I regret not making the last update longer because i had to split this chapter into two, and its ugly. Anyways, here it goes.

I put down my coffee on the table, no longer feeling the need of anything warm running down my throat (Because I already feel fairly warm all over me) put down my feet and take a quiet moment to contemplate everything. And indeed, things make sense now. It isn’t that the glow implied that you are destined to be with someone whether you like it or not, but informing you the feelings that you might already have for another and you might have not realized it yet. In that sense, what he’s saying is true. It’s a deception, a deception that they have allowed us to believe. But also a misconception that we have come up with by ourselves. The deception is that they never really put an effort to change this. And thus, we went on believing that the machine forced love on us.

“Wow” I whisper in the end, finally coming into terms of accepting it. “That’s…”

“You become soulmates, not because of the machine says so, but because you feel so…” He says mildly on my side.

“But-,” I hesitate, but go with my question on second thought. “If-if he and I never were in love…why did we keep glowing? For two years?”

He purses his lips, and nods his head. “Well…we have to acknowledge it that this is a machine. It doesn’t read your mind. It reads your reactions, your hormones, the biological things…and obviously the reaction you give when you’re in love is quite similar to the reaction you give when there is lust”

I look down, certainly disappointed. It’s been lust then, for all this time. I feel idiotic to have believed in it all this time. Of course we were a particularly touchy couple, but all this time I was convinced that it came with the whole ‘being in love’ package. It’s strange how we can be fooled by our own thoughts and how we can never tell apart our own emotions. Perhaps what they need to mechanize is this, because I’m not sure if we will ever come into terms with acknowledging what we really feel.

“So when the light disappeared…” I mumble, my eyes sternly focused on my feet.

“It was all gone” He responds in that same soft tone. I raise my head then, and am startled at our still proximity. I must say that I’m slowly getting used to how he is habited to be so close to the person he’s conversing with. It’s this remarkable thing, it makes you feel the existence of the person you’re talking to, completely, and it certainly puts us into a mutual trance, secluding us from the rest of the world. It’s beautiful.

“He…” I begin to whisper then, finding it hard to bring out my voice. “He was with another girl. And she was glowing”

1004 nods in agreement. “Well then, he has certainly found his soulmate…or someone to lust after. We can never tell…”

I stretched my lips into a thin line, feeling disappointed even further. Knowing that the glow could be two things, but knowing that it was hard to tell them apart was even worse. It is worse than the thought of being forced to love. It’s worse than anything.

“But then, how do we find our true soulmate? How do we tell them apart?” I ask, almost not expecting an answer. But him, being the intellectual yet astounding academic that he was, has the best answer that anyone may have ever given.

He pulls back and looks into my eyes, the same glint of amazement that I saw earlier blazing inside them, like they held thousand, million galaxies. He gives me a brilliant smile then, incidentally stopping my heart and places a hand on his chest. “It’s all here…” He says.

“Huh?” I go, in the beginning, not catching a clear sense of his words. “What do you mean?”

He shakes his head and smiles ever further, looking down at me as if I’m a little child who just said the alphabet wrong. “It depends on you” He then explains. “Your conscious, your emotions. It is only you who can tell whether it’s love or lust. It’s only you who knows. And when it is love, you just feel it like a thunderstorm.”

I look up at him, and feel a slight giggle coming up my throat. “Thunderstorm…”

He chuckles. “It’s quite a metaphor for love”

I laugh back, and he laughs even more. We are laughing like we found something incredibly amazing, as if we just had a massive comical discovery. But the truth is, I’m laughing because I have no idea what to say, I’m laughing because I don’t know how to go any further in this strangely intimate conversation of ours, all because I didn’t want our little bubble of mutuality to end. It scares me, to know that, when he moves away from me, when this conversation ends and when he returns to bury himself in his book, silencing the world around him, I will be on my own. I don’t want to be alone anymore. Not in this fearfully divided world. There’s nothing comforting there, in this age, this time. No nature to indulge in, no rain to drench ourselves. Not beauty to admire and solidarity is scarcely a living pandemonium. The reason why every single human being is striving to find their soulmates is not only because they needed love and protection, but also because they did not want to be left alone.

After a laughter dies down, he looks at me, and then says in a mild voice, mild but powerful, as if it carried all the sense in the world.

“You know…. the world may have changed, the lives may have taken different directions, but love…. True love, it never dies”

He ends the conversation at that note, leaving something for me to contemplate. I feel a beat of quietness, wafting around us as if it’s indicating that it’s time for us to move apart. But we don’t, we don’t put the effort to. Instead, we just turn and look at ourselves.

