In 2020 my best friend and I decided to move back to our hometown after a three month trip to Japan. As we were looking at housing options, we realized it may help us out to have a third person pay rent and Malea suggested her brother Elisha. Elisha and I had met back in middle/high school and even though we didn’t interact much, I knew him to be a calm, private, responsible person and figured he would make an ideal housemate. We suggested it to Elisha and surprisingly he agreed. Elisha exceeded all housemate expectations. My sister started pushing hard for me to consider Elisha as a potential life partner but I was extremely against that because I didn’t want to mess up our living situation. I would say things like “if we lived in a culture where arranged marriage was a thing, Elisha would be a great partner but I just don’t see him that way”. But still Elisha seemed to go beyond normal human niceness. When I said I missed warm towels from Japanese restaurants, Elisha bought me a towel warmer. When Malea and I talked about omurice (a Japanese rice omelette) Elisha found some recipes and made it for us. When I invited him to hang out with my friend and I at Bok tower for new years, he shockingly agreed and played board games with us that night as well. We started drinking tea together at night and doing things just the two of us. My guard started to lower and I gradually realized I didn’t want a different housemate ever again. The weekend of my 27th birthday, I came home to find that Elisha had baked me chocolate chip cookies and cooked Indian curry and rice from scratch. And I realized I couldn’t keep my feelings to myself much longer. A couple days later his grandpa asked if I ever considered Elisha as a life partner. Embarrassed, I said he was a good friend but that night I confessed my feelings to him and we started “talking” to see if dating was worth the risk of ruining our living situation. In October 2022 we decided the risk was worth it and officially began dating. In March 2024 he asked me to be his forever roommate and we are so excited to share our union with our loved ones this August.