What defines a true high school friendship? Across campus, you’ll find an endless variety of students who form bonds through common interests, shared activities, mutual acquaintances or chance encounters. Less often, you’ll find those compatible enough to break past the surface-level attachment of most peer-to-peer relationships.
The English language has a hard time capturing these connections — it’s hard to put a word on the feeling of inevitability that defines such a friendship — but in Chinese, the word yuán fèn” (缘分) comes close. Yuanfen describes the “fateful coincidence” dictating the encounters, affinity and placement of two people into each other’s lives.
Importantly, the concept of yuanfen extends throughout life. A close encounter as children, a shared class or a mutual friendship might all contribute to the karmic threads that ultimately bring two people together. For the past decade and a half, the two of us have built an impressive portfolio of these moments, slowly building a friendship that’s lasted through thick and thin.
Starting from our childhood, our paths almost crossed an impressive number of times. In 2010, the two of us lived only a 5-minute walk away from each other in Sunnyvale — unknowingly frequenting the same parks as children with our families.
Perhaps if we both stayed in the area, our families could have become close in elementary school, especially since our parents are coworkers at Google. As fate would have it, Anthony moved to Saratoga in 2012, while Jane stayed in Sunnyvale until moving here in 2018, pushing back our friendship for another few years.
Jump to 2019 when, as sixth graders at Redwood Middle School, both of us traveled to Disneyland with the marching band — it wasn’t until freshman year that we found each other in a group photo from the trip: We had unknowingly paraded down Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. together, Anthony playing the trombone and Jane waving a shield with the color guard.
But throughout middle school, our eminent friendship inched closer and closer. Jane’s older sister proctored tests for Anthony at the middle school math club, and our parents both volunteered for the high school marching band for our older siblings.
Finally, our lives intersected when we were placed in the same table group in Mr. Marks’ eighth-grade core class. Ironically, Jane remembers thinking that Anthony hated her, while Anthony has no recollection of his first impression of her. While we talked a few times that year, we didn’t end up forming a close relationship.
Entering high school, we didn’t share any classes, but being in marching band and color guard meant we saw each other pretty frequently — still, we always seemed to be one degree of friendship apart from each other.
Visual: link // Photo by Jane Lee
Caption: One of our first shared photos from freshman year.
Despite growing distant after the end of the marching band season, we ended up sharing three classes sophomore year: AP European History, Journalism and World History. With the large number of AP Euro and World History group projects (read our AP Euro survival guide!), we spent hours together outside of marching band cosplaying as Franz Ferdinand and Louis XIV. As Falcon staffers, we began working together to profile the marching band and helped each other adjust to stressful deadline nights.
Then, as juniors, we began to truly connect as best friends. Taking English 11H, Journalism and AP Chemistry (read our AP Chem survival guide too!) together, we were spending hours inside and outside of school with each other stressing over rigorous classes together — or rather, Jane stressed and Anthony watched her panic.
Sitting together in AP Chem for most of the year trauma bonded us together, while holding leadership roles in the marching band meant we continued to spend hours in rehearsals together. That year, we traveled to Sofi Stadium for our last competition together and placed second, even receiving the trophy together.
And throughout our senior year, we’ve stuck together. We opened both of our early college decision results in Anthony’s car, gossiped in 3-hour FaceTime calls and survived it all.
On Ivy Day, Jane immediately called Anthony after opening her results and started crying when he was accepted to Harvard. And while there was a brief glimpse of a possibility of visiting each other in Boston and New York, we ultimately decided to live on opposite coasts.
Just as the Chinese language has yuanfen, Korean culture discusses the concept of inyun (인연) — introduced to us through our shared love for the film “Past Lives.” Inyun theorizes that even the slightest interactions between two people signify a connection from a past life; every single encounter, no matter how miniscule, is predestined.
Over the years, we’ve navigated side-by-side through our fair share of problems: We’ve fought, consumed an embarrassingly large amount of boba and given each other advice on relationships and college to build a mutual understanding that’s difficult to find elsewhere.
But if we believe what inyun tells us, it means we were destined to move to Saratoga; to sit together in eighth grade; to push through the easy and hard days and perhaps even to venture on separate paths as we leave for college.
So while we’ll make new friendships, probably find new “day ones” and individually grow on separate sides of the country, nothing can ever break the layers of connection we’ve formed thus far.
In the closing lines of the 2023 film “Past Lives,” one protagonist asks the other: “What if this is a past life as well, and we are already something else to each other in our next life? Who do you think we are then?”
In every one of our next lives, we hope we are best friends.
