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When Baekhyun is sixteen, he calculates that he'll meet his soulmate in four years, three months and nine days.
He gets the timer implanted in his wrist because everyone has one. That's just how it works. They turn sixteen, and then they go to the nearest Timer Corporation office and get outfitted with a little device that counts down the days until they meet the person they're going to spend the rest of their life with. Everywhere, there are digital numbers. A 953 on the wrist of a schoolgirl on the train, who's just passed her sixteenth birthday and is too young to really grasp what 'together forever' means. A 109 on the timer of an aging shopkeeper, who looks weary and yearning like he's been waiting far too long. A 2 on the wrist of a sharply-dressed businesswoman hurrying down the street to a meeting, bright-eyed and increasingly nervous with every passing hour. Everywhere is filled with the sight of people anticipating a love hanging in limbo. And now, with 1550 days until he meets his soulmate, Baekhyun is one of them.
Sometimes, he imagines. He imagines someone cooking his favourite recipes for dinner, calling him just to hear his voice, kissing him sweetly in the quiet moments and doing anything to see him smile. Sometimes it's a short girl with bright laughter and curly hair that reaches down to her waist, and other times it's a clean-cut man in a button-down shirt and a tie who's already seen a bit of the world. Sometimes it's an older woman with a curvaceous body, or a younger one who gazes at him shyly from behind thick glasses, or a boy his own age with sharp cheekbones and an uncanny ability to finish all his sentences for him. He imagines any one of those people looking down at their own timer, wondering about him the same way he's wondering about them. But no matter how much he imagines, he just doesn't know.
It's hard to imagine loving someone so strongly without any clue of who they are, and 1550 days feels so far away. He can't imagine ever turning twenty, or becoming an adult, or spending forever with someone. The timer represents an abstract concept he can't quite fathom, and so at first he doesn't pay it much thought. This hasn't changed much by 700 days. As he watches the people around him meet their soulmates one by one, he's happy for them, but not too desperate to be in their positions. By 365 days he's still alone, but not quite lonely. It doesn't begin to feel real until there are only 30 days left.
With 30 days left to go, it hits Baekhyun that this is really going to happen. The number that used to be big and vague and an eternity away is suddenly looming right over him, and all of a sudden the anticipation is nearly unbearable.
So Baekhyun tries to prepare. He does all the things he assumes people do to get their lives in order: cleans his flat and throws out everything he doesn't urgently need, tries to rein in his credit card spending, buys healthy food at the grocery, starts going to the gym, gets a haircut. He hasn't really got a precedent for how to enter into a state of shared adulthood, but he does his best. Baekhyun's not much of a partier, but he goes out to a club one night because he feels like he needs to say goodbye to the single life somehow. He gets wasted and dances all night, then wakes up the next morning remembering why he doesn't do this often. He does what he thinks are the right things to transition into his future responsibility as a soulmate. By the time there are 2 days left, Baekhyun still doesn't feel ready, but he feels prepared.
Baekhyun knows how this works. The night before he's going to meet his soulmate, the timer will hit 0. The next day, when he and his soulmate make eye contact, it'll start beeping to let him know he's found the one. He's read about this in the instruction manual they gave him when they first installed his timer, and he's seen it happen about a million times. To his friends, to his family, to complete strangers. Sometimes the meetings are awkward and shy, sometimes they're joyful and open, sometimes they're tearful and grateful. Sometimes the couple nervously bows and exchanges names, sometimes they laugh or cry or jump up and down, sometimes they fling themselves into each other's arms and don't let go for a long, long time. Every time this happens, everyone around the couple stops and applauds. On the street, in the grocery, in a school or work hallway, it doesn't matter. The introduction of the timer has turned this culture into a culture obsessed with the finding of love, and they celebrate it.
Baekhyun wonders what kind of meeting his will be. If there will be people around to clap for them. What the first thought that goes through his mind will be when he makes eye contact with his soulmate, after 1550 days, for the first time.
