Chapter Text
can i touch your heart? i want to but it keeps slipping through my fingers.
i.
i heard his voice in my mind for the first time when i was fifteen.
"hello?" the voice said. vibrant with excitement. i was drinking water and the glass fell from my hands, shattered on the floor, and my mind went blank.
"hello?" the voice said again. "can you hear me? my name is hoseok. can you hear me?"
i don't reply.
i already knew about soulmates. i knew how the system worked, about how two out of every hundred people will have a soulmate, a person made for them, and only for them. I wasn't exactly sure, when i heard about it, if i would like to be a part of the system too, because i watched people fall in love around me like the rest ninety eight percent usually would and thought this isn't so bad, maybe growing to fit into each other isn't so bad, becoming each other's soulmate over time isn't so bad. love was gentle enough, formidable enough, to turn people into soulmates, even if they were not part of the system. but i also wondered what it was like to know that this person is your forever. that you couldn't stop loving them if you wanted to, and you would also never want to. a heart to match yours perfectly.
i knew that your soulmate could be anyone. that they could be at the other end of the world or next door. that there were ways to find each other. sometimes marks- patterns that bloom across each other's skin at the first touch. sometimes it's tattoos, identical or complementary ones on identical places from birth. sometimes they can write things on their skin and have it appear on the skin of their soulmate too.
all of these are difficult- easier now with phones, but still difficult, because how are you supposed to find someone you can identify only by touch? it's next to impossible, and most people don't and can't spend their entire life in search for someone they will probably never find. to make things easier, these kind of soulmates have weaker bonds between them, which means that they can fall in love with someone else.
but soulmates where they could hear each other's voice in their minds were the rarest- and their bond was the strongest. so strong that it was dangerous. so strong that you could never fall in love with someone that is not your soulmate. so strong that once you find that person, it becomes impossible to live without them.
it was scary.
it scared me.
"can you hear me now?" comes the voice again, a few hours later. i was lying down in bed, unable to sleep, trying to convince myself that i had imagined it all in my head, when he speaks to me again.
"i'm so stupid. i didn't think that you may not know korean, i was so excited to talk to you. but hey, i got this book from my dad that has all these different languages, i'll say hi in all of them."
he starts reading. some of the words i could identify having heard before, but that wasn't the point. the point is that i could hear and understand him perfectly well, i was just scared. i'm scared, i think, and for a terrifying moment it occurs to me that he can hear my thoughts, but he doesn't falter so i realized that it doesn't work that way. he will only hear if i want him to.
"don't worry if i can't understand you, can you speak to me? please?"
he's so good, is what i think. maybe i shouldn't be so scared if my soulmate is someone so good.
i open my mouth. close it. place my hand over my chest and press in, trying to make my heart stop beating so fast, not in a pleasant way, but in a way that makes it hard to breathe.
i clamp my lips together, close my eyes.
ii.
"i kissed a girl for the first time today," he says, sounding sad. i'm eating dinner, and my hand holding the spoon shakes. this was after a whole month of him trying, a whole month of my silence. he kept telling me tiny little things about himself, his life- i live in gwangju or i have a puppy named mickey or i like mint chocolate ice-cream the most or i don't like reading books but my mom loves reading to me in bed and i love her voice or please talk to me, can you hear me?
he was very excited the first week, hopeful on the second, and sad by the third. he hadn't talked to me at all this last week, until now, when he told me he kissed a girl for the first time.
"it didn't feel nice. actually, that's a lie, it felt nice, but i... i feel like i did something wrong."
"y/n, are you okay? you look pale," my mom says, her eyes filled with concern.
"i'm okay," i whisper, and try to eat another spoonful.
"you're my soulmate," he says. he's just thinking, so i don't know how i could hear him so clearly in my head, every dip and intonation of his voice. "my dad told me that you're the one i would fall in love the most with. does that mean it will only ever feel right with you?"
"y/n?"
