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The mark on Mingi’s palm had always been a quiet thing.
Dark and still, like ink on skin, resting just below the curve of his thumb. Smooth, unassuming, a little crescent-shaped shadow that seemed to wait patiently. He’d been twenty when it appeared, replacing the words that had been etched into his skin since he was seventeen, words that had once promised nothing more than mundane guidance and harmless proverbs. Now, it was shaped like a crescent smear, as if someone would one day catch his hand gently while helping him stand, a quiet promise folded into the flesh.
He hadn’t thought much of it.
Not until San.
Duke San Honorrock, radiant, impulsive, full of laughter and color. The kind of person who pulled light into every room with no idea how much he glowed, leaving warmth lingering long after he’d left. Mingi had served as his personal guard for years now, ever since they were teenagers, and it had taken almost the entire first year to stop flinching every time San touched his shoulder, leaned into his space, or smiled as though Mingi were something precious, fragile, worth protecting.
He knew his place.
Or at least, he thought he did.
⋆.˚🦋༘⋆
It was during the second week of Viscountess Heather’s visit that everything started to ache.
Lady Heather was clever and full of flirtation, her laughter like wind-chimes in motion. San laughed at her jokes, leaned close when she whispered, and sat beside her during dinners, brushing shoulders that Mingi had once brushed first. He walked with her in the garden, hands gesturing as he spoke, eyes soft and sparkling, completely unaware of Mingi’s quiet shadow behind him. Mingi just stood there, hands folded neatly at his waist, expression carefully blank, a line of restraint stretched across his jaw.
He tried not to read into it.
But when San didn’t call for him one morning and sent one of the junior guards to retrieve his coat instead, Mingi felt the first crack in his composure. That hollow pang, subtle but sharp, tracing from his chest to the tips of his fingers.
It deepened that evening when the Viscountess pressed a kiss to San’s cheek in the hall, delicate but deliberate, and San flushed, bashful and pleased, a warmth radiating from him that Mingi could not touch, could not contain.
Mingi didn’t sleep that night. His bed felt too wide, too cold, the sheets tangled around his limbs as if trying to hold him back from a thousand thoughts he could not speak aloud.
⋆.˚🦋༘⋆
The next morning, San returned to his chambers in a flurry of chatter, asking for help dressing before the council meeting. Mingi swallowed his feelings, nodding wordlessly, and stepped forward, moving with careful, practiced efficiency.
He helped his duke with the embroidered overcoat, smoothing it over San’s shoulders, buttoning it closed with hands steady despite the tremor in his chest. The fine silk brushed against his fingers, cool and soft, carrying the faint scent of jasmine and morning dew from the garden outside.
Then, as he reached to adjust the clasp near San’s collar, his fingers brushed lightly against the skin at San’s neck.
And Mingi’s fingers glowed.
Rainbow light surged up the mark like sunrise breaking over a quiet sea, soft and warm and unmistakable, wrapping around him like sunlight through windowpanes, spilling over his knuckles and wrist.
He jerked his hand back instantly, heart hammering like a drumbeat in his chest, ears ringing with the sudden, glorious shock.
San hadn’t noticed. He was still adjusting his sleeves, chattering about Lady Heather’s love of classical poetry, voice lilting and unguarded, oblivious to the miracle that had just occurred.
Mingi stepped away without a word, retreating like a shadow in the bright morning light.
That night, he asked to be reassigned to outside patrol, preferring the cold, biting wind against his face to the heat and confusion that lingered in the duke’s chambers.
⋆.˚🦋༘⋆
San didn’t understand.
At first, he assumed Mingi was simply tired. He thought perhaps the long hours of guarding, the endless repetition of drills, had drained him. But as the days passed, the distance remained. Mingi stopped laughing at his jokes, his smiles shuttered behind a wall of restraint. He stopped looking at San for more than a heartbeat at a time, eyes averted, cautious. He stopped standing close enough to touch, a subtle retreat that gnawed at the edges of San’s awareness.
It was… strange. And cold.
San didn’t know what he’d done, only that something had shifted. And it hurt.
At meals, food tasted dull, as if the spices had been stripped away. At court, his head ached more often, the chatter around him blurring into static. Some nights he woke shivering, despite the fire, the blankets twisted around him in futile layers. He didn’t tell anyone.
But the healers began to notice the way his skin paled, the bags under his eyes, the fatigue in his limbs. “Rejection sickness,” one whispered to another, tone hushed, as though speaking it aloud might summon it into being. “He must have touched his soulmate and gotten rejected.”
San overheard.
And everything in him froze.
He touched his soulmate?
When?
Who?
⋆.˚🦋༘⋆
It wasn’t until he caught a flash of rainbow light reflecting in a mirror, on Mingi’s palm, when he reached to draw his sword during drills, that the truth began to click into place. The reflection caught in the polished surface, tiny arcs of color dancing across the steel and tile.
San stared at it long after Mingi had turned away, heart hammering, chest tight, mind racing with the realization of what he had ignored for far too long.
Later that night, he waited outside the guard quarters, footsteps quiet on the stone, hands clenched at his sides.
“Mingi,” he said, quiet, almost a whisper.
Mingi looked up and froze. “Your Grace—”
“Don’t,” San said. “Don’t call me that right now.”
Mingi’s throat bobbed. “You shouldn’t be out here—”
“Was it that day?” San asked. “When you helped me dress. Did your mark glow?”
Mingi flinched. “…Yes.”
San stepped closer, not touching. Not yet. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I thought…” Mingi looked away, voice small, vulnerable. “I thought you were going to marry the Viscountess.”
San blinked, stunned. “What?”
“You liked her.”
“I liked her poems,” San said flatly, and a small flush crossed his cheeks. “She recited one about frogs.”
“She kissed you.”
“And I panicked!” San snapped, hands waving, breath shaking. “Because the only person I wanted to kiss me wasn’t even looking at me anymore!”
Mingi looked at him finally, eyes wide, stricken, taking in the words and the raw emotion swirling in them.
“You’re my soulmate,” San said, breath shaky, voice low but resolute. “I’ve been getting sick over you.”
“That’s not—” Mingi started.
San didn’t let him finish. He reached out and took Mingi’s hand, bringing it to his collarbone. The moment their marks touched, a soft warmth bloomed, gentle and encompassing, spreading from their skin like sunlight captured in a drop of morning dew.
Mingi didn’t speak for a long moment, letting the glow wash over him, the realization, the relief, the quiet joy. Then, “…You’re sure?”
San nodded, finally allowing himself a full, unguarded smile, the tension of weeks dissolving from his shoulders. “I’ve always been sure.”
⋆.˚🦋༘⋆
Later, the Viscountess, observing from the garden with a smirk and arms folded, turned to Seonghwa and whispered, “Took them long enough.”
Seonghwa sipped his tea, eyes calm, steam curling around his fingers. “My brothers and their guards. Always the slowest ones.”