There's only 1 day left when suddenly, without warning, his timer goes blank.
"This has to be a mistake, right? These timers are just technology, I'm sure they can malfunction." Baekhyun grits his teeth to keep his voice even as he clutches the phone tighter in his hand; he shakes the other wrist violently, waiting for any change in the timer. Nothing happens, but he hadn't figured it would. "So I'll just bring it in and then you'll fix it, right?"
"I'm very sorry, but we hear virtually no cases of timer malfunctions. A blank timer means your soulmate doesn't have one. Most likely, your soulmate has just gotten their timer removed." The woman's voice is calm, emotionless, expressionless. The perfect customer service tone. It makes Baekhyun want to scream. "There's nothing we can do about that."
"But they were going to meet me the next day." Baekhyun hates how pathetic he sounds. Harsh tears are filling his eyes, blurring out his vision, and he closes his eyes because the mere sight of the tears makes him feel so helpless. "It just doesn't make sense. Why would they get their timer removed when they were right about to meet me?"
"It happens more frequently than you'd think." The woman clears her throat. "I'm sorry, but it's clear that your soulmate no longer has a timer. You'll have to wait to see if they re-implant it, or find them on your own. Good luck."
Baekhyun hangs up the phone and lets the tears overflow. He's not going to pretend he's too grown up to cry. He's not especially romantic or overly sentimental, but he's been waiting almost four and a half years to meet this person — imagining them, imagining their meeting, imagining their life together — and it feels like a significant part of those last four and a half years has been ripped away from him. He sits there, his eyes fixed on the blank screen of his timer, and prays the numbers will flash back onto the screen.
The thing is, it's not just that Baekhyun doesn't know when he'll meet his soulmate. It's not just that he'll be unsure it's really them if he manages to find them on his own. It's that the person got their timer removed just because they didn't want to know if they'll meet him. They didn't want to look at him and know that he belongs to them. They waited until the last moment, left him hanging on the edge of anticipation, then disappeared.
That hurts more than knowing he has no idea how long he's going to be alone.
Baekhyun lets his hair grow out. He stops going to the gym. He lets his flat turn back into a mess. He ignores all the texts from his family and friends: congratulations!! and How was the meeting? and when are you going to introduce them to us??? He forces himself to continue on with his life as if the blank timer incident never happened. If his soulmate was destined to be with him, he figures, they'll be with him anyway. Eagerly anticipating got him disappointed, so he'll do the opposite — he'll just aimlessly drift towards the inevitable. Maybe the person screwed with the inevitable by removing their timer, altering the course of their natural, predicted love, but fine. He waited almost four and a half years. He can wait more.
So he waits.
It happens on an early October day that's way too cold for the season. Baekhyun's underdressed and overreacting, painfully grimacing and aggressively shivering with each sharp breeze that cuts across his face and dries out his skin. The bus is five minutes late, and in weather like this, five minutes might as well be five hours. He's running late to an appointment he forgot about up until the very last minute, a bag of groceries in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. His hair is a half-dried mess of static, and it's dubious whether or not his clothing matches. This is how the scene is set on the day he meets Chanyeol.
Baekhyun's first glimpse of Chanyeol is an awkwardly gangly boy with horribly tousled hair sprinting towards him at full speed with a panicked expression on his face. At first Baekhyun isn't sure if he should give in to his fight-or-flight response and run for his life, but it makes sense when the guy flings himself down on the bench beside Baekhyun, panting heavily.
"Hey. Did the bus come yet?"
Baekhyun stares at him for a moment. Then another. And slowly, he bursts out laughing. "If it already came, why the hell would I be sitting here?"
This is how their relationship begins.
