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Minhyuk and Hyungwon had been putting off cleaning out the closet for months, maybe even more.
The storage space wasn't always filled with stuff, but the idea of using plastic storage boxes to make more room sounded like a good plan. It eventually failed. It only made more room to make a bigger mess. Even items that weren't clothing articles, and soon their giant closet had been reduced to something other than a giant closet.
So while Minhyuk sent Hyungwon to buy groceries, he stayed to undo the damage himself. He needed to be productive, so this was a good use of time to occupy himself with something.
He pulled everything out into the bedroom. A winter coat that Hyungwon had had since their university days. It had a broken zipper, which his boyfriend kept forgetting to get fixed. Minhyuk would have to see if he can fix it later.
Minhyuk placed it on the bed.
Shoes were placed next to the closet door, a bag of chargers for their previous phone, which they no longer owned. Piles of shirts, pants, and belts. At one point, Minhyuk found his old MP3 player and got so excited about it that he checked if it still worked.
It did.
Minhyuk connected the device to Hyungwon's speaker after finding the aux cord. Before he gets too carried away, Minhyuk played a song he hasn't heard in quite some time before going back to the closet.
He made two piles, one for donations and another for keepsakes.
Once he was deep in the back of the closet, on his knees, his hand closed around something flat pushed up against the wall. Wedged between an old gym bag and a box labeled misc (do not throw away) in Hyungwon's handwriting. Minhyuk tugged it free and sat back on his heels.
Immediately, he recognized the objects in his hand. It was a photo album he made in his second year of high school in art class. The scrapbook is wrapped in kraft paper that has gone soft and worn from age. It is decorated with monochromatic blues and a whale painted on the front, along with a sea turtle. And letter stickers with the words life with you at the center.
There were small wooden heart buttons at the corners, stars, and even more stickers. All delicately placed with such care.
He opened the album carefully. The first page had a border of pale blue and gold washi tape, a movie ticket stub from forever ago taped and decorated next to a photo booth strip centered on the page. The two teenagers were crammed together to fit the frame.
In the first photo, they were looking at the camera, smiling. The first one was always so simple. Yet, as the photos progressed, they got less serious. The second: Hyungwon and Minhyuk were looking at each other; he doesn't remember what they were talking about, but they were distracted by something.
The third: Minhyuk was laughing while Hyungwon was looking at Minhyuk instead. A fondness in his eyes and the softness in his smile still sent an anxious feeling in present-Minhyuk's stomach. And in the last photo, Hyungwon was smiling ear to ear at the camera this time while Minhyuk wrapped his arms around the younger's neck. Pressing his cheekbone against Hyungwon's.
Minhyuk felt the corners of his lips lift.
He could remember how much love he poured into this photo album. The memory surfaced, a sixteen-year-old Minhyuk pressing dried flowers in the pages of each picture that involved Hyungwon and himself.
And inside this well-loved photo album, there is a picture Minhyuk took when he realized Hyungwon was his soulmate.
𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔
Everyone is born with a butterfly that only they can see. A white outline of a morpho butterfly, drifting near you since birth. Unhurried, with nowhere to go in particular.
Only Minhyuk could see it. Not his parents, not his close friends, or anyone else for that matter. People tended to describe their own little phantom butterfly in their diaries or through conversations. However, it isn't something they could verify or compare. The only time Minhyuk would even be able to see another person's butterfly would be when his soulmate is found.
The butterfly would appear in iridescent colors when the sunlight hit at an angle just right. A confirmation that its purpose has been fulfilled.
It's one of the most private things about a person.
His first memory of this butterfly was from when he was a child, collecting white clovers with Minjun to bring to their mother before they were called back inside for dinner. Little Minhyuk remembered how beautiful it was, even with how transparent it was. The phantom lands delicately on the button of his nose, which earned the little companion a giggle from Minhyuk.
After a while, the boy was quite entertained by it. However, like any child, his attention shifted to something else because children could never really focus on one thing—he continued living his life and went on with his day.
What Minhyuk didn't know was that this little opaque companion wasn't entirely his. Well, he sort of knows. Back then, he didn't.
This phantom butterfly is a soul.
