My eyes widened with shock while he pulled a naughty smirk on his beautiful face. I wanted to confront him so bad. Who is he to bring this up? I never told anyone about this for a very long time – even my best friend is not aware about it. I felt like I’ve been betrayed but I don’t have anyone to blame.

“YOU – you were AvisPhoenix, it was your code name on Friendster 7 years ago. I came back to fulfill my promise to you. Can’t you remember me?” He is still trying to control his happiness; I can tell from his eyes that he is overflowing with excitement already.

The feeling is not mutual. I need to understand what’s happening. I haven’t grasped the situation yet. I need to confirm it but what if I am wrong? However what if –

“Don’t tell me you are – BabyBird?” my voice almost sounded like a fading whisper under my breath.  I know it is impossible but I need some clarification. I deserve it.

“Yes I am. I am sorry that I came 7 years late for our meet up. You must have been very upset about it. What should I do to earn your forgiveness?” his voice suddenly became solemnly apologetic and sincere.

I am a person who loved birds since I was a kid. I will always go to sanctuaries or even go to parks just to stalk or feed them. I find them as a fascinating bunch of creatures.

Friendster was a social networking site prior to Facebook back in my high school days. I came out as AvisPhoenix on that SNS because I loved phoenix as a mythical creature; a self-resurrecting firebird. It is almighty and its tears can heal wounds too. I was so immersed with it; I even made it as a display picture. The moment I logged in, Friendster showed me a list with a variety of names on it and his profile’s name of course stood out.  That is how all of it started. 

It did not take long for me to get disappointed. I was expecting to see a lot of cute little birds on that profile but when the site got redirected, his page displayed a dragon instead. It was too late for me to undo the friend request because he already accepted and even posted on my wall – it said:

“Hi! Thank you for adding me!  You are my first friend here :) I hope we can create awesome memories together ~ ^^”

Both of us were new in the portal. I can’t turn him down now that I knew that I am his ONLY friend. I thought it will be fine since it appears that we were both strangers to each other. None of us uploaded our personal pictures yet. It was a thrilling experience to make friends behind our screens during our generation.

We talked and shared about a lot of stuff on Friendster. We even sent messages during the following days, until we also decided to talk using our phones since we can’t be always online as much as we would like to. It felt like I found my soul mate through him. Our friendship blossomed naturally until our faceless reception got threatened when he told me that he will be leaving to go study in Europe.  This made us hurry up to plan and meet in person before we literally change our shared geography.

I can still remember how it all happened. It’s the same month, one of those days of September. He asked me to go wear a t-shirt and partner it with jeans because we will be riding bikes after our lunch, now I realized why I wore this pair. It must have been a habit for me already. I was stuck in the past.

Coincidentally, this restaurant was the same place where we should see each other and it was the same place where my heart started to bleed because of an endless anxiety of waiting. Now it is obvious.

He never came, not that day nor the other day but I still waited. I waited not just a week, but for another bunch of months and no one appeared before me. It was when time fast forwarded to years and I was left waiting with no assurance of his arrival.

I felt like crying. I wanted to punch him hard on his face but I can’t. Now that he had the courage to show himself like this after 7 years he better give me an acceptable reason. I suppressed my emotion and asked him the most crucial question of this insanity.

7 years ago, we decided to come up with a secret code just in case we meet the wrong person half way and this answer will calm the chaos inside my heart.

“What is the password?”  I was confident for a wrong answer but without a blink of an eye or any hesitation, he pronounced the words that pierced deeply to my soul.