had been making a scene and could not have waited for even a second for the organisers to help him out with the harness which the boy could not wrap his head around how to get back down. From the ground, the boy thought it was easy to get to the summit of the wall when he saw his aunt doing it effortlessly but when it was his turn to do it, he froze after just a few meters up.

The young man shook his head reminiscing his days as that scared boy while he was walking along a river bank. He has never tried it before but he has heard somewhere that if you were to get lost then try to find a river and follow it. The young man however was not sure whether he was supposed to go upstream or downstream but after some careful thinking he decided to follow the river downstream since he had the idea that it would eventually lead him to the ocean. His knowledge in that regard was about that much. On the other hand, if he were to go upstream, he was not sure if that was going to lead him to somewhere dangerous or not. He had no clue on the geography of the place so he could not really say not that there was anybody there to hear him if he was wrong.

The young man has never been much of a camper. He would not have any idea as to how he was going to go about camping for the night if he did not find this tavern he was looking for. The young man was hedging his bets on finding this tavern that he not only just assumed it existed but also believed that it was in walking distance and he could spend the night there despite not having any money to pay for a room. Besides that, since he has only had fruits and berries for lunch, he was hoping he could get a proper meal for dinner at this tavern as well. Essentially, the young man was wishing for charity in the form of food and a place to stay. If he was to be asked about this, the young man would not admit it, rather he would say that he would think of something when he got there.

The young man got up from the log he was sitting at while he was looking at the pictures in the camera. He realised that his legs were feeling fine now. He could walk normally now without the aid of his cane that he had made. Despite that, he opted to keep the cane and not throw it away. The young man thought that maybe it would still be useful later on his journey. He did jumping jacks while skipping some stones on the river to celebrate the recuperated condition of his legs. At the time he did not question how his legs got better so quickly even though they were writhing in agony just a while before that.

As the young man got frustrated following the river downstream for so long, he started asking to himself what exactly made his legs feel. Did the rejuvenating water from the river have something to do with it? Did it have any relation to the berries perhaps? The young man kept pondering between these two questions until he caught a glimpse of a monk meditating on the river bank not far from where he was. His steps came to a halt. He stood frozen where he was. This could be the help that the young man had been hoping for. The young man was now thinking how he was going to approach the monk.

The monk was in the middle of a meditation session and it might be a bit rude to disturb him. The young man just stood there for a solid minute as he thought about it, the camera he had found in the meadow on his right hand and the cane he had made on the other. What was he going to say to the monk? What could the young man ask him? Hello, there! I am a bit lost at the moment. Can you tell me where we are right now? Could the young man initiate the conversation with that? The monk was currently sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed. How long was he going to meditate there?

The young man was now considering whether he should wait for the monk to notice him first or tap him on the shoulder to get his attention. How long do these monks meditate? What do they do after they have finished meditating? The young man’s mind was now drifting from what he was going to do to what the monk was going to do. He suddenly became interested in being a monk. This was the first time the young man had seen a monk in the flesh. He was thinking what the requirements would be to join this monk. The young man was lost with no money and any documents to prove his identity. What would happen if he were to become a monk and live the rest of his days in a monastery somewhere here?

The young man recollected that Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was a monk. The only monk that he knew by name studied the hereditary traits of peas in his spare time while juggling his administrative duties at the abbott. The young man was not sure how Gregor Mendel got accepted into becoming a monk or anything else about him other than that he was a monk who pioneered a new field in science. He assumed that a person had to be at least somewhat religious to get a place into a holy order so that might be an immovable hurdle for him to get into a monastery. How long had the young man been entertaining this idea? Why was he seriously considering this? He was not the only one who was in this mess. There were a lot of other people who got lost like him back in the meadows.

The young man was not going to last being a monk. He did not have the willpower to remain celibate for a day let alone his entire life. The young man’s train of thought was disturbed when he heard music playing. The direction of where the sound was coming from surprised him since it was rather close to the monk. The song was Pesona Algebra. The young man knew the intro to that song well. He was no skilled musician but he did manage to at least get the bassline in the beginning right whenever he played it on his acoustic guitar. The song reminded him of someone he used to know who he met on a bus ride home from his college during his freshman year.

The young man who was then still in his late adolescence had just put down his paperback that he had been reading for about half an hour since he got on the bus. He had been so absorbed with the plot of the book that he did not realise that somebody had taken a seat beside him. The passenger beside him eyed the novel then asked him if it was any good. Her question was accompanied by her plucking out her earplugs she had been listening to shift her attention. The teenage boy, wanting to spare his opinion on the story until he had finished it, just nodded and asked her if she was familiar with the author.

The passenger beside the teenage boy simply shook her head and admitted that she did not read much. She added that she preferred listening to music as she hold out her iPod. The teenage boy stated that he would like to listen to the song that she had been listening to. She passed him an earplug and asked if he knew The Times. The teenage boy who had mistaken the question from the passenger beside him for asking the time of day showed her the clock he was wearing. She laughed before telling him that it was the name of the band she had been listening to. The passenger beside him started to play the song and the teenage boy began listening to it on his left ear while she was listening to it on her right ear.

The teenage boy did not realise then that he would remember that moment for a long time for the songs that they listened to. Even now a few years later as a young man, he had already forgotten what the book he had been reading then but he still recalled all the songs that they had listened to during that bus ride. After The Times ended, she played a few other songs by a dozen other Malay indie bands. She had a playlist with Laila’s Lounge, Grey Sky Morning, and Butterfingers to name a few of them. When the bus reached its destination, they went to grab coffee.

The teenage boy exchanged numbers with her. One thing led to another, then they became lovers at least until sophomore year when scheduling conflicts and the like made them stop seeing each other. The young man wondered what she could be doing now. He discarded the thought to focus on his current task at hand. At least he tried to discard the idea, but his mind still wandered off and could not help but remember how in his favorite novel Norwegian Wood, the protagonist is reminded of his estranged lover when he hears the song from which the title of that book named itself from and how similar his circumstances were currently with the song Pesona Algebra.