Sentimental Chances (On-Going)

Prologue

Here I am in the train station in a cold foggy rural city called Barcons, I watch the train stop, I watch passengers get out and the next ones get in and leave and repeat.

I've been there since 10 a.m., and I'm waiting for someone in particular. Even though I was shivering from the cold wind, I didn't care.

As long as I had my phone so I could listen to my songs to entertain me and the deli shop outside the station where I buy steamed bun and tea.

I wanted to spare some space in my stomach to eat pho ramen in our favorite Vietnamese restaurant with the person I love.

We used to do that a lot, and I cherish every moment of it. Those wonderful moments will always stay in my memory. Every small detail of it.

You know, people say I have a very good memory, of course, I knew they meant it as a compliment because I remember a lot of things since I was just a baby, and I get good grades since I didn't have to review my textbooks, but that doesn't mean I'm intelligent though.

I remember the gown I wore when I was two. It was tailored and pink with ruffles and embroidered with sunflowers. I remember in kindergarten, I watched how an older kid colored his drawings with ombre colors, and I tried doing that in my Mickey Mouse coloring book and many more.

I would say I'm sentimental. That's what I am.

By the way, my name is Audrey Picardo, but I have a nickname that my father used to call me. It's Pepsi. I don't know why, but I like it. I guess that he liked to drink Pepsi whenever we had anything fried, but he passed away when I was just seven from an illness.

I'm twenty-six now, and people say I looked like a female version of him from my Creole skin tone, his ash brown straight hair, almond-shaped eyes, and a Roman-like nose.

I still have my mom and my big brother, Alden, who is two years older than me. They live in the city where I grew up about seven hours from Barcon Town.

Way before my dad got sick, he used to go to London to get his MBA so that he could work in my grandfather's company as a VP. I rarely saw him for two years, but Mom told me when I was a teenager that it wasn't his dream. He wanted to be a photographer, but Grandpa didn't support it.

One time, he came home and brought a digital camera. I remember asking him about it, and then he taught me how to use it. "Here, Pepsi," he said to me when I held the camera in my little hand. "Just push that button over there, and you get your picture."

I pressed the snapped button, and there was the flash, "Like this, Daddy?" I asked him.

"Yes, exactly like that. You got it."

My first shot was just a vase in the living room, but being a little kid at that time, I was so intrigued by it that I would take pictures of random things around the house. I know that I got my love of photography from my father, but I love the idea that I can capture a moment and then store it in my memory.

So whenever Dad was home, I borrowed the camera and used it. I just wanted to do that all the time then I found out from my school library's book that you can pursue it as a career and that was when I decided that I wanted to be a photographer.

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So anyway, it started in the year 2011.

I was fifteen. My brother and I went to one of those private schools in our high school years. Alden was on the basketball team while I joined the school newspaper as a photojournalist.

I believed it was a stepping stone for my photography dream, and I would help out the sewing club students with photoshoots for the clothes they made.

I had a camera that the club provided me until my mother gave me my own Canon DSLR. Unlike most kids in my school, my parents were very supportive of my interests and didn't think of it as a 'hobby'.