Myungsoo can't even remember when he first began seeing them. It must have been when he was a young child, because he can vaguely remember tugging at his mother's hand and asking her why the teen girl in the line at the supermarket in front of them had numbers over her head. His mother had taken him to doctors and to psychologists to try and find out what was 'wrong' with him, until finally she settled on it being a lie.

And so he was branded as a liar at a young age, and he learned to keep his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself. 

That was actually really hard to do when he finally realized what the numbers were. Of course, he had had theories before, that maybe they counted down to someone's life ending, but that never explained why he usually saw it on younger people. Oh, occasionally he would catch a glimpse of numbers above the heads of older folks, but usually those glowing golden numbers appeared over the heads of those in the budding years of adulthood. Late teens to late twenties were most often the age range that he saw it, and that was the biggest clue.

The final revelation came to him when he was sitting in a pizza parlor, enjoying a celebration of victory for his soccer team in high school. One of his teammates, a boy named Woohyun, had gotten up to go fetch something or other, and when he came back, the numbers were gone. What was strange was that Myungsoo had begun to ignore the numbers, finding that amongst a group of high school students, probably about two thirds of them would have the numbers while the others did not. But to have Woohyun leave the table with them shining golden and return without any? Strange. Myungsoo wished that he had actually been paying attention to the countdown, but he was so used to ignoring them. 

His best friend Hoya nudged him in the side with an elbow, and answered his blank stare with a sharp grin. "Stop staring at Woohyun, will you?" he teased, leaving Myungsoo to stutter and backtrack about how he hadn't been staring at the other boy.

Three weeks later, the mystery was solved. Woohyun was dating a girl named Eunji and everyone could tell that he was in love with her. And the clincher? He had met her at her work, the pizza parlor, on the day that they were celebrating their victory.

Myungsoo began paying more attention then, and found that his theory was right. The numbers counted down to when someone was going to meet their soulmate, and the more he thought about it, the more he wondered why some people didn't have any. Maybe they had already met and lost theirs, while never realizing that they would never find someone who matched them so perfectly? That thought saddened him, though, because when he looked at his best friend, there were no numbers. Nothing that said that Hoya would ever meet someone who perfectly complimented him, and while that could have made Myungsoo happy (especially since he had long ago admitted to himself that he would like to be the one to make Hoya happy), it made him sad because he knew that he'd never be that perfect match for him.

After high school, they all went their own separate ways: Myungsoo to New York to study photography while most of his friends stayed in Korea for one goal or another. Hoya stayed so that he could focus on dance, and while it was hard to say goodbye to everyone, it was especially hard to say it to him.

Myungsoo had wanted to badly to confess to him, that day at the airport, when they were both standing there with a strange, awkward tension between them. Hoya had finally broken that, though, by giving the taller boy a big hug and wishing him luck in his journey.

That had been five years ago, and only now was Myungsoo returning to Korea. His eldest friend Sunggyu was getting married and he had cajoled and begged Myungsoo to be his wedding photographer. Myungsoo had protested, stating that a more experienced wedding photographer would be better, but in the end Sunggyu had gotten his way. Myungsoo would do it, despite having his area of expertise be in the realm of landscape.

He couldn't deny that returning made him incredibly nervous. He had hardly spoken to anyone since graduation, mostly because life had simply pulled them all in different directions. Sunggyu had stayed in touch because of his own persistence, but Myungsoo hadn't made an effort to keep up with the others. Especially Hoya. He knew that his reasons for that last had been that he knew the heartbreak that awaited him when Hoya finally met someone, started dating, had a life and maybe a family. It would be too much for him to want to handle and so he'd left it all behind readily.

"Damn Sunggyu," he mumbled to himself as he exited the plane, his carry-on bag slung over his shoulder as he hurried into the airport proper. Who got married in the middle of winter? Snow was blowing across the tarmac, cold and wet and clinging to him, and by the time he stepped through the double doors and into the warmth of the airport, his hair was dripping with the rapidly melting snow.

"You made it!" An overexcited voice shouted and he found himself enveloped in a massive hug, and though he wasn't quite sure who it was, he awkwardly hugged the person back. Surely he knew this person...

When Woohyun pulled away from the hug, his grin