Somehow, their conversations wandered into talking about their favourite clubs, making predictions, and even betting on whose team would come on top. It was funny how naturally it happened. What started with eyelashes somehow turned into Harry Potter, then football, then all these little pieces of their lives that they slowly began sharing with each other.
And despite being on completely different sides of the world - one in Asia and one in Europe, they kept finding more reasons to talk.
There was even a little pause along the way. For a short while, they stopped talking, and perhaps life simply got in the way. But apparently, whatever strange little connection they had made wasn't quite ready to disappear.
Because when they started talking again, they somehow picked right back up where they left off.
The jokes were still there. The teasing was still there. The chaos was definitely still there.
If anything, they seemed to come back even more comfortable being their ridiculous selves, talking about poop to each other. Ew.
And then they started discovering just how much more they had in common.
Almost too much, really.
They found themselves loving many of the same things, getting excited about similar things, understanding the same little quirks, and having reactions that were sometimes so alike that it became slightly suspicious. Suspiscious that even google translate can't comprehend.
They bonded over a shared love for the ethereal music of Aurora Aksnes, a quiet appreciation for museums, and a fondness for classic literatures like A Christmas Carol and Macbeth.
They both shared an affection for Eevee and a soft spot for Electric-type Pokemons.
That they both love tulips, and both had a dark side that appreciated anime classics like Elfen Lied and Death Note, although he forgot that it was Light Yagami that is the antihero, not L.
They even share the same health struggle - they are both navigating life with allergic asthma and rhinitis, proving it to each other by showing off their inhalers.
It was the kind of similarity that made them laugh and think, "Okay, this is getting a little scary."
They realized they were essentially operating on the exact same TWO shared braincells.
But it was the good kind of scary.
The kind where you meet someone from thousands of miles away and somehow find little pieces of yourself in them. The kind where distance should make everything feel unfamiliar, yet somehow this person starts feeling strangely easy to talk to.
And then there was the sport neither of them probably expected to become such an important part of their connection.
Somehow, football became more than just football. One instagram story share about the game between Napoli (her club) versus Inter Milan (his club) became another excuse to talk, tease, make bets, celebrate victories, complain about defeats, and occassionally remind each other that the other person's team is, obviously, inferior. Haha
And how he tries to convince her to cheer for his clubs, even as far as asking her to like Inter Milan if KDB moves there, while she dares tell him that she will cheer for Barcelona if Ruben Dias moves there from Mancity, despite her being a fan of Real Madrid.
Then came food.
Because apparently, no friendship between two people who love food can survive without turning food into a source of endless teasing.
Especially when she decides to send him a video of her cutting some pieces of spaghetti in half before cooking them, and followed up by a photo of such monstrosity.
As an Italian, he probably considers this a personal attack, and he might have already called the police on her if he could.
She also keeps him updated whenever she buys coffee jelly frappe, because well, Italians love their coffee, and making it with tons of sugar is an abomination.
She also finds it funny how he overreacts about people who does not like matcha.
And if that wasn't enough, she also tells him that pineapples on pizza exist, oh, the horror on his face! Such perfection. Topping it off with the fact that there are people who use cream to thicken and flavour their carbonara. She conveniently brings up these atrocities whenever she wants to annoy him and see how dramatic he is (he is in fact, very dramatic when it comes to food). She knows exactly what she is doing. It's not really just about the pasta or the pineapple anymore. It's simply another excuse for her to tease the Italian guy and watch him suffer.
And naturally, he has found his way of getting revenge.
Like practically forcing her to use WhatsApp just so he could keep bugging her on another platform, using his singing voice as bait.
Or relentlessly teasing her size.
Because she is small.
Very, very small, according to him.
Small enough to earn herself an entire collection of ridiculous names: his little gnome, fairy, and whatever other names he comes up with whenever he feels like reminding her that she is tiny.
She can protest all she wants, but those names have somehow become a part of their little world too.
It's funny how these tiny things become meaningful.
The teasing. The nicknames. The ridiculous arguments about food. The football bets. The Harry Potter references and conversations, including their plans to buy a set of HP toothbrush and toothpaste - which they did not realize were for kids, because they did not read the description. but according to him, HE DOES NOT CARE; and he will just tell his parents that the shipment was wrong.
The random jokes that make absolutely no sense to anyone else.
They've somehow created their own little language without ever really planning to, as if Filipino and Italian languages are the same, because sending each other memes and gifs seems to be the conversation as a whole.
And somewhere in all of that, they agreed on perhaps the most ridiculous, and somehow most fitting name of all.
They are each other's meatball.
Polpetto.
Polpetta.
Of all the things they could call their connection, meatball probably should not make any sense.
But somehow they made sense of it.
Maybe because their friendship doesn't really make conventional sense either.
A Filipina girl and an Italian guy, living thousands of miles apart, separated by oceans and time zones, who somehow started talking because of a compliment about eyelashes.
Then Harry Potter.
