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The thin, red line of thread looped around his pinky, tied into a thousand tiny knots, feels as if it is a part of him, permeating into his skin and anchoring its tiny pinpricks of softness onto his finger. An extension of his soul, only for him to see.
Sungyoon cannot imagine a time without the thread wrapped snugly around his little finger—a ridiculous prospect, as the thread had only appeared on Sungyoon’s eighteenth birthday when the clock had chimed twelve. A comfortable warmth had wrapped around his finger and he’d glanced down to find red blooming before his very eyes, drifting through the air, swathing his beating, fragile, red heart in redder threads.
To keep it safe, until he reached the end of the thread, where his thread would be tied round another’s pinky, just as it was to his. To shelter, until he found the one the stars had decreed for him, his other half, the missing piece to the puzzle that is Choi Sungyoon.
For the most part, the thread remains nothing more than an added sensation to all the others, quietly drifting after him in his daily activities. From time to time, it tugs on him, raising his head so he can watch it ripple and writhe. Such ripples could only be caused by the one on the other end, he knows—his soulmate.
And he wonders, tangling his fingers into the red thread to soothe it, who are you?
The question remains, tucked into a crevice of his mind, never quite fading away.
Until that one fateful day.
That day, when a boy with the sweetest voice and the brightest eyes emerges, and Sungyoon looks at him, at the thread wound around his sweetly crooked fingers. Tugs on his thread and watches as the same one tied around the boy’s little finger reacts, and he thinks, ah.
It’s you.
You, who I’ve been looking for all this time.
You is Hong Joochan, and Sungyoon’s thread implores for him to step closer, to run his fingers down the patchwork of Joochan’s and his shared thread and listen to them sing back, you, you’re the one.
He doesn’t. What he does do is incline his head to Joochan, introducing himself.
“Choi Sungyoon.” Your soulmate, he mouths after Joochan has already turned away, bowing at the rest of the trainees.
He thinks he falls a little in love with Joochan that day and from there, it is only a downward spiral—every word from Joochan’s lips and every shift of his thread pulls him in deeper, into the mess of beautiful and furious emotions not quite organized enough to be named love.
In the hour before Joochan’s eighteenth birthday and his twenty-third, Joochan whispers secrets to him.
They’re holed up on the couch, eyes fixed on the screen before them. The rest of the members have long gone to bed, only Sungyoon and Joochan staying behind to stay up until twelve.
“I think I might regret saying this soon,” Joochan starts, and Sungyoon can feel how their thread trembles in apprehension, “but I hope it’s you.”
The admission is muttered softly, quickly. Sungyoon wonders if he’d heard it at all. His voice is sticky in his throat, working furiously to speak. “It’s me?”
Joochan doesn’t take his eyes off of the old cartoons playing on the television. “My soulmate.”
Oh.
Something fills Sungyoon. Relief? Joy? Surprise? He doesn’t know, and can’t find it in himself to think over it. From where it’s tangled comfortably around their pinkies, their wrists, their ankles, their thread pulsates, as if aware of his flurry of emotions.
“Don’t you think I would have told you if you were my soulmate?” Is what he settles for, even as every form of yes, I am scratch themselves to the back of his throat. Joochan mulls over it for a second before seemingly making up his mind, inclining his head to Sungyoon.
“You have a point. But I’ve decided-” Joochan’s fingers press between the cracks of his and his fingers part on instinct, their hands lacing together as if it was meant to do so. Just as the stars were meant to align the days they were born, just as how the red thread tying their souls into one was nothing less than fate.
Their thread sings, a beautiful orchestra of chiming bells and sweet, throaty hums. Joochan turns to him fully now, the brightness of the television screen slanting artificial light over Joochan’s face. His messy bangs fall over his forehead, hiding his eyes in its shadow as he leans his head onto his folded knees.
“-that even if fate claims we aren’t meant to be, I won’t stop loving you.”
Sungyoon’s breath catches.
The clock chimes twelve.
“Happy birthday, hyung,” Joochan whispers to him. Their thread weaves between the cracks of their fingers, tying their palms together impossibly tight.
“Happy birthday, Joochan-ah,” he whispers back.
Muffled dialogue crackles from the TV, black and white animation dancing across the screen. Even with both their eyes on the screen, neither of them quite see it, all their attention skewed onto the softness nestled between them, rustling softly as if alive and breathing, reveling in the meeting of those it connects.
A soft laugh reverberates from Joochan and then he’s tugging their entwined hands up. The thread yanks Sungyoon, forcing him to look at the other. “Guess I didn’t have to worry,” Joochan says, and he’s smiling now, amusement dancing in his eyes.
“No, you didn’t,” Sungyoon agrees. Joochan smooths an experimental hand down the length of their thread, and goosebumps pepper Sungyoon’s skin as he fingers the knot at Sungyoon’s pinky, as if confirming it is truly there. His hands finally withdraw but there is no time to recover because he’s speaking once more.
“Then there should be no problem with me saying this now,” Joochan says quietly. Sungyoon looks up into Joochan’s eyes, brimming with starlight. The knots around his heart loosen. “Hyung-”
“I love you,” he says, and the knots come undone.
There are a thousand different things he can say, but none of it matters now. All that matters is him and Joochan, the strings of their soul one and the same.
He huffs a laugh. “Beat me to it,” Sungyoon says, and abandons all decorum in favor of kissing the moonlight off of Joochan’s lips.
Their red thread wraps around their bodies, pressing them tight together. Rendering them unable to move away from the other—which, even if they had been able to, they wouldn’t have.
And if they spend a little too long kissing on the couch, enveloped in blankets and thread and each other, all the way up until even the late-night channels stop airing and it is only static crackling on the screen, it is their and the moon’s shared secret.