This is my submission for the June 2026 IndieWeb Carnival. The theme is “No way!?”, hosted by Alex Hsu.
Let’s call this girl Lily.
The first time we met was on Twitter, a decade ago – November 2015. The Bataclan terror attacks had just happened. My flatmate’s girlfriend had lost her best friend, so she came to our place, and I went away for the weekend.
I jumped in my car – I still had a car – and decided to meet this boy I had met on the r/intj subreddit (…it was a long time ago), who said he had a Super Smash Bros. tournament in Montpellier on that weekend. So I told him I was on my way to go see what that was like. Except I needed somewhere to sleep.
I put out a tweet, because in 2015, we did that and found what we needed. « Hey, I’ll be in Montpellier in 4 hours, anyone got a couch? »
I was on my last 10 euros (I actually had to beg to refill the car’s tank on the way back, but that’s another story). I’ve always been taught not to go to people’s places with empty hands, so I bought chocolate. Except I had left in a hurry and I hadn’t had lunch. So I hate half of the chocolate.
And there she was: Lily, a pharmacy student who had nothing in common with me, who had just separated from her absolutely awful boyfriend, who had a cute cat and was going to a Rammstein concert soon. We talked all night. Then I left, and we never talked again on Twitter.
Five years later.
In April 2020, stuck at home for obvious pandemic reasons, I decided that I’d use the free time to get back into studying Mandarin. (It didn’t go well.)
I signed up for an online class with hundreds of participants and started doing the exercises. I would ask questions in the forums sometimes. I once shared an Anki tutorial for learning characters. I got a message.
« [Alex], is that you? This is Lily, from Montpellier. Do you remember me? »
Of course I remembered her! That random smash bros tournament had started a seven-year long arc of my life, and I had told, again and again, the story of that first weekend to anyone who would listen. I had thought of Lily a lot, even though we didn’t talk! And here she was, in my DMs half a decade later, because we had signed up for the same online Chinese class, because we had both been to China and had both really enjoyed our stay, just a couple of years apart!
So we started talking again, and that was really nice.
We joined Mastodon together in 2020. She’s still very active there, and while I’m still terrible at reaching out, I read her posts quite often. But after the fun Chinese class coincidence, we stopped talking.
Two years later.
In September 2021, I posted a photo of a giant fire near Paris that happened to be right next our apartment.
I got a message.
« Hi Alex! It’s Lily! I just saw your photo and you might not believe this but I live about 300 meters from this photo! »
So in early 2022 (yes, well, I’m bad at this whole social thing AND COVID restrictions were still happening, okay?), we had lunch together at a Greek restaurant in our shared neighborhood.
Lily and I had grown a lot since our first meeting. Now, she was in her thirties, a pharmacist who had lived in a van for a few years and was considering settling down again. We talked and talked. She told me one thing that makes so much sense now that I’m 32 – « your thirties are your best years. You’re less stupid and more installed than when you were in your twenties. You’ve made the most egregious mistakes. Now you actually know yourself and what you want from your life. You can start building. »
I often think of that conversation we had.
It’s 2026 now. I should reach out to Lily. I’ve moved away, so has she, and reading her posts on Mastodon always makes me happy and a little nostalgic. I’m not the best at staying in touch. But coincidence after coincidence made it easy to rediscover Lily and create a relationship over the years, one that ended up being only a few conversations online and two in-person meetings, and yet one that holds a special place in my heart.
There is no moral to this story. I just wanted to take part in this month’s Indieweb Carnival; the theme is « No way!? », and the first thing that came to mind when I saw the title was how I felt when I got a message on an online Chinese class for beginners, in April 2020.
👍
Siddharth