Then football.
Then food.
Then endless teasing.
Then ridiculous nicknames.
And eventually, somehow, meatballs.
It sounds completely chaotic when written down.
And perhaps that's exactly why it works.
There was never really a grand plan behind any of it. They simply kept talking, kept laughing, kept teasing each other, and kept discovering new reasons to stay in each other's lives. As far as cursing each other not in HP spells, but in each other's langauges that the other did not teach.
Maybe that's what makes their connection so special.
They weren't supposed to have so much in common. They weren't supposed to find someone on the other side of the world who could match their energy so naturally. They weren't supposed to become this comfortable, goofy, chaotic little pair.
But somehow, they did.
And perhaps the sweetest part is that neither of them had to try very hard.
It just happened.
From a simple compliment about eyelashes to Harry Potter, from football bets to arguments about pasta and pineapples on pizza, from little gnome to meatball - their story is made up of all these tiny, silly moments that probably wouldn't mean much to anyone else.
But to them, those little moments became the connection.
And despite the distance. despite the short pause, despite how unlikely it all seems, she's genuinely glad she got to talk to him, and maybe him to her - otherwise he wouldn't be reading her blogposts before he went to work on a random night while she was asleep; and immersed himself in one of her writings. Knowing that, that one random night, made her think that if someone is so openly expressive of getting himself immersed in a story that does not involve him, then he does deserve of a writing that is solely dedicated to him. It wasn't random, it wasn't asked from her, she wanted to do it because he derserves it.
Because somewhere between all the chaos and teasing, she found someone who feels oddly familiar.
Someone who makes her laugh.
Someone she can be completely ridiculous with.
Someone who somehow understands her a little too well, but with the help of a translator sometimes.
And maybe that's a little scary.
But it's the kind of scary that makes her smile.
Because sometimes, the best connections are the ones you never saw coming.
And, naturally, because football had already become such a big part of their conversations, it eventually found its was into their collection of ridiculous nicknames too.
He decided to give himself a rather ambitious title: Italian KDB.
The reasoning according to him, was perfectly sound.
He plays football, he is Italian, and he knows very well that Kevin De Bruyne - KDB himself, is her favourite football player. Always has been, since she started watching football in 2018.
So, naturally, he decided that the obvious solution was to simply declare himself the Italian version.
Whether he actually deserved the title was, of course, highly questionable.
She wasn't exactly going to let him get away with that.
Because if he was going to combine Italian footballer with her favourite player, then she was going to combine football with HP.
And that is how Italian KDobby was born.
Italian KDB was apparently far too confident for someone who was now being compared to a house elf.
But perhaps the name was strangely appropriate.
He had the football part down.
He had the Italian part down.
And as for the Dobby part... well, she had decided that HP was going to be involved in absolutely everything.
While other people might picture Italian guys as handsome, smooth-talking AI mafia character straight out of a romance novel, her Italian guy was simply... Dobby meatball.
He could call himself Italian KDB all he wants, but to her, he is Italian KDobby.
And naturally, he couldn't possibly let her have the last word.
So he came up with the name of his own.
Filipina Bellatrix.
Because according to him, she is a little bit crazy.
She would probably argue that "a little bit" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
But honestly, after everything they had talked about, he probably had enough evidence to make his case.
And so their Harry Potter universe continued.
She has her Italian KDobby.
He has his Filipina Bellatrix.
Neither nickname was particularly normal.
Neither of them was particularly flattering.
And somehow, both were absolutely perfect for them.
It became another one of those little jokes that only made sense inside their friendship. To anyone else, "Italian KDobby" and "Filipina Bellatrix" would probably sound completely nonsensical.
To them, though, it was just another Tuesday.
And perhaps that's what makes their nicknames so funny.
They aren't random names pulled out of nowhere.
Each one carries a little piece of their story.
Football.
Harry Potter.
Their countries.
Their personalities.
The fact that he knows her favourite player.
The fact that she knows exactly how to turn his own joke against him.
Even their insults somehow come with evidence of how well they've been paying attention to each other.
He knows what makes her excited.
She knows what makes him annoyed.
He knows exactly which football reference will get her attention.
She know exactly which HP character will make him roll his eyes.
And somewhere in between all of that, they somehow built an entire dictionary of names for each other.
Italian KDB.
Italian KDobby.
Filipina Bellatrix.
His little gnome.
Fairy.
Meatball.
At this point, they probably need a spreadsheet just to keep track of everything.
And somehow, every ridiculous name, makes the friendship feel a little more like their own.
because that's what they've created without really realizing it; a little world filled with jokes, references, nicknames, rivalries, and tiny things that only the two of them would understand.
A world where an Italian footballer can become a house-elf, a Filipina girl can somehow become a Lestrange, where pasta can cause an international conflict, where two people can operate on two shared braincells, and two people living on the opposite sides of the world can somehow feel like they're not quite as far apart as they really are.
And that is beautifully scary.
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