The beginning of this chapter

From friends to family.

We met in 2018 in the DePaul dorms, Beldine Racine Hall to be exact. We started talking as friends, the way the best things sometimes begin: casually, honestly, without knowing how much a person is about to matter.

Some of the earliest memories still feel perfectly us. Kieran falling asleep on Nang's mattress topper while she was studying for finals. Nang getting her first tattoo and wanting to show him first.

Our first date was the Art Institute of Chicago and sushi at Hot Woks Cool Sushi next to the museum. On the walk there, someone from Kraft was handing out free mac and cheese, which feels like the kind of strange, perfect Chicago detail a story should keep forever.

We still have pieces of that day: the museum program, the ticket on Nang's cork board, and the memory of walking through the miniature rooms exhibit telling each other which tiny rooms we wanted to live in.