We were never really tied to anything together.

Not our line of work ---she was an instructor and a coach of a swimming team and I was a teacher at a local school downtown---

Not our family ---well I was never from here, nor any of my family was. I just moved here ideally when to get away from all that city life---

Not our circle ---

Not a meet cute (specially not a meet cute) ----I was swimming with a body that was scarce from the hobby and ended up with a cramp when I was a good fifty meters away from the shore, where I saw her hesitate to help me before she ran away. Great, all my hope was gone and I was sure not an hour from now I’d be at the bottom. Then I saw her again rushing at the pier carrying something, with my terrible eye sights I could only hope it was the kisby ring I saw by the porch of her house. And it was, she threw it perfectly towards me that I barely had to swim towards it. It was one of kind of first encounters but it wasn’t a single fiber to the rope I felt that tied us together--- not our first encounter

And not even the beach. By the beach, we were neighbors; living in 2 different vintage houses built from the 1960s. They were a spitting image of each other. From the roof to the walls, it showed just how comparable they were to each other. We never really knew how, but in our first few encounters I could remember our short conversations and sudden assumptions one of us would make, or were collected stories by both of us.

We had thought one of them came first and the owner would have probably been an Irene, and the owner of the latter, one I made as a Suho, could have simply found the house bewitching and decided to plagiarize it. Countless of lawsuits would have been formed by the former when her designs were forged. Causing them to clash into each other’s lives with witty squabbles and invaded privacies. One could have found the other sobbing and ended the night with the cliché scene where they kiss. Then countless of cliché scenes would have emerge in the picture with outside encounters, nights at the beach, and eye-opening jealousies. And just when it was decided for the Suho’s to be demolished the two owners would have fallen in love and decided to drop everything.

Wendy on the other hand confidently claimed that hers was the former. It was a joke that we laughed off, but either way if the story wasn’t close to that, I would have still agreed. The pair were a view, mine was a beauty but hers was somehow just a divine.

We also assumed that it was perhaps a family heritage, thorn then when the only 2 siblings (which Wendy named as Yeri and Sehun) secretly sold it off separately. Cutting off the dear family lots they inherited. (I jokingly added they were Irene and Suho’s only grandchildren when their other children deprived them from having more, at least while they were existent.)

Or it could have been the first two of the envisioned set of beach houses for a what could have been a wealthy business with an exceptional beach like this one. Then just when they had finished with the 2^nd, the business partners (and lovers), Seulgi and Lay, would have broken off from each other when Yixing really fell in love with another woman, that we named as Joy.

But someone did tell me that it was believed the houses were built by two people who were the best of friends to each other. Maybe it was the tight bond of their friendship that made them swore to live next to each other and resulted them with these two beautiful houses we both live in separately now.

I told her about it and I can still remember her all to knowing smirk when I told her of my assumption. I didn’t know what it meant, it was among of those things I never knew what she meant, or even her herself.

And I never asked nor bothered her about it. It was odd to me, too, how I never got myself to ask those simple questions she would have more probably answered, even if it was in a subtle manner.