Funnily enough, when I was leaving school and they asked you what

Host: The train station was alive with movement — a blur of faces, voices, and departures. The air was thick with the scent of coffee, steel, and stories going somewhere else. Outside, the sun was setting, spilling its light across the platform, turning the commuters into silhouettes — half dream, half duty.

In the middle of this quiet chaos, Jack and Jeeny stood by the departures board, a pair of old suitcases at their feet. A train was announced, its voice echoing across the station, but neither of them moved.

Jack: “Kylie Minogue once said, ‘Funnily enough, when I was leaving school and they asked you what you were going to do, and I just liked acting, that's never what I would say. I would always say I would go into business, even though I didn't really know what was meant by that.’”
(He pauses, smirking faintly.)
Jack: “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We spend half our lives pretending we know what we’re doing — the other half apologizing for finding out.”

Jeeny: “Because honesty scares people, Jack. If you tell them you just want to create, or feel, or live, they look at you like you’ve just said you’re going to chase clouds for a living.”

Host: A bell rang, the sound long and melancholic, like the echo of time itself departing. The crowd shifted, moved, blurred, but Jack and Jeeny remained — two still figures in a world that couldn’t stop moving.

Jack: “When I left school, I said I’d go into engineering. Everyone nodded. My dad even smiled — the kind of smile that finally meant I was becoming a man. But inside? I just wanted to write. To make worlds out of words. Only that sounded too... fragile. Too small to be taken seriously.”

Jeeny: “Because the world doesn’t like dreamers. It likes plans. It likes numbers. It likes titles that sound like security.”

Jack: “And yet it’s the dreamers who build the music, the stories, the art that keeps the rest of the world from going numb.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. But they’re not trained to say that when they’re seventeen. They’re taught to sound practical, to sound like they’ve chosen something that fits neatly on a business card.”

Host: The lights of the station began to glow, warm against the gathering dusk. A pigeon fluttered past, landing on the beam above them, its head tilted as if it, too, were listening.

Jack: “You know, maybe that’s why I like Minogue’s quote. There’s something almost... tragic about it. A kid who already knew what she loved, but felt she had to translate it into something acceptable.”

Jeeny: “That’s every child who grows into an adult, Jack. We stop saying what we feel, and start saying what the world wants to hear. We don’t outgrow dreams — we just learn to rename them.”

Jack: “Yeah. We call them ‘goals.’ Or ‘careers.’ Or ‘five-year plans.’”

Jeeny: “And somewhere along the way, we forget the joy that made us want to do it in the first place. The playfulness. The wonder. That’s what Kylie meant — the thing she really wanted wasn’t a job. It was aliveness.”

Host: The train’s engine hummed, filling the air with a soft, mechanical tension. Jack glanced up at the departures board again — names of cities blinking and changing, like possibilities that expired every minute.

Jack: “You ever wonder why people are so afraid of saying, ‘I don’t know what I want yet’?”

Jeeny: “Because the world doesn’t reward uncertainty. It rewards confidence, even if it’s false. You can sell a lie easier than you can defend a truth that’s still being born.”

Jack: “So we fake it. We say ‘business’ when we mean ‘art.’ We say ‘stability’ when we mean ‘freedom.’”

Jeeny: “We say ‘sensible’ when we mean ‘safe.’”

Jack: “And we say ‘success’ when we really mean ‘approval.’”

Jeeny: (smiling) “Exactly. But the funny thing is — every ‘business plan’ ends up being just another form of performance, doesn’t it? Maybe she always knew she’d end up acting — she just didn’t know the stage yet.”

Host: The lights of the train flashed, the doors opened, and a rush of air swept through the station, lifting the edges of Jeeny’s scarf, rippling it like a flag.

Jack: “You ever notice how every decision you make at seventeen feels like a sentence, but it’s really just a draft?”

Jeeny: “Because nobody tells you that life rewrites you. You think you’re choosing a path, but really, you’re just starting the edit.”

Jack: “So what’s the point of all the pretending, then?”

Jeeny: “Maybe it’s not pretending. Maybe it’s just translation — the only way we know how to say ‘I want to live fully’ in a language the world understands.”

Jack: “You mean the language of profit.”

Jeeny: “No. The language of permission.”

Host: A moment of quiet — the kind that feels like a comma in a sentence that doesn’t want to end. Jack picked up his bag, hesitated, then smiled — not bitterly, but with that soft recognition that comes when you finally see your younger self not as foolish, but as innocent.

Jack: “Maybe we all start by saying ‘business’ just to buy time — until we’re brave enough to say what we really mean.”

Jeeny: “And what did you mean, Jack?”

Jack: (after a long pause) “I meant art. Always art. I just didn’t know how to say it without apologizing.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe it’s time you stop apologizing and start living like that seventeen-year-old who still believed in possibility.”

Host: The train doors began to close, their sound soft but final. The sun slipped below the glass roof, painting the platform in orange firelight. Jack looked at Jeeny, his eyes catching the reflected glow — a mixture of fear and freedom.

Jack: “You think it’s too late to rewrite the story?”

Jeeny: “It’s never too late to stop being practical.”

Host: The camera would have pulled back — the station, the crowd, the motion of a world too fast to wait for its own dreamers.

The train moved, slowly, surely, disappearing into the twilight.
And there, under the echo of its departure, two souls stood still,
neither certain, neither successful,
but finally, honest —
ready to step into a life not built for approval,
but for art.