Chapter Text
A man’s seventeenth birthday is a coming-of-age ceremony. Well, it’s a woman’s, too. Regardless. Seventeen. Coming of age. Remember that.
In general, on the seventeenth birthday itself, not much happens. It’s socially acceptable to have a large party – girls in new dresses, boys in whatever is the fashion, lots of booze. It depends on what kind of person you are, you know? What kind of celebration you have. I knew a guy called Key once who invited over three-hundred people to his sollemne. He rented out the entire local hotel and made his entrance at eight in the evening at the top of the stairs, wearing gold all-over with a huge boa constrictor around his shoulders.
My big sister held her sollemne in the back garden. She invited five people. They spent the day doing stuff together – I don’t know, girl stuff – and after pizza for dinner they all went home again.
But the entire point of a sollemne – the surrounding motivation – is the Ovo.
My sister’s Ovo is beautiful. It’s a six of diamonds, and it’s a beautiful dark green color. The tattoo is in a kind of sketch expression, like it was created with thousands of tiny flicks of a very sharp pencil. Under it is the name Eric Nam. She hasn’t met him yet, but when she does, I’m sure they’ll be very happy together. Lizzy and Eric. It’s almost poetic.
On the night of your seventeenth’s birthday, you are gifted with the name of your soulmate, and the playing card that represents them. Each suit has its own feeling to it; every number or face card has a sentimental, emotional value to it.
Sometimes, if the tie to your soulmate is very strong, you’ll be gifted an Ovo twice: one on either wrist. People like that are absolutely blessed, because they know when they meet their soulmate, it will be the most intense tie they have to a person. Their happiness is doubly sure.
It is on this fundamental part of our lives, the Ovo, upon which Deck High is based on. Deck High is the first of its kind: the first high school in Korea to be based upon the Ovo.
As the playing cards represent a human’s deepest soul, it divides the students of Deck High into four individual groups: the House of Spades, of Hearts, of Clubs and of Diamonds. Students choose which house they most represent, and each house is led by a Prefect: a valedictorian, of sorts.
The Prefect over the house of Spades is Wonwoo, Ace of Spades. Wonwoo is a perfect example of a Spade: he’s calm, neat, a little fussy, and painfully punctual. If he promised to show up at 2PM, he will arrive at that exact time. It’s almost freaky. He’s also the dark, strong, silent type. More often than not, students are intimidated by his cold look.
The Prefect over the house of Hearts is the King of Hearts, Seungcheol. He’s the school’s taekwondo champion, and the muscle behind the Prefect Five. If there is any funny business around, Seungcheol doesn’t just know about it, he’s already kicked the perpetrators into purgatory and back again. He’s bright and very masculine, except where his boyfriend is concerned.
The Prefect over the house of Clubs is the Queen of Clubs, DK. And there is nothing he hates more than being called the Queen, so of course as his best friends, we bring it up as much as possible. Like most clubs he’s emotional and sensitive: but most of all, he’s got the sun shining out of his ass 24/7. He’s the Prefect you go to if you need cheering up. Or candy. Or a tissue. Or some of the girls even go to him if they’re out of feminine products. Most of us wouldn’t be seen dead with a pad in our bag, but DK has five sisters. Suppose he’s used to it.
Lee Jihoon is the Jack of Diamonds, the Prefect that strikes blind terror and panic into the hearts of the students. He’s also the aforementioned boyfriend of the great Choi Seungcheol, and the connection is utterly bizarre. Jihoon is stunningly smart, and painstakingly creative, so it was a toss-up on whether he would go to diamonds or clubs, but then Seungcheol got his Ovo and it was decided. Jihoon is cold, cunning, strategic, amazing with numbers and a sarcastic piece of shit. But I’ve seen him when he thought he was alone with Seungcheol. He’s just a little duckling that wants to be cuddled. And his boyfriend goes from a burly athlete to a cuddle machine.
It’s real weird.
There’s five Prefects, not four, even though there’s only four houses. The Joker Prefect is in charge of the other four Prefects: not only that, but the Joker is the number one connection between the students, Prefects, and the principal. The Joker keeps the school running smoothly most days, and is considered not so much without a house as belonging to them all.
And currently it’s 23:56 on his seventeenth birthday and he’s sweating bullets.
Hong Joshua. Seventeen years old. Just a few sweet moments away from getting my Ovo. It’s a sleepless night for most people, but I never really realized just how sleepless. How the anxiety and excitement eats away at your chest. How you can’t keep still. I keep staring at my wrists, waiting for the pattern to show up. What kind of person will my soulmate be? I always imagine them to be a Queen of Spades – somebody sober and responsible like myself – but they might end up a Deuce of Hearts or even a Seven of Clubs. Imagine that! A Seven of Clubs!
I turn over and grip my sheets. Go to sleep, Joshua, I think to myself. First day of school tomorrow. Don’t go in with bags under your eyes.
