I wasn’t supposed to publish this yet.
This was supposed to be a long rambling about Tia, about how she entered my life, how the little things became important, how one game, one traffic-filled day, and one person slowly turned into something I didn’t know I needed. There are still so many journals I wanted to put here first, so many memories I wanted to arrange properly before anyone read it.
I’m not gonna write a love letter, this is just me trying to put her into words. Tia. Some people call her “Matcha” and honestly, I still don’t know how she ended up in my life… but I’m glad she did.
Ranger Community… I really have to give the flowers to Jo for building that place, because without him, I wouldn’t have found the one who fits me so well. The first time I talked to her, nothing in my head went “woah,” nothing punched through to my chest yet. But I knew one thing with 100% certainty: she’s smart, and she’s hardworking.
The girl is full of positive energy, even though she gets easily offended, that’s what “ngambek” means, by the way. She’s the kind of person who can walk into a room and it feels like the lights just turned a little brighter. An extrovert, people would say, the kind who can make strangers laugh like they’re old friends.
Our first conversation didn’t really go anywhere special. She was asking for help with homework and I just… volunteered to help. Simple. No plan. No script. And then, out of nowhere, I gave her my main email so she could use my ChatGPT. That inbox had everything: links, passwords, drafts, traces of every weird thought I ever had. I don’t know what I was thinking back then in those early days of knowing her.
Maybe that was already a sign, some invisible string theory shit, or red string theory if you wanna be poetic. I handed her the keys to my digital life like it was nothing, and in that moment, without realizing it, I may have already started letting her in.
And then our chat just… kept going. It wasn’t like some dramatic “from now on, everything changes” movie scene. It was slow, quiet, like we didn’t even realize we were building something.
From helping her homework, we ended up playing games online together. Nothing fancy, just Roblox games, trash‑talking, bad jokes, and we’d just start laughing non‑stop. It felt stupid, but it also felt real.
We shifted from “hey, can you help me with this?” to “wait, you’re still online?” to “oh, you’re fun to talk to” without anyone actually saying it out loud.
Those early days of building up into something… it took forever. November, then December, then January crawling by. I don’t even know the exact timeline, but I know it felt long like we were slowly walking toward each other without realizing we were both moving.
And then, in February, the “movie” actually started.
I’m pretty sure I was in a voice channel with my friends when she randomly popped in and asked people to play Stardew Valley with her. No one really responded. No one but me.
Yeah, me.
It was almost the end of January, I was almost out of money, and Stardew Valley was a paid game. You know what I did? I bought it. Right away. It was worth two days of meals. Two days. I stared at the price and then just confirmed the purchase.
I didn’t have any feelings for her at that exact moment. I was still thinking about another girl, still tangled up in someone else’s orbit. Buying that game wasn’t some grand romantic move. It was just me being impulsive, maybe a little lonely, maybe a little bored. Maybe it was the red string theory thingy, maybe it was just me being a dumbboi who overinvests in random coincidences.
We ended up playing the game the next day, or the day after that. It wasn’t some epic romantic montage, just two people clicking on crops, feeding chickens, and pretending we weren’t both quietly curious about how this little moment was starting to feel like the beginning of something.
Every night, we just kept playing that game together while staying in a call. It started as “okay, let’s farm some crops and not die in the mines,” then slowly turned into something else without us announcing it.
The talks went from just talking about the game, to her explaining her day, then my day, my work, her homework, and then to bigger things. My life. Her life. Things that usually don’t get typed into Discord chats. I even started sharing some of my problems, stuff I’d normally keep to myself or just write in a private note.
Back then she didn’t always give the kind of answer that felt like it “fixed” everything. Her advice wasn’t magic, but just having someone who actually listened was already better than nothing. Sometimes, later, I’d realize that some of the things she said did help, even if they didn’t sound like solutions at first. It felt like she wasn’t trying to be a therapist, she was just… there, and that made the difference.
And after those long nights, after all those calls that started as “just one more day of Stardew” and somehow became part of my routine, I slowly started noticing her in a different way. I found her attractive. Not in some sudden movie-scene way, not like the whole world stopped or some romantic soundtrack started playing, but in a quieter and more annoying way, because it happened slowly. My brain started collecting little details about her without even asking for my permission. She’s cute, she’s nice, and she has good humor, the kind that actually matches mine, the kind where the joke doesn’t even have to be that funny but somehow, because it’s her, I still laugh.
And whenever we talked, everything just felt lighter. All the stress that had been building up inside me, from work, from life, from random thoughts I didn’t even know I was carrying, would just disappear for a while. Just like that. I know it sounds a little dramatic when I write it down, but when it happened, it didn’t feel dramatic at all. It felt simple. Natural. Like breathing after holding it in for too long. Like my day could be messy and heavy and full of things I didn’t want to deal with, but then her voice would show up in my headphones and suddenly the world became a little less annoying.
