Chapter Text
The shouting starts before Chan even reaches the bottom of the stairs.
He hesitates on the second-to-last step, small fingers curling around the railing. His parents’ voices spill down the hallway – sharp, tired, cracking in the same places they always do.
“You don’t look at me the same,” his father says. “Your mark hasn’t glowed in months.”
And his mother – her voice is quieter, almost apologetic. “Maybe soulmarks don’t glow the same for everyone anymore.” “Maybe it just… happens.”
Chan presses his back to the wall, breath held tight, stomach hollowing the way it always does when their voices rise. He doesn’t look at their faces. He looks at their arms.
Two constellation soulmarks, once bright and beautiful, now dimmed into a faint scattering of grey stars on skin like old pencil sketches – faded, brittle, the kind of light that looks like it’s apologising for still existing. Barely there. Barely anything at all.
He remembers when they used to light up entire rooms. He remembers falling asleep between them, the glow warm on his cheeks like the promise of something unbreakable.
His mother steps away, rubbing at her mark like she’s trying to warm it back to life. “People change. Maybe we weren’t meant to last.” She says it like she’s talking about the weather, not the person she once promised forever to.
His father laughs, bitter. “That’s not how soulmates work.”
But Chan sees the truth. He understands something he shouldn’t have to understand at that age. It’s right there, fading on their skin.
Soulmarks can dim until they mean nothing. Soulmates can fall out of love. Forever can run out. Love isn’t safe – it just pretends to be. And if it could fade for them – two people once perfectly matched – what hope did he have?
The argument swells again – words he’s heard, words he’s memorised, words that rake across the same quiet scars every night.
Chan slips into his room and closes the door gently, as if softness could stop the noise from seeping through. He looks down at his own tiny soulmark on his collarbone – a fragile constellation fragment just beginning to form. It pulses once, faintly – like a star trying and failing to stay lit. He covers it with his palm.
I won’t end up like them. I don’t need anyone. I can’t risk something that breaks this easily. Love isn’t for everyone. Maybe it’s not for me.
Outside, the shouting fades into exhausted silence. The house goes quiet. His parents retreat into separate rooms.
Inside, Chan’s small constellation flickers again – uneasy, dim, and aching for something he decides he will never want.
The first dim star of his life flickers once more, then settles into uneasy darkness – and Chan decides that if love looks like this, he doesn’t want to shine at all.