It's a weird thing, the two of them. The conversation starts with wild speculations about the reasons for the bus's tardiness that have them both doubling over in laughter, and somehow progresses into Baekhyun giving Chanyeol his number once the bus finally comes and subsequently reaches Chanyeol's stop. Chanyeol texts him an hour later, and before Baekhyun can really process what's happening, they've set up plans to go out for dinner on Friday night. Chanyeol concludes the exchange with three simple words: it's a date.
"So … what's your job?"
"I'm a musician."
"Yeah … me too."
"Cool."
This is not how Baekhyun pictured their date going. He wants to smash his face into a wall.
Where they are is an upscale restaurant. Not the minimalist, modern type with the experimental dishes that no one's really sure if they want to try, but the type of stuffy place that people probably go to propose to their soulmates or have business dinners. Not Baekhyun's scene at all, and judging by the look on Chanyeol's face, not his either. They're there flipping through these menus full of over-priced seafood dinners that neither of them can afford, rolling their eyes a bit at the violin music in the background, and it's awful. It's uncomfortable. The conversation is totally dead. From the way they clicked the other day at the bus stop, Baekhyun never expected it to be like this, but this is how it is.
Chanyeol coughs a little. Baekhyun clears his throat. They turn the page on their menus simultaneously, with no real interest in what they're seeing. And just when Baekhyun's starting to think of excuses to ditch this horrible date as fast as he can, Chanyeol sighs and closes his menu and drops it on the table.
"Want to get out of here?"
Baekhyun looks up at him, a bit surprised, and then gives him a wry smile. "Yeah."
So they do. They leave. They put on their jackets, slink away from their table and get the hell out of there. The chilly night air brings with it a bit of a fresh perspective, and they both loosen up a bit. Chanyeol gives Baekhyun a bit of a sideways glance, and there's a smile on his face that kind of takes Baekhyun's breath away. Chanyeol reaches out and takes Baekhyun's hand in his. It's a bit awkward, but Baekhyun smiles back.
So they don't plan it. They just wander. They don't go anywhere in particular. They walk down a few blocks of the street, looking into shop windows and restaurant windows and looking up at the lights around them. They head into a shop to get bubble tea, and Chanyeol laughs when Baekhyun briefly chokes on a tapioca pearl. They get on a bus with an unfamiliar route, and get off when Baekhyun points out an empty park that looks kind of nice. There's a bench inside it, and Baekhyun pulls them there to sit down. This whole time, Baekhyun's hand has never left Chanyeol's.
"So you said you were a musician?" Baekhyun asks, a bit breathless from the adventure, and Chanyeol grins.
"Yeah. Want to hear me sing?"
It turns out Chanyeol's really more of a rapper. He admits this sheepishly when Baekhyun's polite smile gets more and more forced. He also admits he's much better at guitar than he used to be, and he'd probably be better off showing off that than his singing. Baekhyun, who actually is a singer, shows off his own. They stay there in the park under the moonlight for a long time like that, and then suddenly, Chanyeol leans over and kisses Baekhyun. Baekhyun's surprised, and the kiss is horribly clumsy, but he finds he doesn't mind.
"Wanna do this again?" Chanyeol murmurs against Baekhyun's lips, and Baekhyun nods.
"How about tomorrow?"
They meet again tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. The schedules of musicians don't work like everyone else — there's no daily, weekly, monthly, yearly pattern they have to follow; no desk or supervisor to be chained to. So it's not that hard, finding times for Baekhyun to meet up with Chanyeol. Before long, it seems like they're always together. Baekhyun calls Chanyeol to wake him up, because Chanyeol's bad at remembering when he's got someplace to be, and he never sets his alarm anyway. Chanyeol brings Baekhyun lunch, because sometimes Baekhyun gets too caught up in a song he's writing and he can't tear himself away from it to cook. They go out to dinner together a bit more frequently than they can really afford, and when they can, they run wild around the city like they did on their very first date. Whenever Chanyeol gets to perform in a show, Baekhyun goes. Whenever Baekhyun's writing a song, Chanyeol offers his help. It seems like they're almost never apart. And before Baekhyun knows it, he's not just one person anymore.