The soul of the person who loved him in a past life, who came back with one purpose and one purpose only: to find the body it was reborn into. Minhyuk had once heard of a Japanese legend about the face you have now is the face of the person you loved the most in your past life.
As it happened, his past lover (or so they say) has reincarnated not as a person, but as a soul in the form of a small butterfly.
And so whoever this soul belonged to—this little opaque morpho with no color or markings—is the one searching for itself. To find the face that was once theirs and reunite itself with its other half. Because the butterfly had been searching long before its person could walk.
There was no countdown or pull, just the classic waiting game, and because of that, people went on for years without knowing who their soulmate was. You had to pay attention to your surroundings, always on the lookout.
Some did pay close attention; others did not.
Minhyuk could only observe it, and most of the time, the phantom did nothing. Just fluttering by him, a quiet soul that follows Minhyuk. Existing as a strange yet private piece of his life that Minhyuk carries on without giving it much importance. While the morpho searched without being watched.
Hyungwon and Minhyuk never searched, never looked at their surroundings, or cared about the topic of soulmates that much, and they became friends in eighth grade over their love for video games. Had many sleepovers that involved playing games up until the middle of the night, until they lay knocked out on Minhyuk's bed, with Minhyuk stealing most of the covers.
Hyungwon never complained, because Minhyuk always took care of him.
They started dating during the summer after eighth grade. Unbothered by the soulmate question, because all the butterfly was to them was white noise. A shadow in the background, without ever caring to glance over their shoulders to look for it.
The little phantom had faded into the background.
Their first date was at the cinema, where Hyungwon somehow stumbled over his words when asking Minhyuk if they wanted to go to the back row. Minhyuk laughed at his anxiousness, clearly the first time Hyungwon had even been nervous around him because of their date.
Minhyuk took his hand and dragged him up the stairs to the back row
Sometime during freshman year, their friends wouldn't let it go. Always debating it, because apparently, dating before you found your soulmate was absurd to them. And that they needed to be patient.
At the cafeteria, they were bombarded with questions like: What if you're not each other's soulmate? What if you meet your actual soulmate? What then?
Hyungwon and Minhyuk would shrug it off because it never really mattered to them, and their answer was always the same. "If we're each other's, great. If not, we'll figure it out when we get there."
Because their relationship wasn't going to wait on a confirmation from anyone, and that included the universe.
By the second semester of sophomore year, Minhyuk's art class was assigned to do a mixed media project that was personal to them. To which the teacher described the assignment as a document of the things or people in your life that matter to you. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted.
Just be intentional with it. What's something or someone that matters to you? The teacher said.
Some students had collages of magazine clippings or abstract paintings. Minhyuk, however, went to the craft store and started building a scrapbook. From photos to little notes, to receipts and polaroids. What Minhyuk had documented was everything from the beginning of summer after eighth grade to the beginning of high school with Hyungwon.
As it slowly came together, the scrapbook was filled with memories over time. Minhyuk couldn't wait to finish and show his boyfriend what he had made. When he did, Hyungwon took his time looking through each page carefully, because it was that precious to him.
After the project was done, Minhyuk continued to add more to the photo album over time.
On a late autumn afternoon of their junior year, the two were in Hyungwon's room doing their homework. Minhyuk set his pencil down and stretched in his seat. While Hyungwon was nodding off to dreamland, the warmth of the sunlight felt really nice, and sleep was already catching up to him.
Hyungwon was so beautiful under the light of the golden hour, and Minhyuk couldn't help but pull out his phone to take a picture of his sleepy boyfriend. He looked at the screen with a fond smile, adjusted the camera a bit, zoomed in, and took the picture. The light was doing something weird on Hyungwon's shoulder, maybe somehow a piece of glitter got on his camera?
Minhyuk looks away from the screen for a second before he does a double-take, and he goes still.
On Hyungwon's shoulder was a butterfly, the white outline of its wings opened, but it looked different. It wasn't just white; the colors shifted, from blue, green, to a violet-bronze. Similar to a soap bubble, a fish scale, or oil on water.
The colors were gorgeous, and it refused to be pinned down. The morpho drifts away from Hyungwon to the windowsill, where another butterfly rests. The colors match the other phantom. Minhyuk couldn't take his eyes off them.
