"Have you ever met a stranger you recognized?"
One in ten thousand- that's how many people have someone predetermined for them. It's even rarer for them to actually find each other, but thanks to a special birthday wish, fate might just be on their...
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nostalgia, epilogue. ❛ one miracle ❜
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"From a bird's-eye-view, one would see ten people wound up around a bonfire in the middle of the night, all seated on the wooden benches. Some alone, and others with their arms around each other, but that didn't really matter. The crackling of the flames seemed in perfect harmony with the cold winds, providing the sense of comfort they very much needed.
A girl looked up to face her friends' shocked and hurt expressions. "I'm really sorry, you guys."
"Out of everything I forgot, it's the little things that hurt the most, you know?" she said. "Our first meetings and introductions, or the places we'd hang out in. God, I wish there were a way to relive those moments with you guys, to even just see it happen from afar."
"That's it," her boyfriend murmured, standing up and rushing inside his tent amidst everyone else's confusion. He came back with a book in his hands, handing it to the girl with a smile. "I always keep this in my bag."
"No way." Her lips parted in disbelief as she flipped through the meticulously decorated pages. "A scrapbook of us? I didn't know you were so sentimental."
"I'm not, but you are."
The girl blinked. "I made this?"
"You were going to give it to me, right before the accident happened."
And so she began reading from the title, 'Not-So-Rough-Days.' A picture of a bus was pasted on its cover, and she later learned why. They say meeting your soulmate is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but she had the fortune of meeting him twice. She might not have remembered the first time, but her grandmother's voice stuck to her head like an overplayed rhyme. "You'll know," she used to say, and indeed, she now did.
Every picture after that stayed true to its claim, and her friends couldn't help but laugh as they explained the context of each. There were school festivals, soccer games, drunken accidents, house parties, beach visits, city trips, and of course, birthday celebrations. She felt as though she were staring through a looking glass, at a version of her she'd yet to meet. A trip down her seemingly forgotten memory lane was possible, after all.
