Hiro has left.
How to celebrate a relation that was as strange as it was fleeting? It wasn't quite the typical acquaintance, nor was it the best of buddies, nor was it anything serious. Despite our typical tendencies to put a label on everything, I couldn't quite put borders on this one. It was greyed, but shone like a light rainbow. It had texture, grainy and pitch black on some sides, smooth and cool white on others. It had an irresistible charm, but not actually addictive. In fact, I would even say it did, AND did not have any form. It was quite a funny mystery. But humor me, let me try my best to explain something that seems as if cannot be explained:
There are many coincidences to explain our friendship: From the time we first met, 2 ludicrously inane people, noticing each other at the Central gym branch on a Saturday morning, surprised at meeting again an hour later at the other end of the Hong Kong port stretch - in Whampoa Garden - and another 2 hours later, finding ourselves face to face in Causeway Bay. From the time we bump into each other on a Sunday morning in Central, to an hour later in Tsim Sha Tsui, and 2 hours later, will meet at Mongkok again.
It's also the same when we met on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays... and back all over again.
After more than a few weeks of peeking suspiciously at each other, we finally did introduce ourselves. What was important was the fact that we began this little mystery, as separate, completely unrelated individuals. It wasn't that I was introduced by him, or anyone to take up all sorts of odd classes, or spend 15 hours a week in the gym. I just decided to. So did he. We lived a block from each other, both early risers, with regular rountines. So, two separate, seemingly different inviduals. Yet the only problem was, both individuals seem to keep ending up at the same places, all the time.
We didn't merely attend step classes. We attended all kinds - aerobics, bodypump, bodybalance, and even yoga. It didn't matter if it was beginners, intermediate, difficult or advanced level, we were there. When I think back on things, why this was so... I'd say we didn't dislike instructors and didn't prefer going only to a select few, but unbelievably, enjoyed each and every one of them. We liked the challenge of a variable environment.
When asked by other possibly discriminating gym rats how we found other instructors, we both smile and mention good points. Bad ones? They didn't seem to matter that much- it seemed to me that we both always had fun, which ever instructor we went to.
At times, we gave each other vacation gifts when we were away from the gym, a token of our coincidental friendship. Flower jasmine teas, crackers, dried mangoes, phone chains, Pocky sticks, handy black bags, false goat milk pills, stamina amino acid chewable pills, heating pads - all the little token you can think of, and maybe a little bit more along the way that I may have forgotten.
He is the only Japanese I've met that doesn't like sushi. He also doesn't eat raw beef, and doesn't drink sake, but enjoys chilli instead. He would say strange but funny trivia tidbits like sleeping from 10pm-2am will have enough sleep to last for the day, or... each Japanese family has 1.xx child - it was quite an exact figure, something that made it hard to put on straight face when you do hear it. He has a funny tote bag he brings to the gym, regularly containing different kind of books each time - fiction, English, Cantonese, language - and together with his amino acid pills, and his towering 1L Pocari sweat bottle. And, he is an avid fan of Phiten - he has one in his neck, and both his ankles. He has a good taste in music - he's introduced me to a couple, of which I all like.
He will be nice enough to offer you a space, and save you a space, too, if you were a mainstay... But even especially when you weren't one.
He is a traveler, an adventurous one, and tries to know more about a place when he does indeed arrive and stay.
He goes to great lengths to attend the gym, foregoing his appendix operation, similar to the time when I was obscenely sick and delirious, but still came in for a class - getting me in a row with my brother. He likes spinning around the step, as do I, and the first time he saw me, he told me that he wondered.. "who is that amazing but crazy girl who keeps on turning?"
In the end, we ended up as partners. I would boldly say, we were good together - we both had the same passion, fast pairs of feet, a love for spinning, and a similar style when it comes to steps. I think I should have known and suspected this from the start. No matter which instructor it was, multistep was always a treat with each other.
And before he left, we both had bad deteriorating knees. :)
We loved routines, trying out new things, that's why we always coincidentally met. Preparation, timing, efficiency, picking out the fastest path to a destination... Many of the things we seemed to have in common. But most of all, we treated everyone, including ourselves, and life, with that light-hearted, self deprecating humor. I've never met anyone who reacted the same way as I did. In some ways, it was bizzare.
We weren't two opposite sides of the same coin, but, in the beginning, the same side of two exactly the same coins - identical base etching, but weathered in different durations, passing between different hands. Yet in the end, still the same, fundamentally. And that's why we kept on crossing each other's paths - we end up in the same mint, same bank, side by side.
You'd think we'd end up really close, but we didn't either. We never purposely invited each other. It was an amazing series of coincidences. You can say we let the coincidences lead the way. We didn't decide anything towards each other, but decided by ourselves. We ended along the same path, and kept going on, keeping each other company. For almost 3 years. It was a wonder it lasted for so long.
But in time, I slowly got caught up in the stress and pressure of life. I drifted, yet he kept on. No more coincidences, ... but strangely enough, there was still, some. We would meet downstairs at our place. Or in the supermarket downstairs to my house. On a ferry. At a bus stop. It was strange...
Before the end, he did something unexpected. After such a long hiatus from me, he openly asked me to be there for the last Friday for partner step. And I broke my drift - after 6 months, I came back. It was the strangest thing. It was like a beckoning to come back to who I was before... I was miserably unhappy for many months, but when I did come back, I soon realized what I have forgotten. And how much those coincidences meant. He was my reflection - and he was not miserable now, but I am. How did I drift away so drastically from myself in such a short time, so quickly?
The friendship that was, and also was not. Definitive, yet vague. Action, but also inaction. How to describe its existence and non-existence? The only words I can use to define: it is one-of-a-kind, yet, gleeful mystery.
These days, there's no more reflection, but I don't need one anymore: I remember now how it was, and what makes it worth returning back to. To finally remember who I was, and should remain to be. Its the best lesson given, and learnt. Hiro taught me a good lesson, by being who he was - like me. He's going to be sorely missed, though :)