"i have a headache, mom, can i go lay down for a while?"
i got to know what he was talking about when it was my turn to kiss a boy for the first time, and he was gentle but if felt wrong, like writing with your non-dominant hand, like waking up a summer morning to a sky painted grey. not unusual, just an unavoidable feeling at the back of my mind that this is not how it's supposed to be.
i lay in my bed that night, trying to remember how hoseok's voice sounded like. he hasn't talked to me for a whole month now, but surprisingly i could remember it like i've heard it all my life.
it felt wrong for me too, i think. i'm sorry.
iii.
the date reads february eighteenth, and hoseok is talking to me again. this is the saddest i've ever heard him, voice small and vulnerable, a quiet thing.
"it's my birthday today," he says. just that. but something inside me breaks, spills over like it's too much for me to hold.
i'm sorry, i think. not loud enough for him to hear. i'm sorry. we'll love each other too much it won't be healthy, please stay away.
i wait for a long time for him to say something after, but he doesn't. there's this feeling- like when you call someone on the phone and you just know when they've picked up and when it's static silence. i wonder if this is how he knows i'm at the other side too.
i wait for him to speak but he doesn't.
he doesn't ever, after that day.
iv.
the snow crunches under my boot with a satisfying sound and i press harder, trying to breathe the cold air into my lungs through the muffler. jisoo's bouncing with excitement next to me, leaning over with a giggle and asking how do i look or do you think meeting hyun's friend would be awkward or do i look like i'm nervous. hyun is her six month long crush, and also her soulmate. it's funny, she whined and whined for months because he wasn't looking at her way at all when i've caught him staring at her more times than i can count, and last week we got "accidentally" stuck behind him at the line for coffee. they struck up a conversation and jisoo spilled coffee on his jacket, and he laughed and took it off and we both saw the tiny "j" tattooed right above his elbow, matching jisoo's "h."
things had taken off pretty quickly from there, and here we are, a week later, waiting in front of a café, waiting for hyun to arrive with his best friend/roommate, who doesn't go to our college.
i see them before she does. i nudge her and gesture to the two boys walking towards us, so bundled up it was difficult to see their faces. i take in the other guy, dressed in earth tones- brown jacket, a pale peach scarf, black hair fluffed up in the wind.
jisoo hugs hyun shyly, and he smiles wide at her, then at me, nods at the other guy.
"this is hoseok. hobi, this is jisoo, and her best friend and roommate, y/n,"
the wind is suddenly colder, the blood rushing past my ears louder. did i hear that right?
"hi, jisoo," the guy says, cheeks lifted like he's smiling wide under the scarf. his deep brown eyes then settle on me. "hi, y/n,"
"nice to meet you, hoseok," jisoo says. i shiver, pull the coat closer around me, and hoseok says let's go inside, it's freezing, so we do that.
hoseok sits next to me inside the café so that hyun and jisoo could sit together, and in a way it was better because i didn't have to look at him while we were sitting around, in a way it was worse because he took off his scarf and gloves and even with the space between us he was warm warm warm.
it can not be him, i tell myself, to calm the pounding of my heart. there are so many hoseok's in this world. there's no way it's him.
we all order coffee and two cakes to share, and jisoo and hyun are already in their little world, pressing shoulder to shoulder and laughing loud. soulmates.
"you study literature?" hoseok asks me, turning to me. i turn to look at him- golden skin, soft smile.
"yes. you?"
"dance. i minor in photography too,"
"cool,"
and then, after we finish the cake-
"do you wanna walk around with me?"
i know he's asking that so we could give jisoo and hyun some time alone to themselves, so i nod.
it's fine, i think, sipping into the coffee as we walk a little in silence. it's not hoseok. it's not.
"they seem to be getting along really well," hoseok says, a tiny smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. "he's been crushing on her for months,"
"same with her," i say, laughing a little. "they'll be good to each other,"
"they're soulmates too, so." he nods. "everything's bound to turn out alright,"
he sounds a little too neutral and i can hear the hardness in his tone. i swallow down a wave of panic.
"are you from seoul?" i ask instead, my brain scrambling for a change of topic, and it's after i say those words that i realised that i dug the hole deeper.