Shut up, the excited part of my brain mutters back. Everybody knows you’re getting your Ovo today. Just stay awake, damn it.
I’m wrestling with the idea when there’s a soft thump in the middle of my room. At first I think that the shoebox I stacked precariously on top of my school uniform has fallen over in the breeze that’s coming from the open balcony door. Then the soft thump makes a disgusting grunt sound and I sit up, hitting the button on my lamp, giving myself a lovely papercut on my roster sheet in the process. I hiss in shock, whipping my hand limply at the sharp cut, and simply glare at my floor.
Right there lies the dark shape of a human body.
Then I smell it and I gag a little. I never really thought that blood had a smell – I never bled much in my life anyway – but this has to be the smell of blood. It’s sour, like bad cabbage, salty, and a bit metallic. It is absolutely revolting, and the pool of it on my beautiful hardwood floor is slowly expanding.
Somebody had swung into my bedroom, on the third floor, walked through my balcony door, and begun to bleed out on my bedroom floor. Which tends to be something I take offense at.
The body slumps, making a squelching sound as it loses the will to fight, and for some reason, I don’t start screaming like any sane person would. I just slowly lean over the side of my bed to touch it – to see if the blood is real.
The moment my finger touches the hot, sticky liquid, everything seems to go dark again.
To explain what it feels like, you have to imagine wearing -8 diopter glasses your entire life, and then casually taking them off for a night. The headache in the middle of my frontal lobe is throbbing like somebody just hit me with a mill hammer, my limbs are cold and my breath is shaky.
Breathing is kinda difficult for a moment, as if I’ve forgotten how to breathe, but then my lungs finally kick in and now I’m breathing too hard, like I just ran a marathon.
“Shh,” a voice says. I don’t recognize it. “Just relax.”
I can’t find my eyes, and then suddenly they’re opening, blinking against the light. My bedside light is still on. There’s somebody beside me. Somebody I don’t know.
I pull up against the wall, curling up under my bedsheets in both shock and fear. For a moment, I can’t get my mouth to move just right – and when I find my tongue again, I don’t even know what to say.
“Please don’t scream,” he whispers.
I just stare. I hadn’t realized earlier, but I’m shaking from head to toe.
“Shh. I mean you no harm.” The man holds up both palms. “I’m Jeonghan. You just saved me.”
“Saved you?!”
“Shhhhh!” he hisses, looking towards the door instantly. “Please keep your voice down!”
“What do you mean, saved you?” I work to get my voice down, but whispering burns against my raw throat, as if I’ve been working choir for seven hours straight. “Who the fuck are you?! What are you doing in my room?!”
“Like I said, I’m Jeonghan,” he whispers. He’s still got his palms up, in a very obvious I-come-in-peace stance, but a few seconds ago he was lying on my bedroom floor dying uninvited, so I feel like I have the right to be a bit upset. “Sorry about bursting in like this. I really thought my balls were fried there. You saved my life.”
I want to believe this is a dream. Strange men don’t swing into your bedroom in the middle of the night and claim you saved their lives. It’s just too weird, you know? But the splitting pain in my head is so distinct, it’s so sharp that I can’t imagine this not being reality. Which sucks dick on all sides.
The man takes an audibly deep breath. “I’m a demon.”
…well, what do you even say to that?
“When the blood of a demon comes in contact with the blood of a pure soul…” He reaches out to hold up my hand, pointing out the papercut. It’s got a tiny crust of blood forming. “…then a bloodbond is formed.”
I stare a little, because when self-proclaimed demons walk up to you like you’re a saviour, it puts a guy on edge.
“It’s called a Concordat, and it means that because you saved my life by touching my blood, I’m now your servant and bodyguard for all intents and purposes.”
I think my brain has stopped working, ‘cause my mind is drawing a blank. Like, total blank. As in, I’m not even sure I understand the meaning of the individual words this guy is spouting.
“God, look at you. You’re exhausted. Your eyes are all bloodshot. Go to sleep.”
I blink slowly, and just say the first thing that comes to mind. “What the fuck?”
“…do you want me to leave so you can sleep?”
I’m not entirely sure what that sentence means – my brain is down for repairs right now, ‘cause I’m seeing some next-level delusions – but I think it means he’s going to go away, so I nod slowly.
He laughs, and then he’s gone.
It takes me a few moments of solitude to realize I’m still shaking, and part of it is ‘cause my room is fucking freezing. I bounce up to close my balcony door against the cold, and then settle down between the warm sheets. I close my eyes, and let peace take me.
I entirely forget the tattoo being magically drawn across my wrist at midnight.
The first thing I do when waking up is that I stretch, think what a weird dream and take a good look at my wrists with genuine excitement.
Where my Ovo should have been drawn as a beautiful, intricate tattoo on the inside of my right wrist, there was a huge, daunting black X.
The mark of man who has no soulmate.