Chapter Text
Seungyoun was back at work the next day, continuing his seemingly normal routine. He uses the term ‘seemingly normal’ very loosely because today was going to be the day he met the person who would change his life forever.
The day he would finally meet his soulmate.
To be very frank, Seungyoun didn’t even see the point of him even coming in for work today. He could barely focus his eyes on the screen of his laptop, everything just looked like a never-ending sea of numbers and complicated words that his brain could not comprehend at this point in time. He impatiently tapped his foot against the floor and he could physically feel beads of sweat accumulating on his forehead.
As he began typing away on his keyboard, Seungyoun could see his hands trembling in anticipation. It took thirty-long years for fate to finally bring him his life partner. He wasn’t even sure how he was supposed to properly react to this surprise. All he could do was ponder about his near future, his mind for the 100000th time today drifting to the endless string of possibilities as to where and how he would meet his soulmate.
‘Could it be a random client walking through the doors of the office looking for an auditor? Or a friend of his boss that came to attend a meeting? Maybe even the food delivery boy that frequently sends lunch to his colleagues.’
He immediately cringed.
“Oh God, please not the greasy, not-so-cute food delivery boy,” he silently prayed to himself, making a list of all the good deeds he’s ever done to remind fate that he is a good person and deserved a super-cute individual to live out the rest of his life with. He repeated this over and over again like a mantra, willing it to happen – until he was rudely snapped out of his prayers.
“MR. CHO!” his boss’ loud booming voice echoed throughout the department.
Seungyoun jumped a little in his seat as he frantically turned his head left and right to locate the source of said voice. He nearly fell out of his chair, letting out a little yelp when he felt a stern hand placed on his left shoulder. “Mr. Cho, I really hope you aren’t messing about at work considering that I gave you a day off yesterday,” his boss angrily shook his head, clearly clueless about Seungyoun’s soon-to-be life-altering situation. “I expect these reports on my desk before you go off for lunch, do I make myself clear?”.
“Y-y-yes, Sir. You got it” Seungyoun stammered, rarely apprehended for slacking off on the job.
Fearful of getting fired from the only job that was giving him a decent income to afford to pay the bills, the black-haired boy quickly brushed aside all thoughts of meeting his soulmate and began furiously typing on the computer. He only stopped a few minutes later, when he felt something – a paper ball maybe? – being thrown at his forehead. He looked up, confused, right before he saw another ball of paper heading right towards his face. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quick enough to dodge this vicious attack as the scrunch of paper hit him square on the face, knocking his glasses askew.
Seungyoun groaned and fixed his glasses in place with a sense of annoyance. He looked across his table with intent to bloody murder the person that bothered him. Seungyoun immediately rolled his eyes and sighed as he saw who the assailant was – Lee-fucking-Hangyul. The other boy had a huge celebratory, smug smirk plastered on his face. It didn’t take a second longer for Seungyoun to hold up his middle finger at the boy as Hangyul wiggled his eyebrows and stuck his tongue out at Seungyoun.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Naughty, naughty Youn. What if your soulmate finds out how rude you are,” he heard Hangyul snicker.
‘Breathe in, breathe out. He’s just trying to distract you’.
With a deep inhale and exhale of breath, Seungyoun quickly got back to work. There was no way in hell he was going to let Lee Hangyul be the reason he gets fired from his job. Besides, Hangyul knew how anxious Seungyoun was about this whole soulmate predicament, why was he even poking fun at him in the first place.
“Ugh. How annoying,” Seungyoun muttered bitterly under his breath, quiet enough that the person sitting opposite his desk couldn’t hear.
But soon, Seungyoun broke out into a little smile.
‘Stupid Hangyul,’ he thought as he shook his head affectionately. Though deep, deep, deep down, he couldn’t imagine his life without his best friend.
When lunch time rolled around, Seungyoun still hadn’t finished the final draft of the auditing report his boss requested for. That’s precisely when Hangyul gleefully bounced over to his desk, leaning on his cubical. “Yo, Hyeongjun-nie and I were planning to eat lunch at that new sushi place,” Hangyul informed.
Seungyoun looked up from his unfinished work to shoot him a questioning look.
“You mean the one two blocks away?” he asked, so very tempted to not come along just because he was too damn lazy to walk two bloody blocks just for lunch, as he focussed back to his computer screen and continued typing up his report.
“Yeah! Hyeongjun got us reservations and everything! Besides, everyone keeps raving about the place,” Hangyul defended, sounding very excited. “Come on, pleaaaaase Youn, let’s go,” he begged, giving Seungyoun the best aegyo look he could muster. And considering Hangyul, that aegyo, was pretty bad.