“Sometimes, I wish things never changed, and I wish we never went forward” I tell him, my voice quiet and contemplative. “I wish we didn’t have a way to learn that we are in love. It’s beautiful when it’s a mystery…”

He gives me a slightest but a gracious smile. “Indeed it is. Man has diminished that beauty themselves, you know…Now we can’t love people for their flaws or take our time to read our hearts, and….” He trails away then, and with a dreamy stance in his eyes, he adds, in almost a whisper. “…now we can’t even kiss in the rain…”

All of a sudden, then, everything stands still. We’re staring at one another. I look into his eyes; he just stares into mine. It’s a strange moment of an enigmatic exchange, like he’s trying to tell me something, and as if I’m trying to find the answer in his gaze. It overwhelms me, the entire situation does. Yet, coincidentally, I want to dive in and submerge myself in the depths of his eyes, his world, his universe, like I belonged there, like I belonged to him. It is a terrifying thought to entertain. But we don’t seem to escape our little bubble. We don’t really try to. I feel him move closer then, and unconsciously, so do I. I notice it, with a pang, his gaze has now shifted downwards. They’re on my lips. I feel my heart beating faster and faster, my eyes threatening to close. My skin is crippling with warmth, and there are butterflies fluttering inside me. The sensation rushes through my stomach to my heart, and rises up to my neck and flows through every single vein. It’s familiar, it’s strong…it’s as if I know what is happening, but still I’m unable to recognize it. I’m a damned fool.

“Jesus” He hisses suddenly and pulls away from me. I sit back, startled, the moment ends like this.

He has accidentally knocked down a can of coffee apparently, and we’re unable to recognize whom it belongs to. He giggles, despite of the warm beverage dripping down his seemingly expensive cashmere jacket. It’s lucky that it is of the same shade. “Well, I guess I’ll be going to the lecture with coffee stains on me”

I widen my eyes in response. “Lecture?”

“Yeah” He replies distractedly, thumbing at his clothes. “I’m headed to Busan for a guest lecture today…”

I laugh. “Why, you can always hologram yourself”

He looks up and gives me a twinkling eye smile. “Well, some of us like to stick to the traditions”

I nod, understanding it that he’s quite intrigued by our unspoken past. He’s not the only one, I think as I stand up and move around, reaching out for the tissues. I grab a whole handful of them and turn around to deliver them to the other, but then I simply sit back, startled, surprised, in complete disbelief. I cannot believe my eyes, what I am seeing. I attempt to understand what is going on at that time. If I should be worried? Happy? But there is one thing that I certainly do feel. Heartbroken.

1004 has taken off his coffee stained jacket and is in a crispy white shirt and a red tie. And there, starting on the left side of his chest, spreading all over in a soft yellow and crimson blaze, is the glow.

He has met his soulmate.

“Jesus Christ” he whispers, loosens his tie and undoes the top few buttons, revealing a creamy patch of fair skin, now shining brightly in a strong peach-colored glow. “I’m glowing!”

“Hell…” I whisper and move closer, but inside I’m in shambles. He’s found his soulmate, this gorgeous, gorgeous 1004 has finally found his soulmate.

Why did I think he hasn’t found his soulmate already?

“This…. this is the first time” He whispers, almost disbelievingly, as if he’s replying to my thoughts. “God…who…on earth…” He begins and trails off in realization.

In a hurried movement, he pulls me closer as all I can do is stare at him in astonishment. He undoes the buttons of my dark blue jacket then, and pulls away my scarf. My chest is revealed to him now, me, still in my white silk blouse from that morning-

And it’s glowing. I am glowing.

He stares down at me as if I am the most glorious sight he had ever seen. “You…you’re glowing…”

“No…way” I whisper in response, feeling tears in my eyes. No it can’t be. It is not supposed to happen that way. 1004 and I are not supposed to glow together.

But he looks up and gazes into my eyes. I expect him to tell me something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just stares at me for a very long time, as if he’s reading me, tracing every inch of me to try to recognize anything familiar, anything mutual which connects us. But in the end, he fails. He’s still dumbfounded. And nothing has answered his questions. My eyes are giving nothing away.

Eventually, he gives up on looking for answers in my lone gaze. He stands up then, and pushes up his sleeves even if it’s cold inside. Perhaps, the incident made him feel warmer. Then in evident frustration, he runs a hand down his face. This gives me thoughts, thoughts indicating number of things. And all of these things summed down to only one. He does not like the choice his heart had made. After all these explanations, he doesn’t accept what his heart is telling him. 

It doesn’t even surprise me when he rushes out of the cubicle door, leaving me behind with my miserable thoughts. I stare after him, as if he had left a trail of his existence behind him as he stumbled out of the door. But no. All I can feel is pain, desperation, the need to belong to someone, and coincidentally, belong to him. But now that I know the truth about soulmates, I can never be certain. He’s glowing, so am I. But for what reason, we cannot tell. Neither can I guess for what reason he suddenly needed to escape. Is he surprised beyond his control? Or is he scared? Is he not certain of what he’s truly feeling? Or is it just…lust, which he decided to take care of by himself? Nonetheless, I know for a certain, the reason why I am glowing. I recognize the familiar feeling. The feeling of the racing heart, the fluttering butterflies and warmth running through every vein. And I don’t even have to question whether its lust or love. I am not in doubt myself. 1004 is attractive beyond words; but it’s not his indescribable beauty which caught my heart. It’s his love for the past, just as how much I wished the times didn’t change. It’s his honesty. It’s his remarkable way with words. It’s how he could hold my gaze for so long. It’s how he could make me feel as if I belonged there, in the depths of his heart. And truthfully, love doesn’t take so long to happen.