Chanyeol never asks him to make their relationship official. Baekhyun doesn't ask either. In this society, there is no such thing as specifically establishing a romantic relationship. You're either with your soulmate or you're not, and Baekhyun can almost completely guarantee they're not. But Baekhyun's not just one person anymore. He's part of Chanyeol, and Chanyeol's part of him. Official or not, established or not, they're together. And that's that.
The problem is, in a society like this, it's only a matter of time before Baekhyun will have to ask to see Chanyeol's timer.
Chanyeol's not the one. Of course he's not the one. Chanyeol will have a timer, just like the rest of society, and because Baekhyun's is blank, it means Chanyeol's won't be. Chanyeol's just passing the time with Baekhyun until he finds his own soulmate; that's what it is. Technically, it's the same for Baekhyun, but the difference is that Chanyeol knows how long they have left. Chanyeol knows how long their relationship can last before he has to break it off and meet his soulmate, and he's planning accordingly. Baekhyun doesn't know.
Chanyeol could be one of those people who doesn't meet his soulmate until he's seventy, and he and Baekhyun will have almost all the time in the world together. He could meet his soulmate in four years, and then they'll have just enough time to fall completely in love before fate has to pull them apart. Or he could meet his soulmate next month. Next week. Tomorrow, even. And it hurts that Baekhyun knows Chanyeol isn't the one, but it hurts even more that he doesn't know how long he's got left to pretend that Chanyeol is.
It's not going to be easy. It's the dead of winter, when they're always covered by jackets and sweaters and long-sleeve shirts; Baekhyun's not going to be able to just look over at Chanyeol and read his timer. He's going to have to ask. It seems like too serious a thing to ask at this stage of their relationship, but the thing is, Baekhyun has to know.
Baekhyun has to know how long he can have Chanyeol for, before he gets too attached.
"I need to see your timer."
Baekhyun blurts it out in a moment of weakness. This isn't how he means to say it. He planned a way to ask, one that was subtle and casual and not too revealing, but he can't help it. Chanyeol's cuddled up beside him on the sofa, his long arms wrapped around Baekhyun's waist and his chin resting on Baekhyun's shoulder, and suddenly Baekhyun realises he never wants to let this go.
Chanyeol looks up at him, mildly surprised. "What?"
"I need to see your timer." Quietly, Baekhyun kisses him, then says, "Chanyeol, I … love you. I love you. And I need to know how much time we have left."
Chanyeol blinks at him with those big, innocent eyes. Then he shrugs. "I don't know."
"What?"
Of course Chanyeol knows. Everyone knows. They always know. They can tell you the exact number of days they have left, because they see it so many times over the course of 24 hours. Every time they wake up, that's another day gone. There's no way not to know. But looking up at him, Chanyeol says, "I don't know." And then, very slowly, he rolls up his left sleeve. Baekhyun's entire world freezes for a moment as he realises what he's seeing.
Chanyeol doesn't have a timer.
Nothing changes. It feels like everything in the world has changed, but Baekhyun doesn't let it. He continues their pattern like nothing happened. They see each other just as much as before, and they do everything together just like before, and Baekhyun tries to pretend like none of these millions of thoughts are racing through his head every time he looks at Chanyeol. He loves what they have together, and he doesn't want to lose it no matter what, so he acts like everything is normal. That there hasn't been this sudden and dramatic shift in the dynamics of their relationship that suddenly make everything more complicated than ever.
Baekhyun tries to pretend that, all of a sudden, his brain isn't filled with all these desperate, delusional thoughts that maybe Chanyeol could be his soulmate after all.
