"Damn!" I swore under my breath.

Then I regretted it a second later.

"I beg your pardon?"

I turned round to look at the person I almost knocked over in my haste. I was late for my tutorial. At the sound of his voice, I stopped. It was Dante!

"Noth...nothing!" I flushed. Well done, Brenda, I told myself. You've waited a year for this opportunity and the first word you uttered when you finally get to speak to him is a blasphemy. Well done indeed.

"Oh well, I must've imagined it, because I could've sworn that I heard someone cursed a minute ago." Dante cast me a knowing look. Then he smiled. An impish smile that caught me by surprise. I blushed.

I searched my mind frantically for something to say. When I failed to do so, I blurt out the first thing that came to my mind.

"Nice bag you have there."

Another point for you Brenda, I scolded myself. Nice bag, indeed!

"Yeah, it's really quite cool. But I kinda prefer smaller ones, you know, like the one you are carrying."

He likes my bag! Then I knocked myself silently. Big deal if he likes my bag!

"Oh, well, err.." I stammered stupidly.

"Say, I've seen you around, but I never had the chance to say hi. My name's Dante."

He extended his hand to me.

He has seen me around! My spirits soared. I stared at his hand for a long while. Then I realized that he was looking at me strangely.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" I extended my hand too, and dropped all my notes at his feet.

I was mortified. Murmuring an apology, I bent down to pick up my notes, and knocked my head against his.

"Damn!" I swore again. Oops.

"Now I'm sure I heard that word the first time round." He tried to keep his face straight but I could tell that he was trying his best not to laugh.

I stared at him in mute misery. He was laughing at me!

"Well, let's try that again, shall we? I'm Dante, and you are?" He extended his hand for the second time.

"Brenda." I finally caught his hand. A sturdy handshake, as warm as his smile.

"We were in the same class before, right?"

"Yeah, I think so." I smiled nervously and glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes past eleven.

"Hey listen, err..Dante" His name sounds strange on my lips. "I've got to rush, I'm late for my tutorial, see you around okay?"

He grinned. "Yeah, sure." And waved as he walked away.

That was my first encounter with Dante. The next time we talked, I was in the canteen. It was during lunch a few days later.

"Hey Brenda, remember me?"

I looked up from my spaghetti and stared at him again. I figure I must've looked quite silly with strips of spaghetti dripping from my mouth, because Dante seemed amused at something.

"Erm.."

I swallowed my food and nodded. How could I have forgotten him?

"Mind if I sit down?"

I shook my head.

"Where are your group of friends?" I asked. Great, I thought. Now he is going to think that I've been stalking him!

"What friends? Oh, you mean the rest of the other guys that I've always hang around with?"

I nodded. Well, at least he didn't seem to notice how I would know who his friends are.

"They aren't really my friends you know. More like acquaintances." He had a strange look in his eyes when he said that. I wondered at it but dismissed the thought as soon as he started speaking again.

We talked for an hour. Dante was an American-Chinese student and he was staying in one of the hostels in campus. He decided not to continue his studies in the states because he wanted to take a break from the environment there. However I sensed a quiet hurt in him that he seemed unwilling to share.

Dante was a lonely person. It seemed that his group of so-called acquaintances left him one by one after his first year of study. He did not seem to care much for them because he didn't seem at all upset when he talked about them. Instead, he had this faraway look in his eyes when he talked about them, or his life, or his friends back in the states. I wanted to ask about his family, but good manners stopped me from prying into his private life. We finally ended our conversation when he had to attend a lecture. We exchanged our userids and promised to keep in contact with each other after that.