Seungyoun shot a death glare at Hangyul when he cheekily said, “Hmmmmm… you might even be lucky enough to meet your soulmate there,”. Seungyoun’s eyes drifted to his left arm, where his long, blue, work sleeves covered up his time mark. The cuff was doing a good job at hiding the flashing digits, but no matter how many layers he tried to cover it with, Seungyoun knew. It was there, and it was ticking away the seconds. If his calculations last night were right, then he would only have a handful of minutes left before he met his soulmate. But, he didn’t dare pull up his sleeve to look or even sneak a little peak.
“Fine, I’ll see you there. I have to get this done, first” Seungyoun huffed, crossing his arms in defeat.
Hangyul did a little celebratory jump and called out, “Woohoo! Let’s go Hyeongjun-nie!” as he quickly grabbed Hyeongjun by the arm, dragging the cute baby-faced boy out of the office. Seungyoun could hear Hangyul loudly listing out all the different types of sushi he planned to order as he practically skipped out the office door, Hyeongjun trying hard to skip along with Hangyul. Seungyoun covered his face with his hands, rubbed at his eyes and willed himself to finish the final details of the report. His heartbeat sped faster and faster as each word he wrote brought him nearer to the completion of his task. And nearer to his soulmate.
The tall black-haired man zipped through the streets with a little spring in his step. He was shaking, he was nervous as hell. But, he was excited. And happy. His heart pumped with a mixture of emotions: joy, anticipation, anxiousness. He folded his left sleeve to see how much time he has left.
00:03:25
He breathed a deep breath, because it was three fucking minutes until it would all be over. Seungyoun continued navigating himself through the unfamiliar, crowded streets of downtown, while occasionally glancing at his arm, watching the remaining seconds tick away.
He was brought back to reality when a very big, muscular man bumped into him in the street, knocking him off balance. “Hey! Watch it, man!” Seungyoun yelled into the crowd agitatedly as the random man didn’t utter a single apology and just ducked away into the rush hour sea of people.
Seungyoun felt the inner part of his wrist vibrate like a phone alarm going off and he knew that it meant that his timer had expired. That’s when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Seungyoun whipped his body around as he felt his mouth go absolutely dry. “Is it you?”, the question randomly spilled past his lips as he adoringly looked the stranger up and down. The stranger’s eyes grew wide, and gave him a very confused look.
“I- think you dropped this,” the brown-haired stranger said timidly, fully-knowing that Seungyoun was checking him out. The boy had a small smile creeping on his face, his hand extending Seungyoun’s wallet that must have fallen out of his back pocket in the previous collision.
The brunette stranger looked like an angel sent down directly from heaven; he had innocent, chestnut brown eyes, beautiful, silky hair that complimented his very cute and small face. His fair skin, was the next thing Seungyoun noticed – absolutely flawless, just like porcelain glass. He had a sharp, pointed nose and rosy-tinted lips which curved into a smile, that Seungyoun felt like he could stare at forever.
“Uh… Mister? This is your wallet, right?” the stranger’s voice brought him out of his daydream as he waved Seungyoun’s wallet in front of his face.
‘Ahh! His voice! It’s so soothing to hear,’. Seungyoun wanted this man to read to him every night before going to sleep. He could see the beautiful stranger continue to wave his wallet at his face, but Seungyoun couldn’t respond, his throat suddenly felt very dry and he felt like he was floating around in Dreamland. He could only manage a nod to respond to the boy’s question.
It would be an understatement to say that Seungyoun was ecstatic. But… Seungyoun was ecstatic. There were no other words that could describe how he was feeling at the time. He had imagined the greasy delivery boy for god’s sake to be his mate, and it turned out to be this gorgeous heaven-sent being.
Then, Seungyoun noticed the boy’s face fall as the smile on his lips vanished. The boy had his eyes glued to Seungyoun’s expired time-mark that read 00:00:00. “You better take this quick, Mister. Someone very lucky is waiting for you” the man said, biting his lips, as he grabbed Seungyoun’s wrist and placed the dropped wallet in the palm of his hands.
Seungyoun looked immediately down the stranger’s arm where there was a time-mark present. His eyes went wide as he read the numbers on the stranger’s arm. He took the boy’s left hand and pulled it gently towards his direction. He slowly realised that his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him.
04:00:35.
Their time-marks didn’t match.
“Good luck with your soulmate” the stranger whispered, with a sad smile as he pulled his hand away from Seungyoun’s grip. He turned around to walk away from Seungyoun, disappearing from Seungyoun’s line of sight. And Seungyoun just stood there, feeling confused in the middle of the street. His time-mark was still vibrating and blinking zeroes, as though mocking him. He turned his head – looking left, right, left, right. There had to be someone looking for him too. His soulmate had to be searching around for him, Seungyoun was so sure of it.
But, alas, nobody came up to him.
And he was still alone.
He was still… soulmate-less.