Invisible String

2

Everyone was surprised when she decided to start joining beauty pageants, her Mom most especially. She's always known that Michelle was in the boyish side growing up and has even come out as bisexual to them by the time she was a teenager. But that was the beauty of being bisexual, she can embrace her feminine side and masculine side, and joining beauty pageants was where she let her feminine side shine. 

And her feminine side shone and slayed like no other, and so no one was surprised when she managed to win the title of Miss Universe Philippines 2023 on her first try. No one's even heard of the business graduate from DLSU working in her family's business, who stood at 5'10" with no history of pageantry or modelling but looked the part, when she registered and competed. 

Now she's in El Salvador representing her beloved Filipinas, going on activities around the area to promote the beauty of the host country for the past week. Today's the first day of rehearsals though, and they were all gathered outside the hotel getting ready to get into the line of buses to bring them to the pageant venue.

There was a lady calling out country names to get them into the right buses and make sure everyone was accounted for. She's waiting for her name to be called when out of nowhere, a sudden outpour of rain comes from the skies above.  

Everyone scrambles, running for cover, with most of the girls running inside the buses and some going back to the hotel's entrance, much to the lady coordinator's dismay. Michelle, being one of them, chooses to go inside the nearest bus and she rushes inside to sit on the first vacant chair available. 

"Oh, hi!" the candidate beside her suddenly quips in an excited voice. "Miss Philippines!"

Michelle turns to look at the girl beside her and sees the face of the girl she's recently just added as a friend on Instagram and whose posts she's been liking left and right. 

"Hi!" she says back and extends her hand towards Ms. Thailand. "I'm Michelle."

"I know," Anntonia takes her hand and shakes it briefly. "And I'm Anntonia."

"I know that, too," she says back.

They share a smile and then both burst out laughing at the same time. 

"It's nice to finally meet you, Anntonia," she says after their shared moment of laughter.

"Likewise," Anntonia grins back. 

As the bus starts moving, they share stories about what they've been up to for the past week, the places they've gone to, and the activities that their assigned groups have done. 

She was in the middle of telling Anntonia about the surfing lessons they had the other day when she gets distracted for a second with the rain's pitter patter on the window bus. A flash of a memory of a rainy night in Phuket enters her mind and she blinks as she realizes there was something familiar about this very moment she was in.    

"This is gonna sound like the most random question in the world but... Have you ever seen frogs on the beach?" she asks.

"What?"

"Frogs on the beach," she repeats, ignoring the fact that Anntonia was now looking at her as if she's grown two heads with her sudden question.

"Umm, no, I don't think so," Anntonia shakes her head unsurely. "Have you?"

"Yeah, once, it was just a weird random thing," she dismisses, not wanting to embarrass herself in front of the Thai beauty. She shakes her head and tries to smile out of the situation. "Anyways, just forget I ever said that."

"Oh-kayy," Anntonia raises her eyebrow but then smiles teasingly right after, making Michelle feel at ease. She goes back to her story of the surfing lesson she had, the memory of that rainy night in Phuket now forgotten.