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His heart is a rolling thunder of answers to questions he'd never asked. His whole body a tuning fork where he stands, vibrating harder than the tattoo gun in his hand.
His soul...
Marks aren't rare. Aren't special. Up to 60% of the population have them, and most never find their match. They don't mean anything.
They don't mean anything.
And to make sure, he'd tattooed over his own when he was even younger and even more bruised and battered than the girl reclined on his chair, the left side of her clothes awkwardly pulled aside from her chest and the sling around her shoulder.
He can't stop staring and she doesn't notice, nearly passed out from exhaustion, injuries, lingering traces of rohypnol, shock, comfort food, and the several stiff drinks he'd poured her while making sure she didn't drink them on an empty stomach.
The hungry snarling punch of the needle burning in his skin, blood and ink smearing out his delicate swirling mark with a black, monstrous mark of his own choosing, had been liberation. Defiance. Fury.
Despair.
What soul Mujin had had left after that, Donghoon had warmed, and fed, and held fast, and shredded into bloody, screaming tatters. And Mujin had burned those tatters to ash.
Now he understood, why those ashes had never scattered to the winds. Why they had remained, wrapped up and tethered inside him like death, like hope trapped in a jar, held like a fist in the delicate, swirling mark shimmering above Jiwoo's left breast.
The gun buzzes, primed. He wonders if she would have felt it, a little innocent girl whose mark had already come in when he obliterated his. But she wouldn't have been born yet, and it's just one of those stories, some markmates can feel what happens to the match on the other's body.
Her knee, slamming into the other side of his chest. Would they have discovered it then...before...
It's too late.
He extends the needle, dipped in black. This is his mark, and he's going to put it deep.
"Ready?" he asks, and under his hands, his soulmate meets his eyes, and nods.
The needle goes in, and stabs him to the heart.