"no, gwangju," he smiles. "i moved here for uni."
"oh," i whisper.
"why do you look so surprised?" he asks, tilting his head.
"you don't.. have an accent," i reply, and he laughs. he looks like he has sunshine bottled inside of him, spilling out in bursts as he laughs.
"right. i guess it got buried under too quickly."
we see a dog café on the way and hoseok looks through the window with a fond expression, saying that he has a dog back home, called mickey. i quietly suggest we should go in, and he smiles wide and asks me are you sure and i say yes when i'm thinking no, no this can't be happening, this is not how anything was supposed to go.
ten minutes later we're inside the dog café and i'm sitting on the floor cross legged beside hoseok and all these tiny dogs are running around us, trying to climb into our laps, snuggling under our palms for pats, sniffing around for treats. hoseok looks so happy as a huge group tackle him to the floor and he's laughing, sunshine spilling out of him in loud colourful bursts and i'm looking at him and he meets my eyes and smiles and my insides feel like broken glass.
it's instant, the falling, like falling is. maybe he was the one destined for me, my soulmate, the one i would fall in love with no matter what, but i know i would've fallen for him even otherwise. hoseok is made of love, made to love, gentle and unflinching as love itself is.
v.
"we bought a pictionary!" hyun announces, walking into our apartment with a huge grin, hoseok closing the door after him and then turning to us, smiling bright as always. i had been jittery since two hours ago, when a red faced jisoo told me that hyun was coming over later with hoseok.
i'd managed to convince myself that it's fine. i met him, so what. as long as he doesn't find out, we'll be fine. even if i have feelings for him i'll manage to stay away. it had seemed too impossible for me after that first day, when we walked back to the coffee shop from the dog café and hoseok hugged me goodbye and he was so warm and soft that guilt lodged itself between my ribs, hard as unripe fruit, for hurting him back then. i came back home and let all the panic wash over me while i took a shower, sitting inside the tub till my skin wrinkled up. what do you do when everything you've been running away from hit you head on one day and you're knocked to your hands and knees? playing dead seemed to be the only thing i can do, because i couldn't run anymore, couldn't face it head on and tell hoseok. i don't know if it's impossible to hate your soulmate, but i'm sure he hates his. i'm sure he hates me, and the knowledge is unbearable.
we teamed up in pairs, jisoo and me, hyun and hoseok. we win with almost eerie ease because we were just good at figuring out how to draw something to make the other person pinpoint it exactly, like when cat eye came as the prompt all i had to do was to draw the makeup look while hoseok struggled to draw a cat and it's eye and circle it with a question mark right beside the circle, by which time jisoo had already screamed my queen ariana i won't fail you it's cat eye!
"c'mon, we're not a match for you guys," hyun groans, waving the paper pad in defeat as i yell angel when jisoo shows me the drawing of a smiley with a halo and wings while hyun is halfway through drawing long hair on a figure. "let's switch teams. me and jisoo, hobi and y/n?"
"just say you wanna sit with your girlfriend and go," hoseok huffs, but smiles as the rest of us laughs at hyun's sheepish expression as he moves closer to jisoo. i, for my part, crawls over to the other side, meeting hoseok's eyes and smiling a little before sitting beside him, a safe distance between us.
this time, the game is more even, but hoseok and i still get the most right. after our first win, hoseok holds a hand up for high five and give him one, and there's this very brief moment where we both glance at each other's palms- me, because of a small fear at the back of my head that my skin may bloom colours at his touch- we are soulmates after all. him, maybe on instinct. it dawns at the back of my head that maybe he feels this.. thing between us too, and is trying to figure out why.
that moment is so small and passing though, soon forgotten as we take out the next card.
me and hoseok become steadily better as the game progresses, and i'm looking forward to our turns, observing the way hoseok's eyebrows thread together and his lips purse as he draws, or the way his eyes go wide and light up in understanding when he sees my drawings.
"you're unbelievable," jisoo whines. "this is obviously sea,"
"i mean it was either beach or sea," hyun pouts.
