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Michele was not prepared when he opened his eyes in the dream to see an adorable Chinese kid. It didn’t change the plan at all, but it did give him a pang of regret. He was adorable, and they were at a movie theater. It would be a good way to ignore the kid, watching movies the whole time. He’d know something about the kid based on what movies ended up showing, so in… five? six? eight?... years when the kid came looking for him, if he did, he wouldn’t be starting completely from scratch.
The kid came over to him. “Hi! I’m Ji Guang Hong, and I’d like you to wait until I’m at least sixteen, preferably eighteen, before you even try to come. If you ignore that, or you come when I’m sixteen, the soulmate password is to ask me if my cabbages are pink. Do you have any questions that can’t wait until then?”
Not bad English for the obvious Chinese accent, so Michele decided to break his plan after all. “None. I wasn’t planning on coming anyway. When you’re eighteen you can come find me if you like, and we’ll see what happens then.”
“Perfect! I’m going to go get some popcorn, want some?” Guang Hong gave him a brilliant smile. “In a dream, I can go nuts with the food without worrying about my diet, and you can too! Wow, I just recognized you!” He pouted. “My soulmate’s a male skater and I don’t get to skate against him until I go up to seniors, and I won’t know to go up to seniors early to skate against him.”
So the kid was a skater… and between that and the movies, Michele already knew more than he’d planned on learning about his soulmate. Oh, well, at least Guang Hong wouldn’t be mad at him when he had his dream and Michele hadn’t come to him or reached out at sixteen. Depending on how things went with Sara between now and then, it might even be a good thing when Guang Hong reached out to him.
When the alarm went off at five in the morning, Michele grumbled a bit… and then remembered why he was getting up so early. For one thing, it would get him out of a potentially awkward dream, if his soulmate was not happy about being ignored. For another, he could cook a good breakfast and be prepared to grill Sara about her soulmate.
Sara rolled her eyes when she came out to find the fancy breakfast on the table. “Let’s get this over with. I have a soulmate. Only one. They are too young for me to go to them at this time, so I will be ignoring it until that changes. You will not get any more information out of me until then.” She plopped into her chair, arms crossed. “How big a dick were you to your soulmate?”
“As it happens, aside from his name, the first thing my soulmate told me was that he does not want me to come to him.” Michele sat across from Sara and began loading his plate. “I have enough information that when he comes to me when he’s ready, I’ll know it’s really him and not someone faking it for some reason, and beyond that neither of us saw much point in talking.”
Sara let out a quite unladylike snort. “What, did you get Lee Seung Gil?”
Michele had to rack his brain for a bit to remember who that was. Right. Korean skater, Sara thought he was very handsome, but it wasn’t just Michele who thought he was a colossal jerk. He was most known for being taciturn and dismissive – and for being Phichit Chulanont’s best friend, somehow, which meant that Michele couldn’t really keep Sara completely away from him. “No, I did not get Lee Seung Gil. I wouldn’t think you’d know him.”
“Well, then, unless you tell me who it is, I’m going to entertain myself with the idea that Seung Gil is your soulmate.” Sara stuck her tongue out at Michele and started loading her plate, finally. “If you want to stop me, you know how.”
“As long as you don’t start rumors, have whatever fantasies you like. Doesn’t bother me at all, although it’s a little weird, you imagining your brother in a soulmate type relationship…” There were certainly enough rumors going around about the two of them, although from what had gotten to Michele, it was more directed at him being a creepy weirdo and Sara being a normal sister and disgusted by the idea. He still reserved the older brother right to tease Sara about her poor phrasing there.
Sara choked on her bread. “That is not what I meant and you know it. I meant going for long walks on the beach and holding hands. Posing for cute selfies for Instagram.”
“I know, but… you set yourself up for that one.”
“I did.” Finally, Sara relaxed enough to smile again. “No rumors, I promise.”
For the next two years or so, things were calm. Michele kept an eye on Sara, watching to see if there were any men she was developing an unusual interest in, but nothing happened that seemed out of the ordinary. He watched juniors skaters to watch for potential threats, not that he needed the warning on Yuri Plisetsky this year but there were always stars waiting in the wings for their crack at seniors. It made it easy to keep tabs on Guang Hong and see how he was doing. He looked like he was going to be making a strong run at becoming China’s best men’s singles skater when Cao Bin retired, which might affect when he came up to seniors.
For right now, though, there was a more important concern. At their first competition of the season, Sara had been abnormally nervous, and it didn’t seem to go away. He finally got the explanation when they got into the Grand Prix and Sara approached Mila Babicheva to tell her they were soulmates. Michele tried to get over to congratulate them, but Viktor Nikiforov misunderstood his intentions and hauled him away from them. By the time he could make Viktor understand that he was just wanting to be among the first to congratulate his sister on finding her soulmate and apologize if he’d been the reason she was so nervous about things, Mila and Sara had disappeared. Oh well, he could text Sara, and get Mila’s number some other time.
Not long after, he became aware of a new problem – there were rumors all over the skating community about Guang Hong and Leo de la Iglesia being soulmates. The jealousy was unexpected, and unwelcome. Leo had always struck him as a good kid, not the kind to lead someone on, which meant that if there was any truth to the rumor, Guang Hong had two soulmates, and there was nothing wrong with that. If there wasn’t any truth to it, then Michele was being ridiculous.
