Chapter Text
Everybody was born with a soulmate.
Even Kim Dokja was— or at least, that was what the tattoo on his left wrist told him. January 1st, 00:00.
It was inked on his skin in something celestial, and it wouldn’t come off even with the most thorough of scrubbings (of course, he hadn’t wanted to get rid of it, but a part of him needed to be absolutely sure that it wasn’t a trick). A permanent reminder that he was worth something to someone.
A permanent reminder that at the turn of every New Year, Kim Dokja’s soulmate would spend exactly one hour in his body, and Kim Dokja one hour in theirs.
An auspicious date, his mother had said. She was the one who’d taught him that soul bonds were something to be revered, though the bruises staining her skin and the heaviness to her smiles suggested otherwise. She’d been kneading dough for dinner when Kim Dokja’s mark first appeared, shortly before he turned ten. She’d paused in her work to gather him in a tight hug, dusting flour over his clothes and hair.
“Dokja-yah, listen to me,” Lee Sookyung had said. Her smile was tired, but her eyes were feverishly bright. “A soulmate is a beautiful thing. It’s like a tree, or a flowering bush. You must plant a seed, and be careful not to let it rot.”
He clung tighter to her waist, willing her to not let go. She steadied herself on the counter and smiled again, her eyes dimming.
“If you water your little seedling, it will grow into something that can nurture you. You must be sure to never let it die.” His mother leaned down when she said this, meeting his eyes solemnly. It was as if she hoped it would imprint the phrase in his head. Never let it die.
“How do I water the seedling?” Kim Dokja asked, unwillingly moving back so that his words wouldn’t be muffled by her clothing.
Lee Sookyung’s eyes softened slightly. The intense quality her face held lessened, and she released his back to smooth his forehead with one flour-dusted hand.
“You don’t need to worry about that just yet,” she said, tapping his nose with her finger. The smile was back, but it looked different, somehow. Lighter. “Start simply— introduce yourself, share your hobbies. When the time comes, you’ll be able to meet.”
Kim Dokja frowned. “What time? Can’t we meet as soon as possible?”
His mother opened her mouth to answer, but a shrill timer suddenly sounded, abruptly cutting off what she was going to say. Her lips whitened as she turned from him to shut it off.
“Your father will be home soon,” Lee Sookyung said, setting the timer back on the counter. Her face tightened around the edges. “It’s time to go now, Dokja-yah. Run along and play in your room.”
With that, Lee Sookyung returned to her cooking, and the only sound in the room was the fizzing and bubbling of the water. She didn’t say anything more to Kim Dokja about his soulmate, but if she minded the way he crept even closer than before, she didn’t tell him.
————
It was New Year’s Eve, and Kim Dokja was not ready to meet his soulmate.
A full ten months had passed since January 1st, 00:00 appeared on his wrist. It had swollen, become discolored through a myriad of bruises, and, on one eventful occasion, was hidden by a sterile white cast, but it never faded. Kim Dokja still found it difficult to trust that there would be someone else’s body waiting for him on the other side of the year. Since it showed up, he’d regarded the date as some sort of dreaded holiday— the sort he’d experienced when he was little, before father burned his proverbial bridges and their family stopped visiting.
Kim Dokja remembered that his aunt was a particularly terrifying woman, her eyes harsh and her words harsher, her sharp tongue reserved solely for him and his mother. He’d watched the calendar with trepidation as Christmas and Chuseok approached, what little excitement he felt for the holidays tugged back by a sense of unease. The knowledge that he would inevitably fail to measure up to his aunt’s rigorous standards had kept him from ever being too eager.
He wondered if his soulmate would be like her.
Surely they would wake up in his body, take one look at his skinny arms and bruised ribs, and decide they were better off not having a soulmate at all. Kim Dokja was nothing special— if he hadn’t reached that conclusion himself, his father certainly would have helped him.
The other kids at school already thought he was weird. They didn’t like the way he spoke when he made conversation with them, and so eventually he stopped trying. The few times Kim Dokja had gone shopping with his mother, the ahjummas that frequented the store had clucked about how underfed and scrawny he looked, and when he went without her, they openly commented on what they considered his ‘strange, antisocial behavior’.
No matter who Kim Dokja looked at, they had an unfavorable impression of him. Their reasoning varied: “Kim Dokja never talks”, “Kim Dokja is too bony”, “Kim Dokja’s clothes are ugly”, or, his personal favorite, “Kim Dokja reads too much”. Yes, their reasoning varied, but at the end of the day, none of them liked him. To Kim Dokja, this was the most important part of the whole exchange.
Somewhere, he was half-sure, his soulmate was going about their normal life. If they hadn’t been soulmates and they came across each other, what would his soulmate think of him?
Kim Dokja felt his forehead crease in concentration, and he was suddenly torn out of his thoughts by the sound of speaking.
“Are you overthinking things again?” asked a voice that sounded suspiciously like his mother doing an impression of an old, philosophical man. Lee Sookyung poked her head into his vision, her beautiful almond eyes crinkled in a genuine smile. “Don’t be. Anyone would be lucky to belong with my little Dokja-yah.”
