Lisa never was a woman of many words. Her friends always made fun of her for it. Minnie and Bambam constantly about how she’d never put real captions in her pictures - only emojis or a hashtag. They’d end it with a punchline about how if Lisa posts anything on her social media accounts with more than three words, would be the signal of the apocalypse coming.

 

But as much as Lisa always drew a crowd to her and never had a hard time making friends, she always felt like she had nothing much to say that photographs or actions couldn’t relay much more effectively.

 

And that’s why she’s a dancer and photographer, she’d explain to her friends after telling them off. She communicated through snapshots and movement and she believed there was no better way to get her message across. She believed that showing and doing, rather than saying, made every feeling, every thought, and every idea tangible and more real.

 

But that was until she met Rosie early in the morning of one fateful day.

 

It was 5 am and she was early at her university, trying to get work done before her 8 am classes start.

 

5 in the morning was the best time for her. She wasn’t an early riser by any means but she was nothing if not dedicated and hardworking.

 

Plus, the golden rays of the sun peaking over the horizon and their school buildings was one of the most breathtaking sights Lisa swore she ever saw. And she would never pass up the opportunity to photograph it, add it to her collection of daily photos of the sun at the moment it rises and wakes up.

 

Lisa yawned wide, used one hand to hold the cartoon sleeve of her steaming coffee cup snugly in between her thumb and forefinger and the other to cover .

 

(Lest a fly wandered in, her mother often told her in jest.)

 

She pressed the button to close the elevator doors, thinking no one else would be crazy enough to be up and about, in the arts building at that ungodly hour.

 

But the closing doors stilled and then slowly slid open once again. She misses the small voice that says, “hold please!” from being too occupied with the lack of thoughts in her head, induced by the lack of sleep the night before.

 

And then she was smacked awake by the beautiful face that the opening elevator doors reveal.

 

The girl smiled softly at her.

 

Lisa was stunned, frozen at her spot.

 

The girl was breathtakingly beautiful.

 

And then the girl smiled.

 

And Lisa learned that it is possible for a person to be born on this earth with the gift of being able to both take her breath away at first sight and crush her heart into tiny useless pieces at first smile.

 

Lisa wasn’t a woman of many words. She wasn’t a fan of romance novels or cheesy teenage movies and all those clichés.

 

But goddamn, was she reduced to a messy tangle of every gay trope that ever existed at that moment.

 

The girl entered the elevator, jean-clad with a guitar case slung over her shoulder, black converse padding through the carpeted elevator floors.

 

Lisa tried not to look and stare because she’s been told that doing so is considered rude and she was a girl raised to have good manners. But she finds herself unable to don the mask of calm and composure that she so easily slips on in front of strangers.

 

The girl pressed the button for floor 5. The elevator door finally closed. The girl stared ahead.

 

But Lisa found that her eyes were moving sideways, drawn like little magnets by forces only science could explain…

 

To the girl with the guitar.

 

And the breathtaking face.

 

And the heart-crushing smile.

 

Lisa studied her, learned then and there that if perfection had a side profile this was exactly how it would look like - brown eyes that sparkled like it held a thousand stars in them, a ski-slope nose, and perfectly plump full lips that looked like one touch of it would put the clouds to shame.

 

Lisa gulped.

 

The elevator dinged, announcing that they were on the 3rd floor - the floor where the Photography studio was, the floor that Lisa was headed to and supposed to alight on.

But Lisa was dumbstruck and rooted in her spot.

 

The girl looked up at the floor number above the elevator keypad then looked at Lisa.

 

Their eyes met for a split second, a silver of a moment, a fifth of a breath.

 

But Lisa could have sworn from heaven to hell that the moment lasted an eternity - that somehow she was suspended in limbo where time and space did not exist and it was only her and those sparkling brown eyes set in the prettiest face of the girl with the guitar.

 

Then Lisa quickly realized she’d been caught staring and so she jumped slightly in surprise, averting her eyes in shame.

 

She felt her cheeks heat up, and her dignity dropping to the floor like chunks of armor stripped away.

 

God, when did she ever get so vulnerable?

 

“Hi, is this your floor? Third?” the girl asked.

 

Lisa turned to face the girl around so quick she could have dislocated her spine. The girl leaned away, slightly taken aback.

 

“H-huh?” Lisa asked dumbly. Then her mind was ever so kind as to reboot and decide to start working again, recalling for her the words that came out of the girl’s mouth. “Oh, was this my floor? Third?”

 

The girl smiled and nodded.

 

“Yup.”

 

“Oh, yeah. Yes.” Lisa cleared . “Yes it is.”

 

The elevator doors started to close and the girl’s hand was quick to fly out and press hold.

 

The girl turned back to Lisa with a smile.

 

“Here you go, then.”

 

Lisa felt her resolve crumble again, felt her world shaken.

 

Oh, it was that damn smile - so bright and pretty yet so disarming.

 

“Th-thank you.” Lisa muttered, bowing her head down in embarrassment and quickly stepping off the elevator.

 

She was about to make a mad dash for the studio, run away from what was probably the most embarrassing 2 minutes of her life, but then--

 

“Have a nice day!” the girl called out.

 

Lisa turned around, catching only half the girl’s face as the elevator doors closed.

 

“You, too!” she yelled back, mostly out of instinct than conscious decision.

 

The girl’s smile stretched, widening as the space between the doors slowly disappeared.

 

And then she was gone. 

 

And Lisa was left staring at closed elevator doors thinking, “what the ?”