"we have to get better at this babe, soulmates are supposed to be good at this stuff," she says, rubbing the picture off.
hoseok glances at me at that with a small smile, says-
"guess we're an exception to the rule. we're already so good, imagine if we were soulmates too."
"nobody can tell you guys aren't," hyun says, looking at us and wiggling his eyebrows. "y/n, do you happen to have an h tattooed somewhere?"
"no," i say, shaking my head and giggling.
"she doesn't have tattoos, i checked very thoroughly," jisoo says, waving the pen. "maybe you guys should hold hands, see if something appears,"
"that's-"
"no, let's try," hoseok says, smiling too, and holds his hand to me, palm out. i hesitate, but hold his hand anyway. his hand is warm and soft but also slightly calloused at the tips, and i hold him as lightly as possible.
"any tingling feelings?" hyun asks, comically serious.
"any feelings?" jisoo asks, equally serious. hoseok bursts into laughter, and i follow, and the both of them huff in disappointment.
"sorry to say this, but we're not soulmates. you guys just suck," hoseok teases.
we play the rest of the game in more of a competitive spirit than earlier, hyun and jisoo both mumbling about wounded egos, but hoseok and i are in the lead regardless. we become more comfortable with each other over time, high fiving and fist bumping after wins.
"you got this," i say, showing hoseok the last picture. the prompt was icicle and honestly an icicle just looks like a cone and there was a good chance that hoseok would say cone so i also drew a tongue sticking to it. from what i can see, jisoo drew the same thing as me, and when i look at her picture i understand how it looks so weird-
"blowjob!" hyun says, and jisoo groans, starts beating him with the drawing pad.
"no way… icicle?" hoseok asks, raising an eyebrow, and i squeal and go in for a high five… except the carpet slips under my knees me and i lose my balance and the high five becomes a hug.
it happens too quickly that nobody except me understood that it was a mistake. hoseok just puts his arm around me as i'm scrambling to find my balance, horrified at what happened, and i go still when he hugs me close, like it's the most natural thing in the world. the subtle sweet scent of his nape hits me and his hands are warm and his body is warm and then..
i just want to be held.
and precisely because of that, i pull back, supporting myself on his shoulders. hoseok takes his hand from around my waist to hold my elbow to support me and then we meet eyes, and i'm acutely aware of how everything else blurs out and the only thing i can focus on is his lips, and he has a mole on his upper lip and it's so pretty, it's hypnotic, i could just lean in and-
his hands tighten on my elbow, and my gaze lift to hoseok's eyes again, but he's not looking at me, he's looking at my lips, and it's too much, it's too-
"blowjob? dicks are not that pointy!"
"i thought you forgot to put that detail when you drew it so quickly- ow!"
"this is a family game! who puts blowjob as prompt in a game for kids? guys-"
so easy to kiss him. it'll be so easy-
"um, guys?"
hoseok looks up and meets my eyes, the haze in them replaced by panic, and the moment breaks. we both jerk away from each other, and i sit down and try to breathe, because i apparently haven't been doing that if the tightness in my chest is any indication.
"well, it's getting late," hyun says.
"yeah, you guys should leave," jisoo says, jumping up, trying to diffuse the air of… awkwardness? tension? whatever it is that's making it difficult for me to meet hoseok's eyes.
"do you wanna talk about it?" jisoo asks, cuddling upto me that night. if it was anything else i'm sure she would've pounced on me the second we were alone, but something in my face must've made her hesitate.
"actually, i don't even know what happened? i slipped and the next second we were.. like that."
"about to devour each other,"
"no," i huff. "anyway, it's.. nothing. it'll only make things complicated,"
"hm," jisoo says. she understands me not wanting to date people, even when i haven't given her any solid reasons except don't wanna commit to anything yet. thing is, i did feel attracted to people, but it always stayed on the surface, those half crushes that i was quite content with never being reciprocated. i never went on dates because i knew that it would never lead anywhere, and that was unfair to the other person.
