This is a fantasy story.

Bloody secretary.

She's known my calendar for a week. She knew very well I was supposed to go to Modena today for that meeting. Yet she only booked the train ticket two days ago.

Result?

I find myself travelling in Economy instead of Business as usual.

The air is really different here. I have no leg room, no snack. Beside me, a little greenhorn is looking at some boorish girl on Netflix. In front of me an old woman just looks at me and smiles as if looking for a cue for a discussion that God knows how much I hope will never, ever happen. Next to her is a priest. My God, a priest! Let's hope they don't start talking about mercy, Lent or other devilries. I could stand up and stay there for the rest of the trip just to prevent my ears from hearing this fanciful and moralistic conversation.

I even forgot my earphones! What a great way to start the day.

I need sugar.

Luckily on Italo there is a snack and drink machine between the cabins.

A bueno kinder might partly lift my spirits to pieces.

I'm heading between cab 5 and cab 6 to look for change.

There's someone sitting on the floor. Must be the usual beasts who don't even have any change to pay for a seat. Sitting on the ground in a train. Well. No hygiene and little self-respect.

While I try to insert the first coin I hear someone tug my Armani Blue 600 euro while a hoarse and feeble voice asks me for some change and a bottle of water.

My day is about to go from bad to murderous.

I turn around and I'm ready to call the train manager or take the law into my own hands.

I turn around and see him.

Hooded half-ripped sweatshirt, rough, bruised face, empty eyes.

Unrecognizable, but I recognize him.

That's him.

I still remember him, sitting in the back row of our high school class.

Five years together.

He's always in the back row.

Never failed. Never failed. Never made a note in the register. Never made any mention of himself in the class.

Luigi was a boy who seemed absent from class. You never knew what he was thinking.

You couldn't figure out if he was an absolute genius or a poor demented man.

Having always overcome every obstacle, we all leaned towards the former.

Outside the classroom, he'd transform. He was considered by everyone to be what you might call a "beautiful and damned."

Tall, brown and physical despite not practicing any sport, he was full of suitors who he didn't listen to at all.

He smoked a lot and not only cigarettes and yet every time he "puffed out" he didn't do it to attract attention as most of us did at that age but he did it because he needed it all.

An intelligent, attractive, mysterious guy. The dream of every girl and maybe of every mother.

And yet it seemed empty.

We couldn't decipher it. Few, very few had relations with him. No one had ever been to his house or met relatives, brothers or anyone.

A blank page that everyone wrote in their own way.

It was the fourth year and one night I was at the bar with my friends. We'd had a lot to drink and I felt sick.

It was the first time I ever threw up that much. My friends were worse off than I was and I didn't know what to vote for. I couldn't go home like that. My mom and dad would have punished me, or at the very least, attacked me.

Luigi was there, on the sidelines and I remember that he came to me without saying a word and put his arm around my neck asking me to try to walk for a few hundred meters without "disgorging".

He lived a few steps away from that little bar Luigi.

He took me to his house.

He made me lie down. He prepared me something warm that I don't even remember anymore and told me to rest, he would take care of the rest.

I came home later than usual, he took me there, but I didn't look like someone who had suffered a colossal hangover and so my parents didn't break the boxes.

The next day I thought a lot about his gesture. The fragments of that night came to mind.

A tidy house, clean but small and sad. There was sadness everywhere. It was clean, but it looked like a walking pharmacy.

I decided to try to understand what Luigi's world was like. I wanted to become his friend, help him when he needed it.

I asked around, I sent my father to investigate the family and after a few days everything was clearer.

Luigi's father and little brother had died when he was only 7 years old. A car accident while his father was on his way to the swimming stadium to bring Luigi home. His 4-year-old brother also drove him home.

A tragic, totally accidental skidding drove them off the road. They died instantly despite a not excessively devastating crash.

Since then her mother hasn't been the same. They decided to move before Luigi started high school. The goal was to put the tragic past behind them.

His mother drowned all remorse and hope, all pain in alcohol. He tried to commit suicide 3 times in the last 2 years and Luigi since he was 7 years old found himself being his mother's carer and orphan of the other parent.

That's why it was empty. That's why he constantly seemed to have his head somewhere else.

Learning of that news was a bolt out of the blue.

I decided not to say anything to anyone. Not to Luigi, not to my classmates.

I just changed my attitude and tried to make friends with him.

He rejected me. He wouldn't let me become someone for him.

Another year passed and Bocconi was waiting for me, Milan was waiting for me and I would soon forget Luigi.

He didn't go to university. He didn't have any money to invest, but on the contrary he needed to pay the rent for the two-room apartment that sheltered him and his mother.

I never heard from him again. I forgot him. I never asked what happened to him. I didn't even look for him when I went back to the country for a few weekends or holidays.

Today he found me here, by chance, in a carriage that does not belong to me, in a context that is not mine, in a situation that makes me uncomfortable.

A chance encounter upsets me. Those empty eyes stare at me to ask me for a few coins.

Eyes that I recognize and that maybe don't recognize me.

Petrified. Frozen to see how that kind and intelligent boy with a tragic life behind him ended up begging.

An impetus of generosity overwhelms me, the desire to yank him and tell him what happened. I'd like to take him home and introduce him to my children. Take him in and let him lie down on the couch.

I'd like to.

I decide to ignore it. I'll take my Kinder Bueno and go back to my place where I'll be waiting for the little boy, the old lady and the priest.

I'm going to pretend that that meeting never happened.

I won't let that boy's sad end up upset me.

It's all right.

I have an important meeting in two hours and I can't let myself be distracted by these quarrels of such an unfair life.

I close my eyes, breathe a sigh.

I think back to that couch, I think back to that night and I move on.