Girl of his dream by Presh Bliss (summer reading list txt) 📕

They never talked about meeting face to face, and because they had such an obvious chemistry, he wasn’t too worried about that. But after many days of sun and rain, after many moments of connection, after many sweet exchanges, she never even suggested he might phone her for a real chat.

Which wasn’t to say that if the girl walked up to him, he’d actually dare speak to her in person. But there was something frustrating about this kind of life, being single yet part of a couple, neither lonely nor fulfilled, that resulted in endless speculation. No matter how much he wondered, it was hard to settle on any one of the following possiblities:

Perhaps she was perfect in every way, and simply waiting for him to make the next move—but it was hard to imagine any woman waiting patiently for a partner like himself.

Perhaps she was already married with a three-year-old daughter and a son who’d just passed his first birthday, lumbered with some greaseball of a husband. Needing to fill the emptiness between breastfeeding sessions, and hating her life, she’d fabricated dozens of personalities, filling dozens of unfortunate fellows with frustration.

Perhaps she was not one person but a bored couple, enacting an elaborate hoax to make a stranger look foolish.

Perhaps any day now, she’d send a message asking him to transfer money to a particular bank account.

Perhaps—and this was the worst-case scenario, he unabashedly thought to himself—she might be just like him, and the person she least wanted to look at in the world was herself.

Contemplating this point, he decided to either stop the affair or take it to the next level. It was already a mercy that reality hadn’t yet brought him crashing down, and it seemed pointless rushing forward off his own bat. And furthermore, he ruminated, for all he knew, this petite, attractive girl had been put on earth just to love him. If some people could win the lottery and others survive after being struck by lightning, why shouldn’t he be visited by a miracle after suffering for so many years?

Perhaps because of his long-standing habit of avoiding reflective surfaces, he was the last person to detect the mysterious transformation.

The first to notice was a gaggle of girls from a secondary school. Every evening, they’d come into the fast-food restaurant to do their homework, covering a table or two with books and notepads. Yet their eyes, full of suppressed twinkles, were not on their schoolwork at all, but clung to him as he worked the cash register or flipped a burger or mopped the floor. This made him feel thoroughly self-conscious, and he made even more mistakes than usual, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Next, his colleagues began whispering behind his back, not bothering to conceal their chatter, which was also not loud enough to be overheard. He’d known they loved to exchange rumours about others, but had no idea he’d one day become the object of their gossip.

Then came the final straw—his mother. One morning, she suddenly thought of something or other she needed to discuss with him, and rushed over to his place. When he opened the door, she stood there slack-jawed. “Sorry, I must have come to the wrong house.”

“Ma? What are you talking about?”

She was so shocked she forgot the purpose of her visit. After studying him a long while, she finally said, “How come you’re so skinny now?”

That was the least of it. After his mother left, a dazed expression still on her face, he went to his bathroom and stayed staring at the mirror for a good half hour. He could still just about recognise himself, but was suddenly fearful. This felt like that fairy tale, the shoemaker and the elves—he wondered if something was coming in the middle of the night and only leaving at dawn, working day after day on his sleeping body, filling in and carving out, turning him into a lean-torsoed, clean-featured hunk of a man. His skin emanated some kind of light, and he’d grown a full eight centimetres. Even the big black mole by his eyebrow had shrivelled into a pale blemish that let you imagine he’d once been punched in that spot. No wonder his mother, after not seeing him for some months, was shocked into temporary amnesia. No wonder his colleagues murmured about his being on some kind of special diet, subjected to some kind of make-over. And as for those secondary school girls—of course they who’d had no interest in his former self couldn’t now get enough of his new self.

He knew it was all down to the girl. His world had changed the moment she appeared. Like Ye Gong who pretended to be fascinated by dragons but ran away terrified when confronted by an actual beast, he stayed at home panic-stricken for three days, before wandering out shakily to embrace this wondrous event, like a lottery-winner showing himself to society for the first time, still uncertain how to hold himself, having to re-appraise his appearance in each shop window he passed. Gradually, though, this began to feel good. He was now bold enough to accept the fashion tips passed on by salesgirls as they giggled, ignoring other customers, their voices so tender it seemed they were spilling their secrets.

They urged him to go across the road and ask Kenny on the second floor for a haircut. He left with shopping bags full of this and that, not to mention two receipts with cell phone numbers secretly scribbled on their backs. Beauty is a form of class, and the physical body is a weapon of class warfare. As he walked through the city meeting gaze after gaze, he knew he had become a conqueror.

But there was only one question on his mind: now that he was fit to meet her, would she come?

Every detail of that evening would remain etched into his memory forever. He got back to his apartment around eight-thirty, bearing his new outfits and a bellyful of worry. At nine, he ate the box-dinner he’d bought from a roadside stall, and then logged into his e-mail inbox. Everything was as per normal, but the e-mail recipient was a brand new person.

These three days in hiding, he thought, might possibly have caused the girl, in whichever of the thousands of lit windows across this city she sat by, to grow anxious and fretful. For some reason, this thought gave him a more powerful erection than he’d ever had before. He finally abandoned the arguments he’d spent all evening composing to persuade her to meet him, and sent only two sentences: ‘Want to see a movie this weekend? My treat.’ And with that, he swiftly logged out, turned off the light, and slid beneath his blanket. He fell asleep as soon as he touched the bed, and went straight into his first dream for a long while. He dreamt about the girl.