Z & C (1)

All she knows is that someone fell, and that everything beautiful began after. 

                                                    - Everything Beautiful Began After  by Simon Van Booy 

         "Do you know ZM?" asked Y (also known as Peaches). She asked me that question often as we volunteered at the Children's Home for the first two years of our university life. ZM was the guy she knew who was in the same law school I was, and slowly she grew the idea that we should really know each other. 

       "No" was my first answer, my second answer as well as my third. But, she asked me often enough that I finally had an inkling of who was ZM. That vaguely chinese guy with big eyes in one of the lecture rows. To be sure, I asked, "Is he the guy that looks like kerokeropi?"

   Kerokeropi was a japanese cartoon character. A frog. She paused. Then laughed, "Yes. Yes, he does."

    That was it. Or, at least that's what I thought. But, Y told ZM that I thought he looked like kerokeropi. So, I became the girl that thought he looked like kerokeropi and he became the guy who looked like kerokeropi.

   Ever so often, she would ask if we spoke. Or met. Or said hello. The answer as always was no.

   It would always be no, I told her. As I could not fathom any reason for why we would speak or have to. Well, maybe at your wedding, I remember laughing.

     Y told me that she hoped we would meet, because ZM said he wanted an interesting girl for his girlfriend, and I was the most interesting girl she knew (haha). I remember telling her that wanting an interesting girl for a girlfriend is actually a very generic description - because don't we all fall in love with someone who interests us?

   And so it went, with nothing to connect us, but a whim or dogged fancy by Y. Y and I were ending our 2 year stint at the Children's Home. I had decided to go for exchange and so would be away for a year. I had picked a rather strange choice; I felt very strongly that I wanted to go to a place with a Civil Law System and definitely somewhere in Continental Europe. I chose Utrecht, in the end, because it was so whimsically beautiful from the pictures, and the Dutch spoke great English. It was such a random choice, that I had no idea who would choose to go there as well.

   A few months before we left, I realised that ZM had chosen to go there too.

   Unknownst to us, history was shifting beneath our feet.