Mira and I have an ongoing argument. I believe in soulmates. Mira believes in a line of coincidences. Here is the case for why I’m right. We met in medical school. Mira from Overland Park, Kansas, and me from Colby, Kansas. Med school was new, slightly overwhelming, and mostly we were just looking for friends. On paper, we didn’t seem especially likely to become close. Our hobbies didn’t overlap all that much, and while there were small sparks quietly acknowledged in our own heads, nothing was said out loud. Still, we somehow ended up in the same small group of eight students selected by our school from a class of over 200 people (Exhibit A) and spent much of our first two years studying together. That small group was where we had our first casual hellos, group hangouts, and the occasional study session, but nothing more. During our first week of school, when everyone was still finding their footing, our class organized a picnic at the Nelson. Knowing Mira’s name from our small group, I asked if I could play Jenga with her and her friends. It was our first word exchange outside of school, though neither of us thought all that much of it at the time. We both quietly thought the other was cute… and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing about it. Medical school stayed busy, and we each assumed that if the other was interested, they would make the first move. As it turns out, when two people both think that way, absolutely nothing happens. So we didn’t start talking until second year. What I didn’t know was that back at the very beginning, Mira had already told her friend about “a cute boy in her class” (Exhibit B) documented with a picture of me. Eventually, with some encouragement from my friends, we started spending time together; first was pickleball with a group, second was pickleball with a group, then finally third was pickleball with a DIFFERENT group, but eventually it was pickleball just the two of us. After that we formed a competitive bond so we took our competition to board games. This included a second attempt at Jenga, where Mira consistently proved she was better than me (despite the fact that I’m the one who’s supposed to become a surgeon). From there came walks, casual dates, a revelation that we have an identical taste in music, (Exhibit C) and of course there was me inventing reasons to hang out, since time always seemed to disappear whenever we were together. Our personalities aligned, our conversations came easily, and we discovered a shared love of food with Mira introducing me to Thai and Indian cuisine (new favorites of mine), and me introducing her to baking. We learned to enjoy each other’s hobbies, found some new hobbies, and more importantly, we learned that simply being together was the best part. Today, you can still find us doing spontaneous little things like trying to bake something new, listening to audiobooks on walks, and talking about absolutely anything and everything, including Mira’s favorite question about our deepest, darkest secrets, to which we both somehow never have an answer. Mira thinks that it's all just an incredible coincidence; I think it was fate. Either way, I'm the one who got to write this story for the website.