Sensing Minhyuk's silence, Hyungwon slowly opened his eyes and caught the quiet shock in his boyfriend's expression. "Min? What's wrong?"
Minhyuk's gaze met Hyungwon's, the clear confusion written all over his face that he couldn't help but laugh a little, "Do you see that?"
Frowning, Hyungwon follows the direction Minhyuk is pointing at the windowsill, and once he sees them. He, too, went still. Neither of them said anything for a while, and the silence stretched between them while the little phantom morphos seemed content just being next to each other.
It was Minhyuk who broke the silence. "How long do you think it's been like this?"
Hyungwon answered honestly, "I… I don't know, weeks? Maybe months?"
They looked at each other; the shock was still there, but there was also happiness. Breaking into a smile, and the couldn't hold back their laughter. Both boys felt so content that they beat the universe in confirming that they were each other's.
The butterflies have only just caught up.
Later, their friends would find this deeply unsatisfying, but Minhyuk didn't care.
𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔
He turned the pages slowly, completely forgetting to clean out the closet in favor of looking through this little time capsule he had made years ago.
There's a picture Minhyuk took of a sixteen-year-old Hyungwon sitting on the steps outside the school's entrance because he always waited for his boyfriend. The younger had his chin resting on his folded arms, most likely spacing out at a comfortable distance.
Photos of the two of them at someone's birthday party, they were making faces at the camera. A photo of Hyungwon sleeping on the bus home from a school trip, head on Minhyuk's shoulder with the winter landscape blurred behind him. This one had small cloud stickers decorated around it.
The photos weren't exactly placed in an accurate timeline, which had been intentional. Minhyuk liked the pictures to tell the story itself.
The next page he turned was the one that changed everything for him. The same golden hour light, Hyungwon nodding off to sleep, and the butterfly on his shoulder that only they could see.
The front door could be heard from a distance.
"Min, I'm home! I also brought pizza." The ruffling of the grocery bag could be heard being set down, then the shuffling of footsteps getting closer to the bedroom. "Do you need help with— whoa." There was no space on the bed, and the floor somehow evaded being covered in storage boxes.
Hyungwon appeared in the room, still in his outside clothes, as he took in the sight of Minhyuk sitting in the middle. Their displaced belongings spread across the floor, with the photo album open in his lap.
"What's that?"
Minhyuk looked up and motioned him over, "Come here."
Hyungwon sat down next to his boyfriend on the floor and looked at the page, "Is that my old desk?"
"Yeah, we were doing homework. Do you remember this?"
"Of course I do," Hyungwon takes the book from Minhyuk. "This was the moment we both found out we were soulmates." He smiles at the elder.
Minhyuk mirrors his smile, and at that moment, he catches their butterflies fluttering around the bedroom together. Sticking by each other's side just like Minhyuk and Hyungwon.
Hyungwon had turned back to the first page, finding the photo strip and the movie ticket, "Cute," he murmured.
"We took this after our first date, you were so nervous."
"Could you blame me? I was afraid of doing something wrong even though I knew you well enough to know you didn't care."
Minhyuk snorts, "You didn't seem afraid once we were barely starting the film, because we were doing anything but watching the movie."
"All we did was sit in the back row."
His boyfriend gave him a scandalous look, "We only went to the back row to make out! We were literally degenerates."
Hyungwon broke into a fit of laughter, and Minhyuk couldn't find it in him to stay serious. He leaned in to kiss his boyfriend, catching the tail end of his laughter against his lips. Hyungwon's laughter soon faded into something quieter as he brought a hand up to Minhyuk's jaw, tilting his face up slightly. It was soft and unhurried until Minhyuk released a soft sigh once Hyungwon became a little more confident.
Hyungwon pulled back first, leaving Minhyuk breathless. There was this look in his boyfriend's eyes that told him he wasn't done. The large hand was still holding him, with no plans to move away.
"Degenerate." Minhyuk grinned softly.
"You started it."
Hyungwon leaned in to kiss him again, and the little phantoms danced around them.
They ended up sleeping on the couch that night, leaving everything out on the bed. Even Minhyuk's scrapbook.