Barcelona was a city that thrived on rhythm with flamenco spilling into the streets, vendors calling people into the market, sunsets turning old stone into molten gold. It was the kind of place that made life cinematic without trying, and also where ordinary people could stumble into extraordinary coincidences. That's how it is with you and Sae.

The first time you saw each other, it wasn't anything special. A person sees millions of faces in a lifetime, passing each other, not paying mind and forgetting about them for the rest of their life. That's what you and Sae thought would happen. He barely looked up when you squeezed by his table into the single seater in the summer heat. He muttered something in response to your polite "excuse me," and that was all. That was years ago.

You two aren't friends or strangers. Just a constant person in each other's lives by accident. The man you'd run into at odd times and even odder places: standing a stand or two away at the market while you picked out fruit, crossing the street, in front of the cathedral in the winter chill. Every time, it was unplanned.

You never each other's name. Well, it would be weird, wouldn't it? Asking for a random person's name, not that you two were really "random" to each other at this point. No conversation really happened, closer to strangers than anything else. So you just let it be. You never said anything to each other, but it kept happening.

Once, you ran into him during a rainstorm, both of you ducking under the same awning, dripping wet, half-annoyed and half in awe. You remember laughing lightly when he said something about rain not being on the forecast. He didn't laugh back, but he smiled. And then during sticky times of the summer, the fall chill, the bite of winter. He's always there.

It should have been suspicious, how someone could appear so often in the same city, multiple times a year, in the same pockets of your life. To you, he was just a man. Brooding, aloof, different hair color. To him, you were just a woman who, he's guessing, is a local considering how often he catches you whenever he's in the city.

The first two times he was in Barcelona was for soccer. You had no idea he was famous, no clue that millions of people in and out of the country screamed his name every time his team was on. He never mentioned it. Didn't have a reason to, since, again, you two were basically strangers and nothing more than that.

Every other time after that? His visits weren't for soccer, for business, or anything of that matter. He just found himself getting a plane ticket over, and gosh, if he said he didn't think of your face when he landed? He'd be a liar. Like he was planning to see you every time he came, or at least hoped to.

The coincidences piled up over the years, becoming something heavier than chance. It was like the city of Barcelona itself wanted the two of you tethered, dragging you to him and him to you no matter how far you strayed. Fate is so silly, if you can even call it that. It's too early to tell, but still.

A part of you started to expect it. Maybe if you pushed open a door of a restaurant to enter, he'd be too. Maybe if you rounded a corner in a park, you'd catch his hair glowing in the sun. Maybe you'd be crossing to one side of the street and he'd be going the other way. Maybe you'd catch each other on the steps of the Church again.

After all the run-ins that felt less like accidents and more like inevitabilities, the air between you had started to shift. Neither of you had said it, neither of you dared, but there was a weight there now. Whatever it was, Barcelona kept weaving you back into each other’s lives, and neither of you had tried to stop it.

After all these years, he finally stops you. In one of the older cities, in the heat and stick of the summer around the same time you saw each other for the first time, outside of an old Church. "Excuse me," You hadn't noticed him yet at this point. His hand lightly catches your fingers, halting you in your tracks. His eyes catch yours and he cracks a smile.