“I’m not,” Kim Dokja said stubbornly, unwilling to admit she’d guessed correctly. “I’m excited.” He tried to force his nerves to adapt to his statement.
Lee Sookyung laughed at the stony expression on his face and poked his cheek. “Don’t be nervous,” she repeated. “Promise me that you trust me— that you trust them.” His mother had been unusually jubilant these past few days, and today was no exception. She was practically glowing, and the dim light that spilled out of the kitchen draped around her like a shawl of living sunlight.
“I promise,” Kim Dokja found his mouth saying, even as his thoughts violently disagreed. They won’t like me. Why would they?
It was with these thoughts that Kim Dokja waited as the hours passed ( one, three, six) until the clock ticked to 11:50.
He crept into the kitchen to watch the clock better. It was also his chosen room for soulmate-vision-swapping (or whatever he was supposed to call it) by virtue of being the only room in their shabby apartment that remained untainted by the smell of alcohol. His mother made sure of that, and, thanks to both lemon-scented cleaning products and the residue of her cooking, you could only smell the lingering bitterness of Soju if you tried really hard.
Kim Dokja was settling into a seat on the floor when he abruptly realized that unless his soulmate was competent enough to locate Lee Sookyung, or, god forbid, father, they would have no way of knowing anything about him. He scrambled to his feet in a panic, skinny limbs and knobby knees askew, and darted to one of the kitchen drawers to search for a pen.
His fingers closed around a garish, intensely traumatizing monstrosity that had somehow found its way into their home. It was a massive carrot-shaped pen that spat out orange ink as often as stray pieces of plastic that crumbled out of its interior structure. Kim Dokja pawed around desperately for an alternative, but there was no hope in sight. Still, he persisted, and his thoughts began to form a plan for him.
‘I’m Kim Dokja. It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?’ No, that was too basic.
‘Whaddup, yo, I’m Kim Dokja.’ Definitely not. Kim Dokja shuddered in horror at the thought of his soulmate writing him off as a wannabe chuuni.
Maybe something more formal would work. ‘ Greetings, soulmate. It is a delight to make your acquaintance. My name is Kim Dokja, and I would be honored to—’
A shadow loomed over him from behind. “What the fuck are you doing here, you little shit?”
No. Kim Dokja’s heart leapt into his throat. He whirled around, arms already rising to face the owner of the shadow. Please, not now.
Father stood drunkenly before him, a half-empty bottle clutched loosely in one hand and a fist in the other. His breath stank. The stench of rotting meat and sour alcohol wafted through the air, heaving in his every breath. It hung from his clothes and curled in his arms.
Kim Dokja thought it smelled like death.
“I said, ” Father ground out, his eyes unsteady and his gait unhinged, “what are you doing here?”
But Kim Dokja couldn’t bring himself to answer. His fingers trembled down to the bone. Something cold was working its way up his spine, and it had claws and fingers that were holding him to the floor.
“Useless little shit.” Kim Dokja let out a cry of pain as Father grabbed ahold of his hair, pulling at the roots until he stumbled over his feet. “What, are you mute now?”
Tears pricked in his eyes. The floor was wavering under his legs and his scalp was on fire. His stomach spun uncontrollably and he could hear the sound of footsteps and he was going to be sick and and and and.
Suddenly, there was the hiss of steaming hot liquid. Father let out a roar. “Oh my!” Lee Sookyung cried from a few feet away, her hands poised around an empty teakettle. “I’m so sorry! I just tripped— over this shoe, see—”
She clutched the teakettle tighter and backed away. Father released his hold on Kim Dokja’s hair and lunged forward, his back as expansive as the sea.
Kim Dokja caught his mother’s eye over Father’s shoulder.
Lee Sookyung mouthed one word. Go.
And so, knuckles white against the hilt of the pen, Kim Dokja ran.
The sounds of shouting and screaming rang out from behind him as he fled. Kim Dokja slammed the door to his room closed and flew to the closet. He sank to the floor, pulling too-small shirts and long forgotten children’s books into walls around himself.
Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine . Heart beating almost out of his chest, Kim Dokja pulled his knees to his chest and tried very, very hard not to think.
He realized an immeasurable period of time later that off to his right, a battered digital wristwatch flickered on and off. 11:56. 11:57.
Somewhere outside his room, the stars were twinkling over a clear sky, and Father’s shouts were only getting louder.
Kim Dokja pulled the sleeve of his shirt up, exposing a sickly pale patch of skin, edged in the remnants of a bruise. He clicked the lid of the carrot-pen and began to write, hissing in pain as the nib dug into the tender skin.
Don’t leave the closet, he wrote. Then, as an afterthought: Please trust me.
“Don’t be nervous,” she repeated. “Promise me that you trust me— that you trust them.”
He could only hope that his soulmate would be able to read the writing on his wrist with the light of the digital clock.
And that was that. Kim Dokja balanced his wrist on his knees and waited as the clock ticked closer to midnight. The shouting began to grow distant, but so did the smell of old clothing and the ache of his bruises.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Please don’t be a trick.