He didn’t have any competitions against Leo, but he could get a message to Mila asking Leo to call him. Leo did promptly. “Michele? This is kind of a shock. Mila wouldn’t have passed on the message to call you if you were going to go ballistic on me for something to do with Sara, so what’s up?”
“No, she wouldn’t.” One of the reasons Michele liked Mila. “I’ve been hearing rumors that you and Guang Hong are soulmates. Is there any truth to that?”
Leo blinked a couple times, and then understanding dawned on his face. “Hell if we know, I’m seventeen, he’s fifteen. Is it me or him or both? Wait, no, if it were both of us, you’d know if we were soulmates. Me or him?”
Huh. Leo was apparently a very bright kid. Both sounded like it would’ve been decent. “It’s him. I’m not calling to ask you to back off or anything, I just misremembered your age and with the rumor being out there…”
“Yeah, figured.” Leo smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in it. “Not gonna apologize for having gotten my hopes up, he’s really cute and fun and I wish we could be soulmates, but knowing that you are I’m going to bet on not. I wasn’t going to date him anyway until I knew for sure. My church is really big on saving yourself for your soulmate.”
“Good luck with your dream. I’m going to be a little selfish and hope it’s not Guang Hong, but that you get someone good, but if it is Guang Hong then call me if you’re going to go to him? He asked me to wait until eighteen, but that may have changed and he just didn’t have a way to tell me.”
“And I’ll know and can tell him in the dream so he can tell me what he wants us to do. Deal.”
Leo’s call back the next August brought the news Michele was hoping to hear – Leo’s soulmate was not Guang Hong, but was Emil Nekola. That was going to be a good thing for both of them, Michele felt. They would be adorable together.
The call from Guang Hong was both long-expected and completely out of the blue. Michele had never bothered to look up his birthday, only really keeping track of his age because he moved up to seniors this year. Leo had agreed to give him the number, on condition that he didn’t use it until Guang Hong called or said something that would indicate he’d want a soulmate to come earlier, so when he saw the caller ID on his phone, he knew immediately what it was about. The timing was kind of terrible, as he’d just gotten home from the world’s awkwardest dinner and just wanted to get in bed. On the other hand, maybe Guang Hong would be able to help? Either way, he should answer. “Happy birthday, Guang Hong!”
“Thank you.” Guang Hong sounded… upset. Shit. Had Michele really been that big a dick in the dream? He certainly hadn’t meant to be a dick at all. “Why didn’t you come earlier?”
“You didn’t ask last night?” Michele cursed himself mentally. That was not the smart thing to have said. “You asked me not to until you turned eighteen, and between looking out for Sara and you being so young, I had no problem at all with that. You did say sixteen would be okay but that you would prefer eighteen, so I figured wait until you had your dream and contacted me.”
“But you told Leo. Why would you tell Leo and not me?”
“Because I thought Leo was the one who had had his dream when the rumors started going around that the two of you were soulmates. I knew you hadn’t, but I thought Leo might be eighteen and would know if they were true. When did Leo tell you?”
“His eighteenth birthday. Obviously I was disappointed that it wasn’t me, but it hurt that he wasn’t acting surprised or bothered at all, and he didn’t mean to tell me about you but it just slipped out that he knew who my soulmate was and I kept bothering him until he gave me a name.”
“Okay, but I didn’t know Leo had told you, Leo never said anything to me to indicate that I should call you early, so I’m not understanding why you’re bothered that I didn’t call. I was doing what you wanted.”
“So you didn’t go for eighteen over sixteen just because it gave you an extra two years where you didn’t have any competition for Sara demanding your attention?”
Oh, for… “Sara and I are very close still, but she has her soulmate who she’s very happy with and I can trust. Mila’s great for Sara. Again, I’m not sure why you would trust me now if you didn’t last night…”
Guang Hong’s giggle cut the tension. “I, um, did not exactly use last night wisely. In my defense, the fire alarm going off at 2 am was not my idea or my fault, and once you’re out of the dream you don’t get to go back in, but we could have talked before I went for getting laid. As it was, I was so pissed about getting woken up before that was finished that I really wasn’t fair about planning out this call, and being sleep-deprived here isn’t helping.”
“Ouch... although this explains something… in the middle of dinner with Sara and our coach, I got the world’s worst boner. Completely out of nowhere, the worst erection I’ve ever had, and it would not go away no matter how much I tried. Sara and Sabrina would not stop laughing at me.” At the time, it had been humiliating. Even through the worst of puberty, he’d always been able to at least will away the random wood.
“Oh no! I am so sorry! At least there weren’t sponsors or anything?”
“No, there was supposed to be a sponsor there but the representative had a last-second emergency with her son falling off his bicycle, so it was just the three of us, but it was a public restaurant. Private room, but you might see things in the less respectable tabloids from the walk out. I haven’t had the chance to do anything about it yet, though, you called just as I got home.” Michele tilted the phone down so Guang Hong could see as he untied the coat from around his waist.
“Well, I’d give you a hand, but I’m kind of short and my arms aren’t long enough, so will a voice be okay?”
“Certainly better than nothing!” Michele leaned back, tilting the phone back up so he could see Guang Hong. “Thank you for this.”