Maybe that was when I started getting scared, or maybe not scared exactly, more like aware. Because when someone starts becoming your peace, that’s not really a small thing anymore. That’s not just “oh, she’s fun to talk to” territory. That’s the kind of thing that makes you stop for a second and wonder what the hell is happening to you. And me being me, of course I didn’t admit it immediately. I probably told myself she was just a good friend, classic denial, very professional dumbboi behavior. I was out here farming digital potatoes at night and accidentally developing feelings like it was some side quest I forgot to read properly.
But deep down, I think I knew. I knew talking to her felt different. I knew I was starting to look forward to her messages, her calls, her little reactions, even the way she’d get annoyed over small things. I knew her presence was becoming something I didn’t want to lose. And maybe that was the first real sign, not the email, not the game, not even the late-night calls, but the way being around her made everything feel peaceful for a while.
But soon after that, I started getting this feeling that maybe, just maybe, she liked me too. And I don’t even know why I’m writing that with so much confidence, like bro relax, who gave you this much evidence in court? But at the same time, I couldn’t ignore it. It was in the way she replied to my messages, the way her voice sounded when she talked to me, the way she looked forward to our nights together, whether it was to play games or just to talk about random things until time disappeared again. It was in the way she got mad when I ingkar janji, when I promised something and didn’t follow through. Maybe I was reading too much into it, maybe I was just being too highly confident, but part of me really thought, “Wait… does she actually like me too?”
But of course, the road from whatever we were into an actual relationship wasn’t as smooth as other people’s cute little stories. There were obstacles. My best friend was one of them, and I’m not gonna go into the details because I don’t want this rambling to turn into some messy documentary. I want to keep this part as romantic as it can be, because in the middle of all that confusion, all that uncertainty, there was still this feeling that kept growing anyway. Like even when things weren’t simple, even when the situation had its own weight, I still couldn’t stop thinking about her in that way.
And then, long story short, we met. After my sempro, I didn’t really have any plan to do anything. I was just done, tired, probably mentally fried, and then Fatur, shoutout to this guy, my fucking family, asked me to join him to go to Bekasi, just to heal a bit after sempro. Also shoutout to Kak Ghozy, the fucking goat. At first it was just supposed to be a little escape, nothing too serious, but then I remembered that Tia also lived in Bekasi, so I thought, might as well meet her, right? The first plan was to meet her with my other friend too, so it wouldn’t be too intense, but then my friend suddenly couldn’t join because of work, and just like that, the universe did its little thing again.
And then she showed up. I don’t even know how to explain that moment without sounding insane, but the second I saw her, my heart started pumping like it had been waiting for that exact scene. I was nervous, awkward, probably not as cool as I wanted to be, but inside my head there was this very clear feeling, like, “Yeah, she’s the one. I’m gonna get her.” Not in a creepy way, obviously, more like my heart suddenly made a decision before my brain could even prepare a PowerPoint presentation. That day was full traffic, chaotic, tiring, Jakarta doing Jakarta things, but somehow I didn’t even mind it that much, because that was the day I really fell in love with her.
Maybe I was awkward that day. Actually, no, I’m pretty sure I was awkward. I probably overthought every word, every movement, every silence, while trying to act normal like I wasn’t internally fighting for my life. But thank God, somehow, she still accepted me. She still stayed there, still talked to me, still let the day become something I’d remember like a turning point. Because before that, I liked her, I cared about her, I felt peaceful with her. But after meeting her, after seeing her in real life, after spending that one traffic-filled day with her, it became different. It became real in a way I couldn’t run from anymore.
After that day, I couldn’t really forget her anymore. Her eyes, her voice, her smile, the way she got excited over little things, everything just stayed in my head like my brain decided to save the whole day in high quality. It wasn’t just “oh, she’s cute” anymore. It was worse than that. It was like every small detail about her kept replaying in my mind even when I was doing something completely unrelated. I’d be working, or just lying down, or doing random stuff, and then suddenly my brain would go, “remember her smile?” like bro, please, I’m trying to function.
She really felt like an angel to me. And I know that sounds cheesy, but honestly, I don’t care. Never have I ever seen her in a bad look. Not once. She always looks beautiful to me, even when she probably thinks she doesn’t, even when she’s not trying, even when she’s just being herself. Maybe she already casted some kind of spell on my eyes, because somehow everything about her just looks good. It’s actually crazy. Like, I don’t know if this is love or some kind of visual bug in my brain, but whatever it is, I’m not complaining.
And maybe that’s the thing about falling for someone for real. You don’t just notice the obvious pretty parts, you start loving the details too. The expressions she makes without realizing, the way her face changes when she’s excited, the small smiles, the annoyed look, the way her voice sounds when she’s telling a story. All of it becomes special. All of it becomes something you keep, even if nobody else would understand why it matters so much. To other people, maybe it’s just normal. But to me, it was her, and that alone made everything beautiful.