• I don’t love him. I simply don’t know him. Yet, my mind wanders to him. When did he become someone of importance to me? Maybe the short span of time on the internet, Skype, paved some sort of common understanding. He, a trilingual Mexican teacher in Japan, may have needed a link–any link–to an English-speaking individual from his hometown. I, a biracial woman trying to learn Japanese, needed a bridge for my journeys into a new language. Brought together by our intellectual approach to all things anime, manga, gaming, and Japanese culture, we naturally turned the innocent Skype service into our daily encountenance.

    It never struck me to be on a casual basis with him. We briefly met in a meeting by the International Friendship Commission of our city, and he introduced himself with a smile and laughing eyes. “My name is Fernando.” It turned out he was a former youth ambassador, and his presence at the meeting was purely for testimony as a student guide.

    Once the meeting was over, I immediately stopped him and talked to him. “Yeah, I met Miss Odawara,” he claimed, a smile tugging at the far reaches of one side before fully lifting into a mischievous grin. Somehow, we were on a casual topic, and the entire conversation swept past me like the wind carrying a leaf. We laughed, maybe too boisterously, for the chair of the International Friendship Commission rushed out of the room to quiet us. After all, we were in a public library. Hurriedly but not abruptly, our conversation ended, and it was our first and last time meeting in person.

    However short, Fernando’s seemingly reserved demeanor became laughable to me after our bouts as equal staff members for the site we volunteered for. In retrospect, his eyes, filled with amusement and excitement, betrayed his true personality. No, he was a happy-go-lucky man trying to hide behind an understanding exterior. He simply restrained his tongue from spouting any unwanted and unnecessary words, just for the commission’s sake.

    In actuality, his personality resembled that of a brother. He was intelligent with a streak of mischief. Though his physical features lacked edge (from my first impressions and his photos), he conveyed his hardened voice through written words utterly flawlessly. He rang amongst the other staff members, and in some regard, took my brain by storm.

    When we started messaging each other, twelve-hour differences forgotten, I felt a kindred spirit at the other end of the globe. Every day for two weeks, we spoke on Skype, between work hours, class scheduling, and article edits. His life and my life were very different, but the timezones didn’t care. We simply rode out a new friendship between floating bubbles and keyboards. “Internet addict,” I accused, because Fernando always inhibited the “online” feature on both Skype and AIM. He was always online.

    Our online conversations picked up from where they stopped, along with my added “internet addict” accusations. “I’m going jogging to Kyoto,” he messaged me one day, and I felt a pang of something vibrate through me. “If you have any questions about the article, just email me. I’ll be back on Wednesday.”

    I felt my head nod in spite of him not seeing me. “Aw, I’m not going to talk to my Skype buddy?” I returned in a joking manner.

    “Skype buddy?” he inquired, and I imagined his eyebrows furrowing towards his eyes.

    “Yeah, there hasn’t been a day where we didn’t talk on Skype.”

    He agreed before going on to say a few words about his article. When he reminded me that he would come back on Wednesday, I found my fingers typing, “I’m going to miss you.”

    “I feel so honored,” he wrote back, causing me to laugh. I suddenly cut my chuckles short and typed what I really felt.

    “Ew!”

    “Ew?!” came his shocked reply.

    “I almost sounded like a friend,” I supplied. “‘I’m going to miss you.’ Blah! Blah!”

    Most people would laugh before failing at returning an adequate answer. Fernando’s retort was comical enough. “I’m going to cr-cry!”

    I giggled. “I’m just playing,” I added. “I’ll just miss talking to you.”

    “Yeah, and I’ll miss some gal from my hometown chiming in with ‘internet addict’!”

    “Internet addict.”

    “There you go!”

    I merely smiled before saying goodbye. I always forgot how one person makes a world of difference when they’re gone.