"let's sleep," i say, turning to her and hugging closer. "don't wanna think about that,"
"okay," jisoo says.
vi.
the little, easily ignorable thing with hoseok becomes a million little things, no longer easily ignorable, over the course of the next weeks.
like the time when all four of us went to the movies together and hoseok and i sat together and on a particularly sad scene in the movie i heard the smallest sniff and i turned to hoseok and his eyes were tear filled, and he looked back at me with an embarrassed smile with teardrops clinging to his lashes like small crystals, glinting in the light from the screen.
or
the time we visited a chocolate factory and we were given all these different samples of chocolate and i had both my hands sticky with chocolate and this loose strand of hair just wouldn't stop falling into my face and he watched me struggle for a few seconds, laughing, and then reached over and tucked it behind my ear.
or
the time hyun and him came over again and it was obvious the whole time that jisoo and hyun won't be able to keep their hands off each other much, shameless and at that stage of their relationship where they can't get enough of each other, and hoseok and i sexiled ourselves and walked around the city at night, bought tteokbokki and he laughed at me when i teared up at how spicy it was and we went to buy ice-cream for me. the vendor asked me if i wanted popsicles and there was this moment when hoseok and i looked at each other and his gaze dropped to my lips and a faint pink spread across his cheeks and he looked away, and i stuttered out that i wanted cone ice-cream.
or
another night like that when we went over to hoseok's and hyun's apartment and decided to watch a movie, and he made me ramen and we were flipping through the movies when he suddenly said-
"you know, we don't know each other at all,"
and i said-
"what do you wanna know?"
and he said-
"everything you want to tell me."
we spent that night lying on the bed (his bed) with quite a distance between us, looking up at the ceiling and talking, talking a lot, and i don't remember when i dozed off but i woke up alone and hoseok was sleeping on the couch, and when he woke up a few minutes later with imprints of pillow creases on his cheeks and messy hair i just.. looked at him. my chest felt like rippling water, wavy and expanding.
"you didn't have to move here," i blurted out without thinking, and he smiled, all soft and sleepy.
"i'll remember that the next time."
he was so dainty, a beautiful thing that you cherish in the palm of your hand, all pretty habits and gentle touches. he's a pouty eater. when he smiles too wide his eyes become small crescents and when he's stressed he plays with his earlobe. he's pure- not naive but untainted, and when you look at him you can see all the goodness that he contains- you see stardust, sunlight, flowers blossoming.
one night we were at his apartment and we were eating ramen which he made, smiling very proud and goofy from the kitchen when i thanked him for the gourmet meal, my voice sarcastic but soft at the edges. he got a message in the middle of the movie and i turned to him as he was checking the phone, his lips pressed together in a way that made the tiny, tiny dimples in the corners of his mouth pop out, looking deeper in the low lighting. it also made his cheeks rise more than usual and i'm looking at him and i'm thinking he's so beautiful and then i'm thinking i've missed him all my life and then i'm wishing i could kiss him, just once, be with him just once without being scared of so many many things.
so unfair, i think, my eyes blurring with tears. to have him so near and yet-
the movie isn't even that sad but i ended up breaking down a few minutes later, and hoseok thought i was crying over the movie and took my hand in his, whispered crybaby in this gentle tone, and then i was crying harder, pulling my knees up to my chest and curling into myself.
"hey," hoseok says, brushing a thumb over my knuckles. i can tell by the change in tone that he figured out i was crying over something else, but he doesn't ask, just squeezes my hand. "hey. i'm here."
"don't look at me," i say, voice cracking. it sounds like don't go.
"i'm here. i got you," he whispers, then he tucks me into his shoulder and i fist my hands into his shirt and cry and cry and cry, and it feels never ending, it feels like i'm smoke and his hands are the only solid thing keeping me tethered.
i wake up the next morning with a terrible pulse thrumming at my temples from how hard i cried, and hoseok's there beside me in the bed, still asleep. our bodies are not close but our ankles are tangled under the sheets.
looking at him feels unbearable.