As I crossed the city river, my phone vibrated like it was having a bout of withdrawal. Expecting a friend rushing me, I was ready to say, “I’m late because I was helping an old lady cross the street.” Yet when I pulled it out, the screen only showed a Facebook notification. “Cynthia Chan mentioned you in a comment,” it read. I had no idea who Cynthia Chan was. When I clicked through, I saw the comment: “I want to cross the Bay of Bengal with G Yeung.”
The Bay of Bengal?
Scrolling through the post, there were rows of comments before and after Cynthia Chan’s, all saying, “I want to cross the Bay of Bengal with X.” So many wanting to cross the Bay of Bengal, it’d be jam-packed. I continued to read further and finally realised that the post was from a travel agency: “Comment now and tell us who you’d like to cross the Bay of Bengal with. If your chosen travel companion also says ‘I’m in,’ you’ll be entered to win a four-night trip for two.”
It’s not that I’m unwilling to cross that bay, but I simply don’t recall anyone named Cynthia Chan. I stopped walking, clicked on her name, then her profile picture.
There she was, a long-haired girl in her early twenties, wearing a dark blue pleated skirt and a beige sweater. In the falling light, she shyly extended a hand, offering a cracker to a deer in Nara Park, amidst a carpet of ginkgo leaves.
“This has to be a fake account,” I thought. I transferred the photo to Google Search, but it yielded no results, meaning this could be a unique photo; meaning this ethereal girl could actually be real.
Her surname is Chan, her English name Cynthia, and she wants to cross the Bay of Bengal with me. In mid-October, on a blindingly sunny afternoon, the two of us were on a white yacht. The sea was as calm as my life had been for the past twenty-seven years. A deer flew down from the clouds; she fed it a cracker, it licked her palm, tickling her. She turned and giggled at me, and I smiled back.
“I’m in!” I replied to the comment. But Facebook flashed an error. I refreshed the screen, and just like that, the comment and Cynthia Chan were gone. My phone vibrated again, like it was in withdrawal. I answered the call.
“Where are you? Everyone’s waiting.”
“No, tell me, where is the Bay of Bengal?”