The chances are slim. With so many people in the city, in the country, in the world, the probability is low. But Chanyeol doesn't have a timer, and Baekhyun's is blank. Baekhyun's blank timer means his soulmate doesn't have one, and the boy he's fallen uncontrollably in love with doesn't. Soulmates fall in love; they always do. That's why they're soulmates. So it's nearly driving Baekhyun crazy, this need to know if maybe Chanyeol is the one after all.
Baekhyun wants to keep pretending nothing changed. He really, really does. But, he thinks, it might be worth the risk to ask. If Chanyeol's not his soulmate, he needs to know so he can fully accept the possibility of losing him. And if Chanyeol is, he can be relieved. So, so relieved.
There's only one way to do this. And so finally, Baekhyun sits Chanyeol down and asks, "Did you ever have a timer? Did you just never get one, or … did you get one, and then have it removed?"
Chanyeol takes Baekhyun's hand in his. Laces their fingers together. With his other hand he rolls up his sleeve, so that Baekhyun can see the indent of where the device once was. The scars from putting it in, and the scars from getting it taken out. Chanyeol says, quietly, "Got it removed."
"When?"
Chanyeol thinks for a moment. "In August, this year. The end of August."
Baekhyun's breath catches as he remembers. 1550 days from his sixteenth birthday. Four years, three months and nine days. His twentieth birthday was in April. It was three months and eight days after his birthday that his timer went blank.
"Can I see yours?"
Slowly, Baekhyun rolls up his sleeve to show Chanyeol his timer. He sees Chanyeol's eyes widen as he sees no numbers on the screen. And at that moment, both of their worlds freeze.
"It's you," Baekhyun whispers, and his hand trembles in Chanyeol's. "I think it's you."
Baekhyun stands by Chanyeol's side as the Timer Corporation surgeon injects topical anaesthesia into Chanyeol's wrist. The needle slides in between the scars from Chanyeol's first timer implant and his timer removal, and Baekhyun has to cringe and look away. The surgery's painful as hell to do and really unpleasant to watch, but Chanyeol insisted on going through it awake as soon as Baekhyun insisted on being by his side the whole time. Chanyeol insisted that he wanted to know at the first possible moment whether or not Baekhyun was his. And Baekhyun agreed, because he doesn't want to wait anymore. He waited 1550 days and then four more months — almost five years — and he's ready to know.
"Are you ready?" the surgeon asks, as she takes a blank timer out of its sanitised package and lays it on the tray beside her along with the scalpels and needles.
Chanyeol grins. "Ready as hell."
In the end, Baekhyun can't watch the surgery. As soon as the surgeon presses the scalpel to Chanyeol's skin, he has to turn away and cover his eyes. But he stays in the room through the duration of the surgery, and he opens his eyes the moment the surgeon says, "Done."
Baekhyun sits down on the operating table beside Chanyeol, not daring to look at his timer quite yet. This is the most important event in his life so far, and depending on the answer, it could be the most important moment in his entire life. But when Chanyeol moves so that he's laying his head in Baekhyun's lap, Baekhyun says, "Ready?"
"Ready as hell."
It happens all in a split second. No sooner does Baekhyun see the 0 appear on his timer than he looks down at Chanyeol's. Chanyeol's eyes meet his. And instantaneously, the timers begin to beep.
"Why did you get your timer removed?" Baekhyun finally asks, as they're laying in bed together a week later after they've made love for the first time. "Ever since my timer went blank, I've been wondering … why?"
Chanyeol hums, low in his throat, and nuzzles his face into Baekhyun's neck. "I guess … I didn't want to know. Didn't want to look at my soulmate and feel like, I have to love this person cause that's what I'm meant to do. I didn't want us to be forced into love. I wanted to find them and fall in love with them on my own. Not because some number told me to do it. I guess I wanted to fall in love with them because … well, because I already knew I loved them."
Baekhyun's not going to admit his eyes tear up just the slightest bit, but it's clear that his voice is choked up when he says, "And you found me on your own. You loved me on your own."
"Yeah." Chanyeol smiles. "Yeah, I did."